Peychaud’s
The bitters that defined New Orleans cocktail culture. Antoine Peychaud’s apothecary on Royal Street started bottling them in the 1830s; they survived two centuries, multiple ownership changes, and Prohibition, and remain the only acceptable bitter for a real Sazerac. Lighter, more floral, and more anise-forward than Angostura.
Peychaud’s Bitters are older than the United States’ modern cocktail culture and have outlived almost every other producer they ever competed with. Antoine Amédée Peychaud was a Creole apothecary who fled Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) for New Orleans during the slave revolt of the early 1790s. By the 1830s he had a shop on Royal Street where he sold a family bitters formula—anise, gentian, and other botanicals macerated in alcohol—initially as a digestive medicine. New Orleans bartenders started adding it to brandy with sugar and a twist, and the Sazerac was born.
What Peychaud’s tastes like, compared to Angostura: lighter, sweeter, more anise-forward (the licorice notes are distinct), more floral, less bitter. The color is famously red, from the cochineal traditionally used. Two-three dashes in a cocktail will read brighter and more aromatic than the same amount of Angostura.
Beyond the Sazerac, Peychaud’s belongs in any cocktail that wants a softer, more floral aromatic profile—certain Vieux Carrés (with both Peychaud’s and Angostura), the New Orleans-leaning subset of exotic cocktails, and as the bitters of choice when a recipe calls for aromatic bitters and you want something other than the default Angostura.
Now owned by the Sazerac Company (which also owns the rye and the brand), Peychaud’s remains made to the original formula. A bottle lasts a long time in a home bar—a typical recipe uses two or three dashes—so the one-bottle purchase is genuinely a multi-year commitment.
Buy: Amazon (every liquor section carries it); Total Wine; direct from Sazerac retailers. The 10-oz bottle is the standard home-bar size.