The Green Fairy

So, through an interesting turn of events, it is now possible to purchase honest-to-god Absinthe in the U.S., legally. As you may know, Absinthe was made illegal back in the day by declaring that the thujone in it made people crazy, and therefore anything with more than X-fiddly-small-amount of thujone was verboten. This was of course in stark ignorance of the fact that most of the actual insanity was probably caused by iron/lead poisoning as lesser manufacturers added metals to their cheap swill to give it a better color. Also ignoring the fact that absinthe is a VERY concentrated liquor and people were drinking a half dozen glasses of the stuff at a time. But I digress.

A funny thing happened, though, after nearly a century of Prohibition: someone unearthed a few cases of Pernod 1904 absinthe, untouched by the ravages of time, and amongst all the celebratory sipping and reviewing, one entrepreneurial soul tested the stuff for thujone content, and the '04 Pernod had so little it was legal for sale pretty much everywhere. Skip forward a bit, one of the original Pernod distilleries in France was re-commissioned, original copper alembics and all, with the goal of providing legal Absinthe to the US market. While we were on the East coast in June and July, canetoad was able to pick up a few bottles in NYC.

( clicky clicky for pictures and a review )