The Brandy Crusta, Joseph Santini, and the drink with a collar

Most classic cocktails arrive with a bare glass. The Brandy Crusta arrives dressed: a crust of sugar on the rim and a long lemon peel fitted inside the bowl. Both are part of how the drink was described from the start.

Joseph Santini

The crusta is credited to Joseph Santini, a New Orleans bartender. Wikipedia says he invented it at his bar, the Jewel of the South, and that the name refers to the crust of sugar on the rim. According to the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails entry, Jerry Thomas’s 1862 Bartenders Guide credits the drink to Santini, one of three drinks attributed to him there. Wikipedia gives Thomas’s 1862 manual as the first published recipe.

Beyond that, accounts of Santini’s life do not line up.

• A New York Times piece by Robert Simonson, republished by WRAL in 2018, says he opened the Jewel of the South on Gravier Street in 1855, sold it in 1869, and died a few years later while traveling in Europe.
• Where Y’at says he was a native of Trieste, Italy, who settled in New Orleans around 1840 and created the drink in 1854 at the Jewel of the South on St. Louis Street near Rampart.
• The Biloxi Historical Society gives his dates as 1817 to 1874 and says he took over the City Exchange bar and restaurant around 1850. It also says he ran a Gravier Street coffee house from 1833 until January 1869, a start date that would make him 16, which the page does not address. It cites a 1987 Times-Picayune article crediting him with the Crusta.
• The Biloxi page puts his death at Saint-Christian, in the Basses-Pyrénées region of France, on August 11, 1874, with a funeral in New Orleans on October 18, 1874.

The safest statement is that Santini is credited with the drink, that the 1850s are the usual decade, and that the exact year and address vary by source. Punch says only that he first mixed it in the 1850s.

Sugar and peel

Punch describes a long lemon peel fitted just inside the rim, with its edge curling over the glass, and calls the sugar-crusted rim a first for a drink. Its formula is brandy, Curaçao, and bitters, with a small squeeze of lemon. Punch says lemon was unusual in the “Cocktails” category.

The Oxford Companion describes the same arrangement as a lemon-peel collar and a sugared rim. Where Y’at says Santini placed the rind along the inside of the glass because he liked citrus.

What is in it

Wikipedia lists the International Bartenders Association version as 52.5 milliliters of brandy, 7.5 of Luxardo maraschino, 1 bar spoon of curaçao, 15 of fresh lemon juice, 1 bar spoon of simple syrup, and 2 dashes of bitters. It is stirred with ice, strained into a slim glass with a sugared rim, and garnished with an orange or lemon twist.

The 2018 Times piece prints a modern bar recipe built a little differently: 2 ounces of cognac, ½ ounce each of lemon juice and Curaçao, ¼ ounce of maraschino liqueur, and 2 dashes of Angostura bitters. It has the bartender wet the rim of a small wineglass with lemon, dip it in sugar, place a long lemon peel inside, and shake the drink for about 15 seconds before straining. Stirred or shaken is another point on which sources differ.

Ancestor of the Sidecar and the Margarita

The family-tree claim shows up often and deserves caution.

The Oxford Companion says some mixographers call the Crusta the first recorded Cock-Tail variant to include citrus and an ancestor of the Sidecar and the Margarita. The entry then disputes that, saying the citrus is so small that it works as an accent, and that the Daisy is the better path for tracing the Sidecar and similar drinks.

Other sources lean in different directions:

• Wikipedia’s Sidecar entry says the Sidecar is “perhaps most closely related to the older brandy crusta,” without a citation, and also files the Sidecar under the daisy category.
• Punch quotes bartender Jamie Boudreau calling the Crusta the Sidecar’s precursor, since both use brandy and orange liqueur and the Sidecar later adopted a sugared rim. It also quotes David Wondrich suggesting the Daisy was the Sidecar’s more likely predecessor.
• Wikipedia’s Margarita entry connects the Margarita to the brandy daisy, not to the Crusta.
• New Orleans Magazine calls the Crusta a precursor to the Sidecar and possibly the Margarita.

So the sources agree the Crusta is related to the Sidecar, and they disagree on whether it is a direct parent. The Margarita’s documented line, per Wikipedia, runs through the Daisy.

Disappearance and return

Punch says the Crusta faded in the early 20th century, after phylloxera hit French vineyards and Prohibition cut off American access to brandy. It credits Chris Hannah, then at Arnaud’s French 75 bar, with reintroducing it to New Orleans in 2004. The Times piece reports that in 2018 Hannah and Nick Detrich were opening a new Jewel of the South in a French Quarter cottage on St. Louis Street, with the Crusta as its signature drink.