America

 

California

Mai Tai

The Mai Tai was created in Oakland, California, in 1944 by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, one of the founding fathers of American tiki culture.

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Bergeron had lost a leg as a child but apparently none of his ambition. Inspired in part by the success of Don the Beachcomber's Polynesian-style restaurant in Hollywood, he borrowed money from his aunt and opened a little Oakland bar called Hinky Dinks at 6500 San Pablo Avenue in 1934. By 1938, Hinky Dinks had transformed into Trader Vic's, eventually growing into an international restaurant empire.

Then came the drink that would make him famous.
 

One evening in 1944, Vic was entertaining his Tahitian friends Ham and Carrie Guild. He pulled down a bottle of 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew Jamaican rum and mixed it with fresh lime juice, orange Curaçao, French orgeat, and rock candy syrup. He shook it with crushed ice, dropped in half of the spent lime shell, added a sprig of mint, and handed it to Carrie.

She took a sip and exclaimed:

“Mai Tai—Roa Ae!”

Trader Vic translated the Tahitian expression as “Out of this world—the best!”

And just like that, the Mai Tai had a name.

Good thing she didn't say, “Eh, it's okay.”

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The original Mai Tai contained no pineapple juice, no orange juice, no grenadine, and no bright-red anything. Most importantly, it wasn't the sugary fruit punch that eventually appeared under the Mai Tai name in countless bars.

Trader Vic's original did not have a dark-rum float. It was made with that magnificent aged Jamaican rum. When the supply eventually disappeared, Vic began experimenting with rum blends to recreate its rich flavor. The dark-rum float found on many modern Mai Tais came later.

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The original garnish was beautifully simple: the spent lime shell and a sprig of mint. Together, they're often said to resemble a little tropical island with a palm tree.

The Mai Tai became a sensation during America's mid-century fascination with Polynesian culture. In 1953, Trader Vic brought it to Hawaii after the Matson Steamship Lines asked him to create drinks for the Royal Hawaiian, Moana, and Surfrider hotels. Then Elvis Presley gave the drink another pop-culture boost when the Mai Tai appeared in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii.

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Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, bartenders began throwing every tropical ingredient they could find into the poor thing.

The Mai Tai survived. Its reputation barely did.

The modern craft-tiki revival has returned the drink to its roots: good rum, fresh lime, orange Curaçao, orgeat, and just enough sweetness to bring everything together.

And if somebody hands you a neon-red Mai Tai?

Carrie Guild would probably like a word.

 

 

Tequila Sunrise — The Trident Restaurant & Bar

They should have called it the Right Place at the Right Time Sunrise.

In the early 1970s, young bartenders Bobby “Robert” Lozoff and Billy Rice were working at the Trident in Sausalito, California, just across the bay from San Francisco. The Trident was one of the places to be—a waterfront counterculture hangout frequented by musicians and celebrities. Janis Joplin and Carlos Santana were among the famous faces associated with the place, and a young Robin Williams later worked there as a dishwasher and busboy.

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Lozoff began bartending there in 1969 and became known for speed. The Trident was an extremely high-volume operation, and he could pump out drinks with the best of them.

Which would turn out to be rather important.

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The Tequila Sunrise Lozoff first experimented with wasn't today's familiar three-ingredient drink. His early version included tequila, orange juice, sweet-and-sour mix, soda water, and crème de cassis. As the Trident got busier, the drink got simpler. Eventually the recipe became the beautiful three-ingredient combination we know today: tequila, orange juice, and grenadine.

Because sooner or later, every busy bartender discovers that five ingredients would really like to become three.

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Then came one Monday night in June 1972.

The Trident was normally closed on Mondays, but concert promoter Bill Graham arranged a private party there to kick off the Rolling Stones' 1972 American tour. Lozoff was called in to work.

Mick Jagger came to the bar looking for a Margarita. Lozoff suggested he try a Tequila Sunrise instead.

Jagger did.

And loved it.

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According to Lozoff, part of the drink's appeal was its simplicity. Tequila. Orange juice. Grenadine. Three ingredients the band could easily reproduce while traveling.

And reproduce it they did.

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The Rolling Stones began ordering Tequila Sunrises as they traveled across America, helping spread the drink from one city to another. Keith Richards later recalled in his autobiography Life that the 1972 tour became known as the “Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise tour.”

Most bartenders hope a celebrity likes their drink. Lozoff accidentally got himself a nationwide marketing department.

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Then lightning struck again.

The Trident was reportedly selling extraordinary quantities of tequila, and José Cuervo recognized a marketing opportunity. The company began promoting the Tequila Sunrise and printed the recipe on its bottles.

Then in 1973, the Eagles released “Tequila Sunrise” on their Desperado album.

At this point the cocktail had the Rolling Stones drinking it, José Cuervo advertising it, and the Eagles singing about it.

Some cocktails get a garnish. This one got a publicity department.

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By 1974, the modern Tequila Sunrise appeared in Mr. Boston's Bartender's Guide, and the drink was on its way to becoming one of the most recognizable cocktails of the 1970s.

And what happens when a bartender creates a drink that becomes famous around the world?

In Lozoff's case, not much.

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When I communicated with him in November 2016, he told me:

“Unfortunately I was too young to capitalize on the deal and made no money.”

He said he didn't receive significant recognition until writer Jeff Burkhart told his story in 2012.

The Rolling Stones got a tour. José Cuervo sold tequila. The Eagles got a hit song.

The bartender got his regular paycheck.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

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Lozoff moved to Lahaina, Maui, in 1976 and opened Blue Max, a Trident-like restaurant and bar at 730 Front Street. Once again, musicians and celebrities found their way through the doors, including Elton John and Stevie Nicks. And naturally, Lozoff served his Tequila Sunrise.

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Here's perhaps the most surprising fact of all:

Bobby Lozoff didn't drink alcohol. He never did.

After leaving the restaurant business in 1989, he became a Mac technician and taught computer classes. He once told me he spent his money on planes, boats, and Rolexes.

Not bad for a guy who never drank the cocktail that helped make him famous.
 

But Wait...There Was Another Sunrise

To be fair, Lozoff and Rice didn't invent the name Tequila Sunrise.

The Arizona Biltmore credits bartender Gene Sulit with creating an earlier Tequila Sunrise in the 1930s. His version was quite different: tequila, lime juice, crème de cassis, and soda water. The resort says Sulit created it after a guest asked for a refreshing tequila drink to enjoy poolside.

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There's even evidence of a tequila-based Sunrise Cocktail in print by 1933, making the earliest history murkier than the usual origin story suggests.

So the fairest way to tell the story is:

Arizona gave the Tequila Sunrise its early roots. Sausalito gave us the version the world drinks today.

And the Rolling Stones?

They gave it a tour bus.

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Zombie — Don the Beachcomber

The Zombie was created in 1934 by Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, better known as Donn Beach, Don the Beachcomber, and one of the founding fathers of American tiki culture.

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In 1933, Beach opened Don’s Beachcomber at 1722 North McCadden Place, just off Hollywood Boulevard. The tiny Polynesian-themed bar transported Depression-era customers to an exotic fantasyland of bamboo, tropical décor, potent rum drinks, and escapism. In 1937, he moved across the street to a larger location at 1727 North McCadden Place, eventually known as Don the Beachcomber.

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It was at the original location that Beach created the Zombie in 1934.

According to tiki lore, Beach originally concocted the drink for a hungover customer who needed to survive a business meeting. The customer returned several days later complaining that the drink had turned him into a “zombie” for the entire trip.

And a cocktail was born.

Most customer complaints don't work out nearly this well.

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The Zombie became one of Beach's signature drinks: a dangerously smooth combination of several rums, citrus, spices, syrups, and bitters. The alcohol was so well disguised that customers could easily underestimate its strength. Don famously limited customers to two Zombies apiece.

Think about that for a moment.

A man whose livelihood depended on selling drinks was telling people, “No, you've had enough of this one.”

That is all you really need to know about the Zombie.

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Beach's creation became a national sensation and received an enormous publicity boost when the Zombie was served at the 1939 New York World's Fair, helping spread America's growing fascination with tropical drinks.
 

The Secret Code

There was one problem with becoming the king of tropical cocktails:

Everybody wanted your recipes.

Rival bartenders reportedly watched Beach's bartenders closely—studying which bottles they picked up, counting pours, and trying to reverse-engineer the drinks. Competitors even traveled to Hollywood hoping to crack Don's secrets.

Beach fought back brilliantly.

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He prepared his proprietary ingredients in advance and put them into bottles labeled with mysterious names and codes such as Donn's Mix and numbered mixtures. Even his own bartenders might know how much of a particular bottle went into a drink without knowing exactly what was in the bottle.

Basically, Don invented two-factor authentication for cocktails.

It worked perhaps a little too well.

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Recipes changed, bartenders moved on, businesses closed, and eventually some of Beach's original formulas—including versions of the Zombie—became mysteries even to the people trying to preserve tiki history.

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Beachbum Berry to the Rescue

Enter Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.
 

Beginning in the 1990s, Berry became one of the most important researchers behind the revival of classic tiki cocktails. His 1998 book Beachbum Berry's Grog Log helped introduce a new generation of bartenders to forgotten tropical drinks.

But the Zombie became his great detective story.
 

Berry began searching for Don's original recipe in 1994, interviewing former bartenders, collecting old notebooks, comparing recipes, tracking down coded ingredients, and piecing together clues.

It took him eleven years.

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Eventually, Berry connected with former Don the Beachcomber bartender Myrtle Bank, whose old handwritten recipe contained the key. Even then, one mysterious ingredient remained: “Don's Mix.” Further detective work revealed it to be a combination of grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup. Berry ultimately published his reconstructed 1934 Zombie Punch recipe in Sippin' Safari in 2007.

Eleven years to solve one cocktail recipe.

Sherlock Holmes had easier cases.

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Today, Berry's Beachbum Berry website tells much more of the story.

And if you want to experience the fruits of all that detective work, there's an especially appropriate place to order one: Berry's Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29 in the Bienville House Hotel in the French Quarter.

After spending eleven years figuring out what Don put in the damn thing, I'd trust him to make me one.

 

 

 

Blue Hawaii — O‘ahu

If any cocktail ever looked like a vacation, it's the Blue Hawaii.

Bartender Harry Yee created the brilliant blue cocktail in 1957 at the Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, two years before Hawaii became the 50th state. Tourism was booming, Waikiki was transforming into a tropical playground, and Americans were becoming fascinated with everything Hawaiian.

All Harry needed was something blue.

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Yee was born September 26, 1918, and didn't begin bartending until he was in his early thirties. He eventually became head bartender at the Hawaiian Village, where he spent more than thirty years behind the bar.

On a personal note, I had been trying to track Harry down since 2016. I finally found him and began calling him personally. From then on, I called every year to wish him a happy birthday and had the wonderful opportunity to ask him questions about his bartending days and the drinks he created.

So when Harry told me why he stopped putting sugarcane in the Blue Hawaii, I got it straight from the bartender's mouth.

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Then, in 1957, a representative from Bols approached him with a challenge: create a drink featuring the company's Bols Blue Curaçao.

Harry mixed blue Curaçao with vodka, light Puerto Rican rum, pineapple juice, and sweet-and-sour mix.

And on January 3, 1957, the Blue Hawaii was born.

Hilton still recognizes Yee as its creator.

Apparently, sometimes all it takes to make cocktail history is a salesman saying, “Can you do something with this?”

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And let's clear up one important piece of cocktail confusion:

Blue Hawaii ≠ Blue Hawaiian

Yee created the Blue Hawaii.

The Blue Hawaiian came later and generally contains rum, blue Curaçao, pineapple juice, and cream of coconut. Recipes vary, but it isn't Harry Yee's cocktail.

They're blue. They're tropical. They're related.

But they're not twins. More like cousins who keep getting called by each other's names at family reunions.

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At the time, tourists visiting Hawaii were already drinking Mai Tais, Zombies, Planter's Punches, Piña Coladas, and other tropical concoctions. But Yee wanted his drinks to give visitors something they couldn't simply order back home.

As he once explained:

“A Hawaiian drink to me is something they don't get back home.”

And Harry wasn't finished.

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Why the Orchid?Blame the Ashtrays.

Yee originally garnished the Blue Hawaii with a sugarcane stick, but customers would chew on the cane and toss the sticky remains into their ashtrays. When I spoke with Harry in July 2018, at age 99, he told me he particularly remembered the cocktail servers having to clean up all those messy ashtrays. So he replaced the sugarcane with a Vanda orchid.

One of cocktail history's prettiest garnishes was apparently invented because Harry Yee felt sorry for the cocktail servers.

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Sugarcane, cigarette ashes, and moisture combined into one disgusting little mess for the cocktail servers to clean up. So Yee replaced the sugarcane with a Vanda orchid.

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Harry's Other Creations

Yee went on to create numerous tropical cocktails, including the Tropical Itch, Hawaiian Eye, Guava Lada, Hot Buttered Okolehao, Scratch Me Lani, Catamaran, Naughty Hula, Hukilau, Diamond Head, Village Sunset, and Wahine's Delight. Hilton credits him with creating at least 15 tropical cocktails during his career.

The Tropical Itch came garnished with an actual bamboo back scratcher.

Because apparently Harry looked at the cocktail umbrella and thought:

We're going to need something bigger.

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His Hawaiian Eye also became famous through the television series Hawaiian Eye, which aired from 1959 to 1963 and helped sell mainland Americans on the fantasy of tropical Hawaiian life.

Yee has also frequently been credited with helping popularize—or possibly being the first bartender to use—paper parasols in cocktails, although I'd soften your original claim because the exact origin of the cocktail umbrella is disputed.
 

The Color of the Pacific

Yee was said to hold up each Blue Hawaii he made to check its color against the Pacific Ocean. The drink wasn't supposed to look like electric-blue mouthwash. It was meant to capture the gorgeous blue of the water outside his Waikiki bar.

If that's true, he must have only worked day shifts

😂

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Harry Yee died on December 7, 2022, at the remarkable age of 104. When I learned that he had passed, I posted a tribute to him. By then, his contribution to cocktail history was finally receiving the recognition it deserved, and his daughter was speaking with the media about her father's extraordinary life.

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I'm especially grateful that I found Harry when I did. What started with my trying to locate an almost-forgotten bartender turned into years of birthday phone calls and conversations with a living piece of cocktail history. Not many people get to call the inventor of a famous cocktail and say, “Happy Birthday.” I got to do it more than once.

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The Hilton Hawaiian Village organized a 100th birthday celebration for Yee on September 20, 2018. Here are some 110th birthday articles.

Travel Weekly

 

KHON TV

 

KITV TV

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Louisiana

Without a doubt, New Orleans has given the world one of the greatest collections of famous cocktails of any city on Earth.

Or, with a little more attitude:

If cocktails had a hometown, New Orleans would have a pretty good argument for the birth certificate.
 

Brandy Crusta — Jewel of the South

Italian-born bartender Joseph Santini (1817–1874) created the Brandy Crusta in New Orleans, and the drink became important enough to appear in Jerry Thomas's landmark 1862 book, How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Vivant's Companion. Thomas—or perhaps his editor—listed Santini as “Santina.”

Imagine creating a cocktail that survives centuries...

and they spell your name wrong in the book.

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Santini's Brandy Crusta was groundbreaking. Brandy, bitters, sugar, citrus, and Curaçao were served in a glass distinguished by its elaborate sugared rim and long spiral of lemon peel. More importantly, the drink incorporated fresh lemon juice, making it an important evolutionary link between the early Cocktail and later citrus-forward drinks such as the Sidecar.

And considering Santini was born in Italy—a country that knows a thing or two about lemons—perhaps he was simply squeezing a little of home into the glass.

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From Italy to New Orleans

Santini was born in Trieste, Italy, and by the 1840 Census was living with another young man in Milneburgh, a resort community along Lake Pontchartrain outside New Orleans.

The Pontchartrain Railroad connected Milneburgh to the city, beginning operations in 1831 and carrying passengers and goods along its roughly five-mile route. By 1840, the little lakeside getaway had two hotels, two barrooms, a grocery store, and a bakery.

It's possible Santini worked in one of those barrooms.

Because somehow I don't picture the future creator of the Brandy Crusta saying, “I'll take the bakery.”

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By 1841, Santini had landed a position as head barkeeper at the Splendid Bar inside the magnificent St. Charles Hotel, one of New Orleans's grandest hotels. The following year, newspaper advertisements announced that Santini was opening the bar at the Washington Hotel on Lake Pontchartrain, promising that:

“The Bar will be furnished with the choicest Liquors.”

Apparently Joseph understood marketing.

Nobody ever packed a railroad car to hear about the adequate liquors.

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The Jewel of the South

In February 1855, at age 37, Santini opened his elegant saloon, Jewel of the South, at the corner of St. Charles and Gravier streets—one block from the French Quarter and directly across from the rebuilt St. Charles Hotel where he had once worked.

The Jewel was sometimes described as “pretentious.”

Which in 1855 was apparently the Yelp review you wanted.

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Santini eventually operated several businesses along Gravier Street, including a less elaborate saloon called The Parlor, the Corona Cigar Shop, and another cigar shop called Intimidad, attached to the Jewel.

His head bartender at the Jewel was George B. Ittmann, who received perhaps one of the greatest bartender descriptions ever printed. A newspaper called him a:

“scientific mixologist who is to the Jewel what Hamlet is to Shakespeare.”

Forget Employee of the Month.

Put THAT on your résumé.

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And Santini was operating during an extraordinary period in New Orleans drinking history. His contemporaries included establishments and businesses that would become legendary: the Sazerac Coffee House, Old Absinthe House, Antoine's, Tujague's, Café du Monde, and others.

The city's first artificial-ice manufacturing operations were also arriving during this era.

Suddenly, bartenders had dependable ice.

Cocktail history was about to get considerably colder.

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What's in a 19th-Century Bartender's Liquor Cabinet?

This is where your personal research makes the story especially interesting.

New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian reminded me of a webpage I had once bookmarked that ultimately led me to Santini's great-great-granddaughter, Diana.

Finding her wasn't exactly a one-phone-call operation.

I called enough wrong Dianas to begin questioning whether I was researching cocktail history or working for a collection agency.

But eventually, I found the right Diana.

She generously shared family photographs and ten pages of Santini's 1874 Succession Liquor Inventory, recorded after his death.

And what a bar he had.

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The inventory included Boker's Bitters, Peychaud's Bitters, Newfoundland Bitters, Dr. J. Hostetter's Bitters, Guaco Bitters, Sazerac Cognac, orgeat, orange-flower water, Jamaican rum, Holland gin, arrack, Old Tom gin, Scotch, Irish whiskey, Bourbon, rye whiskey, green and yellow Chartreuse, Bénédictine, kirschwasser, absinthe (listed as “absynthe”), cassis, Noilly Prat vermouth, numerous fruit brandies and nearly 1,000 bottles of wine, including Madeira, Sherry, and Port.

Read that list again.

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Santini's backbar in the 1800s could make some modern cocktail bars feel understocked.

And for cocktail historians, that inventory is far more than an interesting shopping list. It provides a snapshot of the extraordinary range of spirits, bitters, liqueurs, syrups, and wines available to a successful New Orleans bartender during the 19th century.

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Retirement & Santini's Final Years

On December 29, 1868, Santini announced in the newspaper that he was retiring from the Jewel and turning the business over to his head bartender, George B. Ittmann.

Santini later traveled to France with his daughter Marietta, who was pursuing vocal studies there. He died in France in August 1874 at age 57. Sources disagree on the exact date, placing it around August 9–12.

His body didn't arrive back in New Orleans for his funeral until October 18.

Santini is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 on Esplanade Avenue.

After his death, his wife Margaretha assumed ownership of the saloons. She later retired to Biloxi, Mississippi—and lived to the extraordinary age of 103.

Apparently longevity ran in the family.

Joseph gave us the Brandy Crusta. Margaretha apparently discovered something stronger.

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More Than a Barkeep

Santini's story wasn't confined to the bar.

He supported the arts, children's education, widows, and orphans and participated in charitable events throughout New Orleans.

At the Locquet Young Ladies Institute on Camp Street, he awarded “Santini Medals” to young women who excelled in French and elocution—the art of clear and expressive speaking.

The Institute later presented Santini with a set of gold cufflinks, engraved with an open book on one side and the word “Education” on the other.

And somewhere, those cufflinks may still exist.

Wouldn't it be incredible to find them?

Santini was also a Mason, adding yet another piece to the life of a man remembered today primarily for one cocktail.

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The Brandy Crusta Lives On

In 1948, David A. Embury included the Brandy Crusta in his influential The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, adding maraschino liqueur to his version.

The cocktail eventually faded from everyday bar menus, but the modern cocktail renaissance brought it—and Santini's name—back into the spotlight.

And there's a lovely full-circle ending to this story: today, Jewel of the South carries Santini's historic bar name into the 21st century. The modern Jewel of the South was founded by bartenders Chris Hannah and Nick Detrich and explicitly honors Joseph Santini and New Orleans cocktail history.

More than 170 years after Santini opened his Jewel...

New Orleans is still raising glasses to him.
 

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Hurricane — Made Famous at Pat O’Brien’s

Ask people around the world to name a bar in New Orleans, and there’s a good chance they’ll say Pat O’Brien’s. Ask them what to drink there, and the answer is almost automatic:

A Hurricane.

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But like so many great cocktail stories, the deeper you dig, the murkier the history becomes. Pat O’Brien’s unquestionably made the Hurricane famous—but whether it actually invented it is another matter.

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First, Meet Pat

Benson Harrison “Pat” O’Brien was born November 6, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He served in the Army during World War I, returned home with a Purple Heart, and eventually made his way through Houston and Los Angeles before landing in New Orleans.

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O’Brien stood an imposing six-foot-four, favored white suits, had a big personality, and during Prohibition became involved in bootlegging.

In other words, his résumé was already headed toward French Quarter bar owner.

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O’Brien operated a speakeasy before Prohibition ended. The famous story says customers gained entry using the password “Storm’s Brewin’,” although that colorful detail appears to be later folklore rather than documented history.

On December 3, 1933—two days before national Prohibition officially ended—O’Brien opened legally in the 600 block of St. Peter Street. Eventually he partnered with Charlie Cantrell, and in 1942 they purchased the historic building at 718 St. Peter Street, where Pat O'Brien's remains today. Pat worked the room while Cantrell handled much of the business.

One watched the money. The other made sure people kept spending it.

A pretty good partnership.

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Pat O’Brien’s own history confirms the 1942 move and says the larger building allowed the bar to expand its two-piano entertainment into what became its famous dueling-piano tradition.

Then Came a LOT of Rum

During World War II, whiskey became difficult to obtain while Caribbean rum remained plentiful. According to the enduring story, liquor distributors essentially told bar owners:

You want whiskey? Fine. Take all this rum, too.

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Accounts vary wildly on the ratio—sometimes one bottle or case of whiskey required buying enormous quantities of rum—but contemporary histories have repeated figures as high as 50 cases of rum for access to the desired whiskey.

Pat O’Brien’s suddenly had a problem.

Too much rum.

There are worse problems for a bar to have.

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The staff began experimenting with ways to sell it. Rum was combined with citrus and passion fruit syrup and poured into a large glass shaped like a hurricane lamp.

The Hurricane became a sensation.

Interestingly, Pat O’Brien’s own current history no longer claims that Pat himself single-handedly invented the drink. Instead, it says that under general manager George Oechsner Jr., “the folks in the bar experimented with recipes,” eventually settling on passion fruit.

That wording is probably closer to the truth.
 

So Who Actually Made the First One?

For years, Pat O’Brien himself was credited. Other histories credit bartender Louis Culligan.

And Culligan left us an important clue.

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In 1956, he reportedly gave Cabaret magazine a Hurricane formula containing four ounces of gold rum, the juice of two lemons, and two ounces of Fassionola, a red passion-fruit syrup.

My friend Scott Touchton, who served as general manager of Pat O’Brien’s from 2000–2014, told me the original recipe he knew was four ounces of rum, lime juice, orange juice, and passion-fruit syrup served in a large Hurricane glass.

Whichever early formula you follow, one fact remains wonderfully consistent:

Four ounces of rum.

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In the 1940s, locals reportedly complained because a Hurricane cost about 60 cents when an ordinary drink could cost around 15 cents.

Pat O’Brien’s had to explain that there were four ounces of booze in the thing.

Apparently even in 1942 somebody wanted to speak to the manager about cocktail pricing.

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But Then My Friend Philip Found Something...

Here's where the origin story gets really interesting.

My cocktail-historian friend Philip Greene, a distant relative of Antoine Peychaud, discovered a 1941 Ronrico rum booklet containing a recipe called Hurricane Punch.

That's a problem.

Because 1941 comes before 1942.

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The Ronrico recipe calls for four ounces of rum, two ounces of passion-fruit syrup, and one ounce each of lemon and lime juice, served in a “special blue glass.”

It is remarkably close to what became the classic Hurricane.

So did someone at Pat O’Brien’s see the Ronrico recipe?

Did both drinks evolve independently?

Was “Hurricane” already being used as a drink name along the Gulf Coast?

Or did Pat O’Brien’s take an obscure existing drink and turn it into a New Orleans phenomenon?

Nobody knows.

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And unless a very informative 1940s bartender suddenly climbs out of St. Louis Cemetery carrying his recipe book, we probably never will.

That's why I would credit this cocktail as:

Hurricane — Creator Unknown; Made Famous by Pat O’Brien’s

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The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails reaches essentially the same conclusion: the 1941 Ronrico Hurricane Punch complicates the familiar Pat O’Brien’s creation story, but it was Pat O’Brien’s version that became a sensation and eventually spread nationwide.

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From Cocktail to Assembly Line

As Pat O’Brien’s grew, so did Hurricane production.

George Oechsner and later his son George “Sonny” Oechsner III helped transform the business, and the Oechsner family purchased Pat O’Brien’s in 1978. Sonny expanded the brand further, and after his death in 2012, his daughter Shelly Oechsner Waguespack became president and owner.

Eventually the Hurricane itself changed.

The original fresh citrus and passion-fruit preparation gave way to a commercial mix designed to handle the extraordinary volume of Hurricanes sold every day. The Oxford Companion dates Pat O’Brien’s introduction of prepackaged Hurricane mix to around 1980.

Today, the official Pat O’Brien’s-style recipe published by New Orleans tourism uses four ounces of rum and four ounces of Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane Mix over crushed ice.

Which is quite a journey:

1940s: Hand-squeeze the citrus. Measure the passion fruit. Pour the rum.

Today: We have 3000 tourists outside. GET THE HURRICANE GUN.
I  learned the Pat O's could fill three Hurricanes in three seconds from custom-made Hurricane guns behind the bars.

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And Yes, It Was Always Red

One thing modern interpretations shouldn't lose is the Hurricane's famous color. The classic passion-fruit mixture—particularly red Fassionola-style syrup—gave the drink its unmistakable reddish hue. Early descriptions and recipes consistently associate passion fruit with the drink.

At its peak, Pat O’Brien’s became so crowded that police were needed outside to help manage the masses.

And those stories you found about sidewalks stained red from spilled Hurricanes—and other things that had recently been Hurricanes—are almost too New Orleans to leave out.

I'd phrase that delicately:

Old newspaper accounts described French Quarter sidewalks stained red from spilled Hurricanes—and occasionally from customers who discovered that four ounces of rum eventually demands a recount.

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The Souvenir You Drink From

The Hurricane glass became nearly as famous as the cocktail itself. Its curving shape was modeled after a hurricane lamp, giving the drink its name and creating one of America's most recognizable pieces of cocktail glassware.

Pat O’Brien’s turned it into a souvenir, helping thousands of tourists answer the age-old vacation question:

“Do we really need to bring another glass home?”

Yes.

Apparently we do.

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Ramos Gin Fizz — The Imperial Cabinet

Some cocktails require skill.

The Ramos Gin Fizz requires skill, patience, upper-body strength, and preferably an employee who isn't busy doing anything else.

Henry Charles “Carl” Ramos created his famous Gin Fizz in New Orleans in 1888. He served it until Prohibition forced him to close in 1919. Rather than let his creation disappear with the bar, Ramos revealed his closely guarded recipe to the public.

Basically, his going-away present to New Orleans was sore shoulders.

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Meet Carl Ramos

Ramos was born in Indiana in 1856 to German immigrant parents and eventually made his way south. In 1888, Ramos and his brother took over the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, at the corner of Carondelet and Gravier streets, just outside the French Quarter.

It was there that Ramos began serving what he originally called “Ramos's One and Only One Gin Fizz.”

A traditional Gin Fizz was relatively straightforward: gin, lemon juice, sugar, and soda water.

Ramos looked at that perfectly respectable four-ingredient drink and apparently thought:

This seems much too easy.

He added lime juice, cream, egg white, and orange-flower water, creating an extraordinarily silky, fragrant drink unlike anything else being served.

And then there was the shaking.

Lots and lots of shaking.

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Shake Until Your Arms File a Complaint

The secret to the Ramos Gin Fizz wasn't simply its ingredients. The drink needed to be shaken vigorously enough to emulsify the cream and egg white and create its famous cloudlike texture.

Historic recipes offered wonderfully vague instructions such as “shake until tired. Shake again.”

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During busy Carnival seasons, Ramos reportedly employed dozens

of “shaker boys.” Drinks could be passed from one shaker to another as each man's arms tired.

Accounts generally put the number somewhere around 30 to 35 shaker boys during the drink's peak Mardi Gras years.

Imagine an entire line of men shaking cocktails as fast as they could.

Today we'd call that CrossFit with benefits.

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The Imperial Cabinet became famous for the drink. By 1900, the Kansas City Star was describing Ramos's establishment in connection with the world's most famous gin fizz.

Demand was extraordinary. One New Orleans account says Ramos's operation produced as many as 5,000 fizzes a week. Another historical account reports that his later Stag Saloon went through 5,000 eggs a week making them.

Either way:

That's a lot of chickens working for the hospitality industry.

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The Stag Saloon

In 1907, Ramos sold the Imperial Cabinet and moved about a block away to the Stag Saloon on Gravier Street, near the grand St. Charles Hotel.

This placed him in a remarkable little pocket of New Orleans cocktail history. Joseph Santini's Jewel of the South had operated nearby decades earlier, and Ramos was now selling thousands of his famous Fizzes in virtually the same neighborhood.

And New Orleans itself was booming.

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Antoine's, Tujague's, Café du Monde, Galatoire's, Commander's Palace, Central Grocery and numerous other institutions were operating during this broad era, while the city was giving America everything from the muffuletta and Oysters Rockefeller to Barq's root beer.

Apparently New Orleans wasn't interested in having an unproductive century.

Then came Prohibition.

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In 1919, Ramos shut down rather than operate illegally. A contemporary New Orleans account preserves his farewell declaration:

“I've sold my last Gin Fizz.”

He reportedly went into the paint business afterward.

Which is going to become important later.

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Enter Huey P. Long

Ramos died in 1928, five years before Prohibition ended.

But his cocktail wasn't finished.

Louisiana's flamboyant governor and later U.S. senator Huey “Kingfish” Long became one of the Ramos Gin Fizz's greatest champions.

In July 1935, Long was staying at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City and wasn't impressed with its version of his beloved New Orleans Fizz.

This was apparently a matter of state importance.

Long had Sam Guarino, a bartender from the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, brought to New York to show the bartenders how it should be done. Long then turned the lesson into a publicity event and proclaimed the properly made drink his “gift to New York.”

Louisiana had political problems.

Huey was addressing the important one.

There's even surviving film footage of Long participating in the demonstration. Your friend Chris McMillian has used the footage in his wonderful “Huey Teaches Us” presentation.

And there's a funny wrinkle: a 1935 New Yorker report said Huey added vanilla to his version—and that after his visit, New Yorker bartenders conveniently “forgot” to keep adding it.

Even cocktail history has recipe arguments.

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Five Bars in the Ramos Story

Over the years, several bars became especially connected with the drink.

The Imperial Cabinet was where Ramos made his Gin Fizz famous beginning in 1888.

The Stag Saloon became Ramos's second great New Orleans home for the drink after 1907.

Then came an interesting detour to Mexico.

French-born New Orleans waiter Achilles Mehault “Mayo” Bessan left during Prohibition and eventually operated the Cadillac Bar in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he promoted the “Famous Ramos Gin Fizz” along with New Orleans and Mexican food.

Prohibition may have stopped Americans from legally selling cocktails.

It did not prevent them from crossing the border to find one.

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After repeal, the drink became permanently associated with the The Roosevelt New Orleans, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel and its famous Sazerac Bar, where the Ramos Gin Fizz remains one of the signature drinks associated with the hotel. New Orleans tourism sources continue to identify the Roosevelt with the cocktail today.

And then, many decades later, came my own little chapter in the Ramos story.

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Bourbon O Bar — And the $1,000 Solution

In 2013, while I was Bar Director at Bourbon O Bar in the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, I started digging deeper into Ramos's history.

My research turned up three details I couldn't stop thinking about:

Ramos went into the paint business during Prohibition.

He had lived just a few blocks from our bar.

And the building that had been his home later housed a neighborhood hardware store—with the paint department in the front room of what had once been Ramos's house.

Naturally, I had an idea.

Paint shaker.

I wanted to make Ramos Gin Fizzes using a mechanical paint-can shaker—a wonderfully ridiculous historical connection between Ramos's two careers.

Unfortunately, reality intervened.

It was expensive.

It was messy.

And apparently “But it's historically hilarious” isn't an acceptable line item in every bar budget.

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So in 2014, I approached William Grant & Sons with another idea. They purchased the bar a roughly $1,000 Asian bubble-tea shaker, and we began using it to shake our Hendrick's Gin Ramos Gin Fizz for six minutes.

The bartender could put the cocktail into the machine, push the button, and continue serving guests while Ramos's famously labor-intensive drink shook away.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MACHINE IN ACTION.

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More than a century earlier, Ramos needed a line of shaker boys to keep up with demand.

I needed an electrical outlet.

Progress. 😂 

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​​​​​​Sazerac — Creator Unknown, but Definitely New Orleans

On June 23, 2008, the Louisiana Legislature designated the Sazerac as the official cocktail of New Orleans. The law took effect July 15.

For years, it was widely repeated that New Orleans was the first city in the world to have an official cocktail. I would soften that to “one of the first cities to officially designate a cocktail” unless you have an older source proving the worldwide claim.

And now we arrive at one of cocktail history's favorite pastimes:

Discovering that the story we've been telling for a hundred years probably isn't true.

The Antoine Peychaud Story

For generations, Antoine Amédée Peychaud (1803–1883) was credited with creating the Sazerac.

It's a wonderful story.

Unfortunately, wonderful and historically accurate aren't always drinking buddies.

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Peychaud came to New Orleans from Saint-Domingue—present-day Haiti—and established himself as an apothecary on Royal Street. By the 1830s, he was producing the aromatic bitters that still bear his name.

The traditional story says Peychaud entertained fellow Masons after their meetings and served them brandy toddies flavored with his bitters. Supposedly, he measured the drinks in a small double-ended eggcup called a coquetier.

Over time, coquetier supposedly became...

cocktail.

Great story.

One small problem:

The word cocktail was already being used for an alcoholic drink by 1806, when Peychaud was about three years old.

Precocious child, perhaps. Bartending pharmacist, probably not.

Modern cocktail historians—including David Wondrich—have thoroughly dismantled the coquetier origin story.

But Don't Kick Peychaud Out of the Bar

Just because Peychaud probably didn't invent the Sazerac doesn't mean he isn't essential to its history.

​

By 1857, newspaper advertisements show that Peychaud's Bitters were being used at the Sazerac House, an important piece of documentary evidence connecting his bitters with the establishment.

​

The Sazerac House was associated with Sazerac de Forge et Fils Cognac, which was imported into New Orleans and became extremely popular. This is the likely source of the bar's name—and ultimately the cocktail's.

So Peychaud may not have invented the drink.

But try making a proper Sazerac without Peychaud's Bitters.

We'll wait.

Then the Story Gets Really Messy

For years, cocktail history told us something like this:

Sazerac Cognac + Peychaud's Bitters → phylloxera destroys European grapevines → Cognac becomes scarce → rye whiskey replaces Cognac → absinthe gets added → modern Sazerac.

It's beautifully tidy.

Cocktail history is rarely beautifully tidy.

​

Recent historical research has pushed the recognizable Sazerac Cocktail much later than previously believed.

Cocktail historian David Wondrich found that although the Sazerac House existed in the 1850s, served cocktails, and used Peychaud's Bitters, newspaper evidence doesn't clearly connect the words “Sazerac” and “cocktail” until the late 1890s.

That changes things considerably.

Instead of Antoine Peychaud standing in his apothecary inventing the Sazerac, the drink appears more likely to have evolved over decades through the bartenders and proprietors associated with the Sazerac House.

​

Enter Thomas Handy

Thomas H. Handy began working at the Sazerac House and eventually became one of its proprietors in 1869. The establishment became one of New Orleans's great drinking institutions, and Handy's business became deeply connected with both Peychaud's Bitters and Sazerac Cognac.

By the 1880s, rye whiskey was increasingly replacing Cognac in New Orleans cocktails. Phylloxera had devastated European vineyards, making French brandy harder and more expensive to obtain, while American rye was readily available. The Sazerac Company's historical records date the shift toward rye to around 1885.

And here's another man who deserves more attention:

William “Billy” Wilkinson

Bartender William H. Wilkinson worked at the Sazerac House and appears prominently in the drink's later documented history. Modern scholarship places Wilkinson and fellow bartender Vincent Merit among the people making whiskey cocktails associated with the establishment during the late 19th century.

After Handy's death in 1893, Wilkinson remained important to the business. By the early 1900s, Handy's successors were trademarking the Sazerac name and selling a bottled premixed version of the cocktail nationwide.

So who actually invented the Sazerac?

Antoine Peychaud?

Thomas Handy?

Billy Wilkinson?

Another Sazerac House bartender whose name disappeared?

Or was it simply a drink that evolved behind that bar until nobody could point to the exact night somebody said:

“That's it. Don't touch it.”

We don't know.

And I'm perfectly comfortable putting:

Creator: Unknown

Because sometimes “we don't know” is better cocktail history than a great story repeated often enough to become fact.

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And Then I Found Something Interesting

In 2016, Joseph Santini's great-great-granddaughter shared with me the eleven-page inventory of Santini's liquor stock taken after his death in 1874.

And sitting among all those bottles were fifteen bottles of Sazerac Cognac.

Santini—the creator of the Brandy Crusta—had Sazerac Cognac in his New Orleans bar.

Does that prove he was making Sazeracs with it?

No.

But it does provide another fascinating piece of evidence showing that Sazerac Cognac was physically sitting on the backbars of important New Orleans drinking establishments during this period.

Cocktail historians love clues.

Unfortunately, dead bartenders are terrible at follow-up interviews.

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Finally, a Recipe in Print

The Sazerac eventually made its way into cocktail literature. William T. “Cocktail Bill” Boothby's 1908 edition of The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them included a Sazerac recipe calling for whiskey, rather than Cognac.

By then, the drink had evolved toward what we recognize today: rye whiskey, sugar, bitters and an absinthe rinse, traditionally finished with lemon peel.

Prohibition interrupted the story, but it didn't kill the drink.

After Repeal, the Sazerac returned, and its identity became increasingly associated with the Roosevelt Hotel and its famous Sazerac Bar.

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My Search for Antoine Peychaud

And then there's my own little piece of this story.

In 2012, I decided I wanted to find Antoine Peychaud's grave.

That sounds considerably easier than it turned out to be.

It took me six months.

Eventually, I located Peychaud buried with his sister Lasthenie Peychaud in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, between Conti and St. Louis streets in New Orleans.

After six months of searching for the man associated with one of America's most famous cocktails...

I finally found him.

He wasn't talking either. 😂

 

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​​Vieux Carré — Hotel Monteleone

The Vieux Carré has appeared on a Hotel Monteleone lobby-bar menu dating to 1934. My friend, New Orleans bartender and cocktail historian Chris McMillian, showed me a copy of that early menu

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Vieux Carré (pronounced voo-ka-RAY) translates to “Old Square,” the original French name for what we now call the French Quarter. The cocktail is a beautiful little representation of New Orleans itself: American rye whiskey, French Cognac and Bénédictine, Italian sweet vermouth, Peychaud’s Bitters, Angostura bitters, and a lemon twist.

​

Basically, several countries walked into a New Orleans bar and decided to get along.

The cocktail is traditionally credited to Hotel Monteleone head bartender Walter Bergeron (1889–1947), who worked at the hotel's lobby bar—the same bar that would become the famous Carousel Bar in 1949, two years after Walter died.

So, when you read that Walter invented the Vieux Carré “at the Carousel Bar,”

technically that's putting the carousel before the horse.

He created—or at the very least served—the drink at the Hotel Monteleone's lobby bar before it became the Carousel.

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In 1937, Stanley Clisby Arthur credited Walter with creating the Vieux Carré in his book Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ’Em. Arthur wrote that Walter created it in honor of the famed Vieux Carré, where antique shops and iron-lace balconies offered visitors “a glimpse into the romance of another day.”

There's just one problem.

Modern drink historians have found that much of the cocktail history in Arthur's book is questionable. So, although Walter has been credited with the Vieux Carré for generations, today we cannot say with absolute certainty that he created it.

What we do know is that the cocktail was on a Hotel Monteleone menu in 1934.

Sometimes cocktail history gives you an inventor.

Sometimes it hands you an old menu and says, “Good luck.”

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So, Who Was Walter Bergeron?

As far as I know, I was the first person to take a deep dive into the life of Walter Bergeron. I wanted to know more than the standard one-line cocktail-history description of “the bartender who invented the Vieux Carré.”

And Walter turned out to have quite a story.

Walter Bergeron was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in February 1889, to Louis Klebert Bergeron and Florence Prioux Bergeron. Remarkably, both of his parents were only about thirteen years old when Walter was born. They married during the pregnancy, but—as you might imagine—the young marriage did not survive.

​

Walter remained with his father, who later married Amanda Benoit. That marriage gave Walter two half-brothers, George David and Phillip. Walter's birth mother remarried John Lankford and later had a daughter named Daisy.

​

With only a fifth-grade education, Walter moved to the New Orleans area around 1907. In 1910, he married French-born Jeanne Cougot, and eight months later their first daughter, Hazel, was born.

​

The 1910 U.S. Census gives us an extraordinary glimpse into Walter's early life. He and Jeanne lived with her parents, six siblings, and a family niece in a shotgun house at 411 Maurice Avenue in Arabi. Eleven people, ranging in age from eight to fifty-one, were living under one roof—with another baby on the way.

​

At the time, the area was swampy and lacked modern sewage and drainage. Walter worked as a machinist, the other men in the household worked mostly as butchers, and the women either worked at home or as chambermaids.

Eleven people in one shotgun house.

I'd have invented a strong drink, too.

​

Tragically, Walter and Jeanne's daughter Hazel died in that same house when she was not yet three years old.

The couple welcomed another daughter, Jeanne, in 1915, and by the 1920 Census, Walter's occupation had changed.

He was now listed as a bartender in a hotel.

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Walter in 1919

And this is where one of my favorite pieces of the story comes in.

For years, I searched for a photograph of Walter.

Eventually, I connected with his great-granddaughter Tristan Scott, and a photograph of Walter was discovered sitting in a picture frame on her grandparents' shelf.

The photograph was taken in 1919.

Walter would have been about 30 years old, right around the beginning of his documented hotel-bartending career.

After years of searching through census records, addresses, family trees, cemeteries, phone numbers, and historical records, the photograph I had been looking for wasn't buried in some dusty archive.

It was sitting on a shelf.

Finally, the bartender behind the Vieux Carré had a face.

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Prohibition & Tragedy

During the 1920s, Walter and Jeanne added two more daughters, Elenore in 1922 and Shirley in 1925.

Then came Prohibition.

The 1930 Census lists Walter as the manager of a cigar store. Considering that New Orleans never exactly embraced Prohibition with enthusiasm, a cigar store certainly could have provided a convenient cover for something more interesting.

Or maybe Walter simply sold cigars.

Cocktail historians have to know when to stop before a good story turns into fiction.

​

That same year, Walter and Jeanne welcomed their last child and only son, Klebert Joseph Bergeron.

Then came 1934.

Walter's wife had been bedridden with tuberculosis—then commonly called consumption—for several years. She died that April, leaving Walter a widower with four children, ages eighteen, twelve, nine, and three.

​

Decades later, Walter's son Klebert told me that he could not remember ever seeing his mother. Because she was so ill, the children had been sent down the street to live with their Aunt Nana.

He remembered that his mother was bedridden for about three years.

I can only imagine what those years were like for Walter: working, supporting his children, worrying about a contagious disease, and watching his wife slowly die.

And yet 1934 was also the year the Vieux Carré appears on that Hotel Monteleone cocktail menu.

His wife died.

He became a widowed father of four.

Prohibition had just ended.

And a cocktail that would eventually carry Walter's name around the world appeared at the hotel where he worked.

Knowing Walter's life makes that little line on an old cocktail menu feel very different.

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Talking to Walter's Son

In 2013, after more digging, I found Walter's only son, Klebert Joseph “Bro” Bergeron, then eighty-three and living in Slidell, Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina had destroyed his previous home.

We talked on the phone for about thirty minutes.

And Bro gave me something no cocktail-history book ever could:

Walter through the eyes of his little boy.

Bro remembered visiting his father at the Hotel Monteleone lobby bar around 1940, when he was about ten years old.

Oddly enough, one of his clearest memories was a shiny red toy fire truck.

A boy about his age had been playing with it. When the truck was briefly left unattended, Bro walked over to touch it and told his father that he wanted one.

Walter told him to leave it alone because it belonged to the hotel owner's son.

More than seventy years later, Bro still remembered that fire truck.

He also remembered the bar itself: men ordering drinks, his father mixing cocktails, and the smell of cigarette smoke.

Bro described his father as short and stocky and told me Walter always worked days so he could be home with his children at night. Walter woke around six in the morning and returned home around seven in the evening.

That's one of my favorite things I learned about him.

Cocktail history remembers Walter Bergeron the bartender.

His son remembered Dad coming home at night.

Bro also remembered Walter eventually leaving the Hotel Monteleone and going to work at the Sazerac Bar at St. Charles and Gravier.

When I asked Bro if he had a photograph of his father, he didn't think he did, but promised to look through his things.

Sadly, Bro died the following year, in 2014.

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“Walter Was a Very Funny Comical Man”

In 2015, while continuing my research on Ancestry.com, I connected with a woman named Fairlee. Her husband's Aunt Punkin was Walter's niece and still remembered him.

And she gave me another Walter.

Aunt Punkin told the family:

“Walter was a very funny comical man.”

She remembered visiting the family in Thibodaux and remembered Walter and his brother George sitting around the kitchen table drinking beer and laughing.

She also remembered Walter's daughter Shirley as exceptionally beautiful and said she looked just like movie actress Ginger Rogers.

I love those little details.

We know the bartender.

We know the census records.

We know the famous cocktail.

But now we also know that Walter Bergeron liked to sit at the kitchen table, drink beer with his brother, and laugh.

That's the man behind the drink.

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Walter's Final Years

The 1940 U.S. Census shows Walter still working as a hotel bartender. He worked 48 hours a week and earned $1,580 a year.

He lived on Dauphine Street with three of his children; his oldest daughter had married and moved out.

​

On the cool, rainy morning of Thursday, February 13, 1947, five days before Mardi Gras, Walter suffered a fatal heart attack in a grocery store at about eight in the morning.

He was only 57 years old.

Walter was born in February.

And he died in February.

He was buried at St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery.

Two years later, in 1949, the Hotel Monteleone transformed its lobby bar into the revolving Carousel Bar we know today.

Walter never got to see the bar spin.

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But His Son Came Back

There is one more lovely twist to Walter's story.

Bro grew up to become a successful artist and commercial interior designer. His company, Designs Unlimited Inc., specialized in restaurants and nightclubs.

During our conversation, he rattled off the names of New Orleans establishments he had designed over the years, including places such as the Dream Room, Safari Room, Brass Rail, Pete Fountain's, Georgie Porgie's, Opus 111, The Godfather, Spinnaker, and Chateau Lounge.

He also told me he had designed a nightclub on the upper floor of the Hotel Monteleone, in the area where the rooftop pool is today.

The bartender's little boy had grown up...

and returned to his father's hotel as a designer.

Bro told me that every time he walked through the Hotel Monteleone lobby on his way to the elevator, he thought of his father.

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Walter Bergeron has spent decades in cocktail books as little more than a name followed by the words “creator of the Vieux Carré.”

But Walter was also a son born to two extraordinarily young parents. A machinist. A husband. A father who lost one child and then his wife. A widower raising four children. A bartender who worked days so he could be home at night. A short, stocky, funny man who liked drinking beer and laughing with his brother at the kitchen table.

And somewhere along the way, his name became attached to one of the world's great cocktails.

The Vieux Carré gave Walter Bergeron a place in cocktail history.

His family gave me the man behind the drink.

 

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