For better or for worse, American southerners drink a lot. The further south you go, the hotter the climate, and the more likely it is that dad unwinds at the end of the day by throwing ice into a glass and pouring something strong over it.
My grandfather’s drink of choice at family celebrations was milk punch — cold, cold milk, nutmeg, and liquor. It’s frequently made with brandy, but I’m pretty sure he preferred his with bourbon. He was one of those handsome, charismatic southern men who could convince everyone around him that what he liked, everyone should like, so at family events I remember the scent of bourbon and most of the adults sipping tall glasses of white stuff under the pecan tree beside the bayou. (I am not just pulling out cliches here. My grandparents really did live on the banks of a bayou, with a magnificent pecan tree in their back yard. My grandfather did not, however, have a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard, and he never wore a white suit, slouched hat, and black string tie. He was a clean-shaven FDR/JFK liberal.)
A few years after he died, at another family event, someone confessed they didn’t like milk punch. It turned out that most of the adults in my family didn’t like milk punch, so that family tradition vanished. I was in junior high school then. I’ve since discovered that I, for one, like milk punch, but nobody else does, and the house on the bayou with the pecan tree was sold long ago so I can’t recapture the experience.
For my generation, it’s sazaracs. My father was a martini man, but on special occasions, he made sazaracs, possibly in tribute to the city where it was invented, his beloved New Orleans. My youngest brother has taken up the torch, and at some point when we get together, that’s what we have. Sazaracs include a sugar cube, Peychaud’s bitters, rye whiskey, and absinthe. (We once found ourselves unable to find absinthe. Jaegermeister, which has a similar anise flavor, is a tolerable substitute.)
It should be served and savored in a short chilled glass. The “sazaracs” guzzled on Bourbon Street in tall plastic cups are a mockery of everything the true sazarac represents.
For the ultimate family experience, now in California, they should be drunk during a long, contentious game of dominoes on the back patio by the pool near the orange tree.
Pam Troy 