Hot off the Presses: The Roffignac

"What the heck is a Roffignac?" I can hear you thinking. Almost lost to history, it has long been one of New Orleans’s most mysterious cocktails. While drinks such as the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the craft cocktail movement of the early twenty-first century, resurrecting the Roffignac has proved a more difficult task.

Named for nineteenth-century New Orleans mayor Joseph Roffignac, the whiskey-based drink became one of the city’s most celebrated libations by the 1890s. After Prohibition, however, its place in Crescent City drinking culture never quite recovered.

It remained the house cocktail at Maylie’s Restaurant until its owners shuttered the establishment in 1983. By then, the Roffignac had fallen into relative obscurity. The renewed interest in craft spirits in the 2010s saw bartenders and spirits enthusiasts across the country creating their own versions of the Roffignac. Many tried to trace its roots back through the years and uncover early recipes for the drink, and some perpetuated fanciful accounts related to its name, origins, and original ingredients.

This book is my attempt to separate fact from fiction and tell the definitive story of this classic pre-Prohibition creation. The Roffignac explains for the first time how and when this once-famous concoction was created and how it fell out of favor before being rediscovered by mixologists and connoisseurs. Along the way, it surveys dining and drinking in nineteenth-century New Orleans and explores how twentieth- and twenty-first-century conceptions of the city have shaped our views of the drink and its history.

Buy now on Amazon or wherever fine hardback cocktail books are sold.