New Orleans is a place that inspires drinking. Not just a beer or two, but serious drinking. Sazerac and whiskey drinking. In the fourth edition of The Bitter Southerner‘s cocktail series, Sarah Baird (also a PUNCH writer) seeks out SoBou bartender Abigail Gullo for a cocktail that a present day James Bond might drink. (In 1973’s Live and Let Die, Bond, played by Roger Moore, ordered bourbon, no ice on his trip through the Southern city.)
“Down in New Orleans, we got your sugar, Sugar, and we turn that sugar into really nice rum,” says Gullo. Combining “the region’s embarrassment of sweet riches” her resulting cocktail is boozy, stirred and rum-laced with Louisiana sugar cane and equal parts Campari and Sicilian Averna, an ingredient that speaks to the Creole-Italian side of NOLA’s cultural mash-up.
The drink highlights the region’s wealth of ingredients “and turns them into the kind of elixirs that are perfect for helping stave off the oppressive heat of August’s dog days … if only for a few sips.” [The Bitter Southerner] [Photo: Flickr/Johan Oomen]