SAVANNAH, GA—Clad in a sort of outfit that resembles the red-striped container that popcorn is often served in, a confectioner behind a glass display lectures me on the technical challenges of making the perfect praline. If the cooker is too hot, the sugar recrystallizes and the caramelization process needs to start all over again. If the sugar is too cold, it won’t caramelize to begin with. The secret, he tells me, is butter. He breaks off a chunk of a hot, brown, lumpy praline and hands it to me, an ambassador of the flavor of Savannah.
The praline is a southern staple thanks to the candy’s reliance on the pecan. The pecan, of course, is the quintessential nut of American home baking. Pralines are like cookies without flour. They are made with brown sugar, cream, and butter.
A bite into a praline is soft and creamy, sweet and buttery. The pecan, already soft, is a nice lumpy addition. While any visitor to Savannah can snag a warm bite of a fresh praline, it may come as a surprise that the drinks of the city have taken the dessert into account too.
For starters, there are several whiskeys on the market that infuse praline flavoring into their brown liquor. Birddog, the distiller out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, offers a 40% abv praline infused whiskey. Many bars and bottle shops around Savannah carry the bottle. Select Club also does a pecan praline Canadian whiskey and a cream liqueur based on whiskey and flavored with praline.
Some Savannah bars make cocktails with these ready-made praline spirits, like Zunzi’s which cracks out the confectionary cocktail category for the winter. Others, though, take the praline into their own hands. During the pandemic, the Alida Hotel along the Savannah River started serving a Praline Old Fashioned. Forsaking the grain spirit backbone of the traditional Old Fashioned, they swapped whiskey for rum, but this choice keeps the brown sugar in the praline picture. The rum was infused with pecans, and the resulting cocktail both sweet and nutty.
Praline is a suitable match for the dark complexities of whiskey, and it can add a smooth edge to rums and other sweet cocktails, but Savannah stands behind the praline flavor in non-alcoholic ways as well.
Both Tusk Coffee Company and Savannah Coffee Roasters have praline roasted coffee in their repertoire. Savannah Coffee Roasters has an extensive offering of flavored coffees. One of these, which they call Savannah Seduction, is flavored with praline.
Roastmaster Nigel Gardner explains the praline flavoring process, “We flavor a Brazil bean that is medium roasted and we have a flavor made by Northwest Flavoring Company. We tumble the beans with the flavoring.” After adding the flavor, the coffee shop will use a specific grinder to prepare flavored varieties, but generally, the amount of extract being used is very small and won’t harm equipment except for use on a commercial scale.
Savannah Coffee Roasters sees flavors like Savannah Seduction as a way to get new coffee drinkers on board. “Typically people who are buying a flavored coffee are less interested in buying a coffee,” says Gardner, “it’s the vehicle to go with the flavor.” Once they taste the praline (or the other popular nut flavors,) they might be more interested in trying the plain coffee. The roaster does about 50% of their business in flavors.
And this is a healthy way to have praline! Instead of using sweetened praline syrup in an already brewed cup of coffee, the addition of the flavor during the roasting process means that there are no added sugars–just nutty, buttery flavor.
Lastly, Savannah Flavoring Company (actually based in Charleston) produces a praline syrup for flavoring drinks. This is a sweet addition to be used in coffees, cocktails, and anything else you might want to add praline to.
The company gives recipes for Praline Toddy (syrup, sugar, egg, butter, praline flavor, rum,) Praline Cafe Royale (coffee, praline flavor, ice cream, brandy,) Southern Cappuccino (cream, praline flavor, coffee, bourbon, whipped cream,) and Delta Queen (praline flavor, brandy, cream, ice.)
One of these beverages is even called “Savannah Sleep.” It is the elegant and simple mix of praline syrup and milk. As the fountains of Savannah’s many parks trickle beneath curtains of twilit Spanish moss in the humid evening, a little bit of praline in milk sounds like a soft Southern way to put yourself to bed.
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In Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, there is a bar that is themed with Christian iconography. The brainchild of an antique collector and artist, the dive is called Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium. Thanks to the unique decorations, the bar has drawn both admiration and condemnation. The divisive nature of its theme underscores the relationship of alcohol and religion.
Manassas, Virginia has a large Latino population. It comes as no surprise that there are businesses selling agua fresca, sweet, flavored juices like lemonade. One such establishment in Manassas is La Michoacana Frozen Mix, which follows the Mexican model of La Michoacana ice cream shop. However, it is also acculturating to its clientele who are mostly Central American and have specific products they want to enjoy that you wouldn’t normally see in a Michoacana.
Kalahuala is a lightly fermented beverage produced by the Garifuna people on the coast on Honduras. It is not entirely clear what the drink is made of, but perhaps it contains palm fruit and sugarcane juice. Additionally, the name calaguala typically refers to a medicinal herb or fern, Polypodium leucotomos, that is common in Central America. Perhaps the drink contains some of this herb.
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