I finally made it back to the Sazerac House in New Orleans. The last time I went, I took a hard hat tour in 2019, about six months before construction was complete. While I was back in town for the New Orleans Bourbon Festival, I took the opportunity to stop by and see how the place turned out. It is magnificent.
I am going to share some of my favorite photos from my tour with Experience Team Leader Matt Ray, who was a wealth of information about local and brand history. It was truly a treat touring with him — I learned more on that tour than I have learned on a distillery tour in a long time.
I’ll try to include descriptions on as many photos as I can, but really you’ll just have to go check it out for yourself. Cheers!
Matt Ray points out on a map where the current-day Sazerac House is located and where the original location was, just a few hundred feet away in what today is an empty parking lot.
The Sazerac House goes deep into detail about the apothecary culture that led to the advent of bitters and tinctures that we use today in cocktails.
Releasing this week! While we were there we learned that there is also a barrel-aged version of Peychaud’s bitters, and this barrel had a day counter denoting when this batch would be bottled. These will be available at the Sazerac House after April 5th, and it is the first batch to be made at the Sazerac House.
There’s a lot of history that goes into both Peychaud’s bitters and the Sazerac Company, both of which were founded in New Orleans. The Sazerac House does a great job of diving into all of that history.This is a cool piece and, as it turns out, they aren’t able to reproduce it because the copyright is held by a local architecture firm that is still in business. It is an architectural diagram that includes cocktail recipes and toasts.One of the speakeasies tucked away in the Sazerac House.
The still at the Sazerac House. Yes, they actually do produce here!
Sazerac owns brands and facilities all over the world, including Domaine Sazerac de Segonzac in the Cognac region of France.
A three-story wall of bottles adorns the back wall of the experience.
This is the part that always feels the most familiar to me.
LouGirl502 