Pearce explains that Louisiana’s location made it a prime location for importing liquor from the Caribbean. “Ships would dock twelve miles out, which is how far out you have to be for it to be considered international waters.  Local rumrummers would go out in their skiffs and bring it back in.”

New Orleanians proved to be equally crafty at distributing liquor throughout the south. “There was a mortuary supposedly sending people to be buried in Monroe and Texas, and Federal agents opened the caskets and there wasn’t a body, it was just filled with liquor,” Jackson’s article recounts.

“One of the most ingenious smuggling operations sealed liquor bottles inside paint cans and shipped them by barge upriver to St. Louis.”

Pearce indicates that it is perhaps something more intrinsic to the nature of New Orleans, something that persists today, that got the city through Prohibition. “Nobody drinks like we do here, and by that, I mean the steadiness of drinking. Not the way that tourists drink when they come here. People drink here all the time, like when you go walk your dog to the dog park. When you get together with people, even in the middle of the day, you get a drink,” says Pearce. “I don’t think that part of our culture has changed or is changing.”

Details. Details. Details.

Elizabeth Pearce’s Original Sazerac Cocktail Tour can accommodate groups of any size and is all-inclusive, starting and ending at the Hermann-Grima house. Contact Pearce through her website elizabeth-pearce.com or call (504) 578-8280 to schedule a tour.

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