Sazerac House

The Sazerac House is re-imagined in New Orleans. Housed in a historic building at the bustling corner of Magazine and Canal—just a short distance from the original 1850s-era Sazerac Coffee House—the new Sazerac House museum is a 20,000-square-foot multi-sensorial journey into the spirited culture of New Orleans.

The Sazerac House reveals the little-known story of the company's New Orleans origins while celebrating the local cocktail culture and the art of craft distilling. This hybrid experience uniquely merges historic architecture, interactive media, immersive storytelling, and distillery production to create something completely new for the city.

It's a true multi-sensory journey into the story of craft cocktail culture and a celebration of the city where it all began. Visitors to Sazerac House can see, smell, and taste their way through the experience, tracing the roots of the Sazerac story back to the Sazerac family’s origins in France and to the turn-of-the-century French Quarter where the Haitian-Apothecarian, Antoine Peychaud, invented bitters—paving the way to America's first cocktail.

Upon entry, visitors find themselves where Sazerac began. G&A artfully integrates the story into architecture, using soundscapes and two-dimensional projection mapping to recreate the experience of traveling from NOLA’s bustling port by trolley car. Lightwells become the trolley car's windows, illustrating the busy streets and storefronts, as visitors move through the French Quarter to their final destination: a bar, naturally!

The story leads visitors through the history of Sazerac. Beginning with the Sazerac family origins, visitors learn about French Quarter flavor and bitters production—an essential part of cocktail mixology—on the third floor. Moving down to the second floor, visitors discover the story of the Sazerac Company’s liquors - whiskey, rum, bourbon, and rye, among others - and discover the richness of cocktail culture. The stories show the fascinating history of how both the art of cocktails and the Sazerac brand have evolved over time.