The Bar Journal

It is the height of citrus season, and an ideal use for Mixologist bountiful fruits is right in your cocktail glass. But back before lemon twists would sit atop a Sidecar or citrus added zing to your Pisco Sours and Dry Martini, there was a church-and-state relationship between sun-grown ingredients and the mixed drink. The marriage of lemon and spirits began with the Crusta in 1850, as American-mixology historian David Wondrich reveals in his authoritative book Imbibe! Here is an excerpt…

It wasn’t the hard-drinking Yankees who first crossed the line [of putting a little lemon juice in their drinks instead of punch]. Not surprisingly, as far as we can tell it was the Epicurean Creoles, to whom “the fiery cocktail” had always been a little suspect. Sometime around 1850, one Joseph Santini took over management of the bar and restaurant at New Orleans’ City Exchange, right in the heart of the French Quarter.

There he invented the Crusta, a fancy variation that introduced citrus juice into the list of things that could go into a drink. This stayed purely a local drink until Jerry Thomas—who must have met Santini and/or had his drinks when he was in the Crescent City in the 1850s—put the Crusta in his book. This isn’t to say the Crusta was a huge hit. It was always a cult drink—one with few but fanatic devotees.

But it planted a seed. That seed would remain dormant until the 1890s, when suddenly everyone stared putting lemon juice, lime juice, even orange juice into their cocktails. From the Crusta, evolution brings us the Sidecar—and life without Sidecars would be very dreary indeed. If Santini hadn’t done it first, they still might have done it anyway, but at least they had someone in the dark backward of time shining a flashlight for them to show the way. Mr. Santini, we salute you. (And besides, there are few drinks as purely delightful as a properly assembled Brandy Crusta.)