Creole Crusta

A Crusta is a unique category of drink, one that arose in the 19th Century, likely in New Orleans. They combine a spirit (commonly and most famously brandy), orange liqueur, lemon juice and bitters, which is essentially the same recipe as a sour, like a Margarita or Sidecar. And as much as the recipe is important to the category, so too is its presentation: in order to be considered a Crusta, the drink must be served in a taller, narrow glass with a sugared rim and a large citrus peel curled in the mouth of the glass. The Creole Crusta, from veteran bartender and bar-owner Alba Huerta, taps into the story of the American South, including the dark history of slavery and plantations.

Rather than the more familiar brandy, the base of the Creole Crusta is Demerara rum, which is strictly the rums produced in Guyana (it’s named for a major river that flows through the South American country, not the sugar). In her cocktail book “Julep”—which reexamines and reimagines classic Southern cocktails—Huerta writes that the use of rum was important to the drink, as it was a major aspect of the slave trade in the Americas, with plantation workers often being trafficked from Africa to farm sugar cane. Huerta also gives the drink a toasted benne seed rim as homage to the benne seeds that slaves brought over from Africa, one of the items they were able to cultivate in subsistence gardens. She clarifies that Ansel Mills is the only producer of authentic benne seeds in the United States—however, you can substitute toasted sesame seeds, if needed or desired.