Southern Comfort (often abbreviated SoCo) is an American, naturally fruit-flavored, whiskey liqueur[1] with fruit and spice accents.

Southern Comfort was created by bartender Martin Wilkes Heron (1850–1920), the son of a boat-builder, in 1874 at McCauley's Tavern in the Lower Garden District, two miles (3 km) south of the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.

[7] According to the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau, McCauley's Tavern was "just off Bourbon Street", and the original form of the drink was called Cuffs and Buttons.

[8] Heron moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1889, patented his creation, and began selling it in sealed bottles with the slogan "None Genuine But Mine"[8] and "Two per customer.

In an episode of The Thirsty Traveler entitled "A River of Whiskey", spirits historian Chris Morris describes the original recipe of Southern Comfort.

Heron began with good-quality bourbon and would add: An inch [2.5 cm] of vanilla bean, about a quarter of a lemon, half of a cinnamon stick, four cloves, a few cherries, and an orange bit or two.

[10] Between the 1930s and 2010, the image on the label of Southern Comfort was A Home on the Mississippi, a rendering by Alfred Waud depicting Woodland Plantation, an antebellum mansion in West Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and now provides bed-and-breakfast accommodation.

Stir.One of the earliest Southern Comfort-based cocktails to be marketed was the Scarlett O'Hara, named after the character and concocted in tribute to the release of the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind in 1939.