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The spirit that hovers over the absinthe drinker in the posters of the 19th century is portrayed as either a slavering demon or an ethereal green fairy, but in all cases the absinthe drinker is a broken-down, miserable soul. It’s the outlaw image that is partially responsible for absinthe’s resurgence today.
It may not be a demon, but there’s nothing fairy-light or shy about absinthe either: drink it straight and it’s a rugged ride; put it in a cocktail and it dominates. It’s a trickster. A demon in fairy disguise.
Absinthe is a high-alcohol (45% to 74%) spirit flavored with anise and an assortment of herbs, including grande wormwood. It is not a liqueur; there is no sugar added.
Absinthe was banned in the United States and elsewhere around 1915, more as a reaction against Europe’s bohemian culture, which had embraced it, than any documented addictions beyond standard alcohol-related problems; hallucinations and madness afflicting devoted drinkers is considered to be myth. The ban was lifted a few years ago.
There are a number of truly excellent books on absinthe. For cocktails, I can recommend A Taste for Absinthe by R. Winston Guthrie. But what I’ve found is that the spirit’s anise flavor is so assertive that it overwhelms all other ingredients in a cocktail, unless its proportion is cut to nothing. So if you love that flavor, by all means proceed. I prefer it straight, by which I mean, watered down.
I had an opportunity recently to dine with T.A. Breaux, the master distiller for Lucid Absinthe Superieure, and now the distiller for three new absinthes for Viridian Spirits. With his background in applied analytic sciences, Breaux chemically analyzed genuine vintage absinthes and then reverse-engineered them to create Lucid and the Viridian spirits; they’re the real deal.
Though I’ve tinkered with the sugar cube and the slotted spoon, I most enjoyed the result of Breaux’s even simpler method: to one part absinthe slowly pour three to five parts ice cold (important!) water. The distinctive green cloud appears and off you go.
There’s nothing wrong with the sugar cube, Breaux says, but it’s entirely optional.
By the way, the term for what absinthe does when cold water hits it and the green cloud forms is “louche.” Yes, louche. As in, disreputable.
Filed under: Connoisseurship, Spirits
2 Comments
October 19th, 2010 at 1:04:09 AM
I would guess that the amount of wormwood contained in absinthe is minimal. Large doses of wormwood might well account for tales of hallucinations & the like. It is actually a mild poison & vermifuge( eliminates worms from the intestines), & eating two or three leaves can cause vertigo as well as nausea. That was my personal experience after taking the advice of a “curandera” from Mexico & ingesting the leaves for a case of stomach flu. It worked! It is also used to get rid of colds, but now instead of eating a couple of leaves, I brew the leaf as tea, drink it as fast as possible-(it is horribly bitter!) & it always rids me of a cold or a stomach flu. Now that absinthe contains wormwood again, maybe a couple of shots will be a more palatable way to get rid of these common ailments…
November 5th, 2010 at 7:12:35 PM
Tom
Thujone has no hallucinogenic effect.
The mythos might be rooted in the fact that those who drank absinthe in the 19th cent were heavy alcoholics, possibly with underlying psychiatric disorders – not Thujone.