Mamou Spirits Co. is a small, independent spirits company founded in New Orleans by husband-and-wife team Erik and Andrea Morningstar. Bringing together their backgrounds in distilling, art, filmmaking, and storytelling, Mamou is an ongoing creative collaboration rooted in personal history and a deep curiosity about the place they call home. Through their botanical spirits, they explore the people, plants, and traditions of South Louisiana—a place where countless cultural influences have intertwined over centuries to create a culture that is extraordinarily rich, complex, and continuously evolving.
The Meaning of Mamou
Mamou is a word with many meanings and stories. It’s the name of a striking native Louisiana plant (Erythrina herbacea) with lush green foliage, brilliant red flowers, and glossy scarlet seeds. Beautiful but poisonous, the plant has a long history in regional folk medicine and was what first captured our imagination.
Mamou is also the name of a Louisiana prairie town famous for its Cajun music and celebrations. One theory traces the town’s name to the French mammouth, inspired by prehistoric mammoth bones found in the region. And across the Atlantic, Mamou is also the name of a town in Guinea, West Africa.
For us, Mamou is a name rich with history, botanical curiosity, and unexpected connections—a fitting reflection of the layered, living culture that inspires our work.
Our Story
The idea for Traiteur began in a small mountain village in northern Italy, where Mamou Spirits co-founders Andrea and Erik Morningstar visited Andrea’s ancestral home and tasted a relative’s homemade nocino, a walnut liqueur made from green walnuts traditionally harvested in late June. That first taste sparked a fascination with Italian botanical liqueurs and eventually led them to amaro, with its extraordinary variety of bitter herbs, roots, flowers, and spices, and the stories behind them.
Across Italy, generations have made herbal preparations in home kitchens, monasteries, and apothecaries, drawing on local plants and ingredients brought from distant places. Often valued for their medicinal properties or as digestive aids, these preparations occupy a fascinating space between healing and pleasure. Their histories are rich with folklore, ritual, and knowledge passed down through generations.
The parallels with South Louisiana were striking. Here, too, traditions of healing and herbal medicine have been shaped by cultural exchange, community care, and a deep familiarity with the plants of the region. Traiteur grew from these connections: a love of Italian amaro, a curiosity about Louisiana’s botanical heritage, and a fascination with the ways traditions travel, take root, and evolve.
Meet the Founders
Mamou Spirits Co. is the creation of husband-and-wife team Erik and Andrea Morningstar, two artists who found a shared passion in making spirits that tell stories.
Erik has spent more than 15 years as a distiller, honing his craft under the mentorship of legendary master distiller Dave Pickerell. A visual artist by training, he approaches distilling with equal parts technical skill, curiosity, and creative intuition. Andrea is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and creative producer whose curiosity about people, history, and cultural traditions helps shape the stories, flavors, and design of Mamou Spirits.
For Erik and Andrea, Mamou Spirits is as much a creative collaboration as it is a spirits company. From developing recipes and designing labels to researching local histories and dreaming up the next project, they bring their different talents and perspectives to nearly every part of the process. Their work is deeply personal, drawing on their own histories and a shared curiosity about the plants, people, and traditions of the place they call home.
