Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, 2019. Oh, the decadence. Last year, we attended just one TOTC soiree. This year, five.
In most places I’ve lived, the social life among citizens is communicated through declarative and interrogative sentences. “Tonight there is bowling league at Oaks Park bowling alley, if you’re interested, that is.” In New Orleans, social life is imperative. “See you at the Garden of Elyx tonight. Bring a swimsuit.”
I’ll just start there, in the Garden of Elyx, hosted by Absolut, because it was the most stunning of all five events. Even amidst a tropical rainstorm deluge, with a flashflood river coursing over the cobblestone garden path and the French Quarter slowly filling like a dirty martini glass, partygoers arrived at the Garden of Elyx soaked top to bottom, barefoot, and huddled together under the big top.
Drinks served in copper chalices, ponies festooned in leis munching hay by the side of the pool, a craft session to fashion yourself a floral headpiece, a beauty salon, an indoor swingset tucked into a closet with disco-mirror copper wallpaper.
Absolut Elyx vodka cocktails with essences you’ve never imagined drinking—patchouli, vetiver. Flowers bursting out of the walls, peonies and hibiscus amid the vines. It was the best of times, it was the best of times.
Earlier in the week, we stopped by a Midnight party at Cane and Table hosted by Sexton Irish Whiskey. We got to meet the Master Blender Alex Thomas who is both glam and soul—so follows her whiskey. She taught us about the barley and the malt and how she marries flavors. She said the term “sexton” traditionally refers to the person in charge of the church graveyard, and so is known as “the keeper of precious things.” She feels personally that this is her role in the making of fine whiskey, not because the liquid itself is precious, but because she believes our short time here on Earth is—and when people use her product to toast at family occasions, at funerals and weddings alike, a lifetime well-spent is what she hopes her whiskey celebrates. She said it much more eloquently than that—a natural storyteller.
We toasted fuchsia gin and tonics with Empress Gin 1908 at an event they co-hosted in a gorgeous mansion parlor on Esplanade Avenue with Zeus’s Animal Rescue. The butterfly pea blossom additive in the gin affords it the technicolor show stopper—turning from indigo to hot magenta to pink as the acidity is altered with citrus or tonic. It was just delicious and Squirrel was my favorite pup of the day.
Finally, we got our Italian infusion of Disaronno and Tia Maria and also Campari.
TOTC coincided with KP and my twelfth wedding anniversary and the Rolling Stones coming to town, so after much frivolity, with honestly no end in sight because…New Orleans…in a cyclone of gratitude, we twirl on.
