The Green Fairy
Aug. 24th, 2007 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dweniusSo, 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,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
canetoad was able to pick up a few bottles in NYC.
The company name is Lucid, and the chemist behind the operation is Ted Breaux from...go on, guess...New Orleans. His absinthe recipe starts with a beet liquor, which is apparently very neutral, which is then distilled with a number of natural herbs including Grande Wormwood, which is the key ingredient that gives the drink its name. The stuff is 124 proof; 62% alcohol by volume. The bottle is um, kind of cheesy? It looks slightly better in real life than in this picture, taken before the preparatory ritual has begun:
The first thing you will notice upon opening the bottle is the aroma. If you didn't know, one of the hallmarks of absinthe is a strong anise/fennel flavor. These are not common herbs and flavors for the American palate, to put it mildly. So if the words "black licorice" make you blanch just reading them, then um, this is definitely not a drink for you. The smell almost jumps out of the bottle at you. From there, pour a shot or so into a glass. It has a very distinct yellowish green color, fairly well captured here:
You may be tempted to taste it straight at this point. Go for it, and more power to you. Me, I take it diluted about 3:1 with ice water, poured through a slotted spoon over sugar cubes, in the traditional manner. I picked up this particular slotted spoon in an antique shop on Davisadero street sometime in 1998, roughly when an underground market for absinthe, fueled by the Burner crowd, was emerging in San Francisco.
Next comes the louche (not a Moby song). I tried to capture the louche action but my camera and I are complete failures at this. So you get the literary version instead. If you are able to drip the water instead of pouring, and if you have a tall enough glass to see the effect, each drop of ice water will plummet to the bottom of the solution, leaving a cloudy trail in its wake. It's really quite lovely. As ice water collects in the glass, the color will shift to a milky white. Actually, that doesn't do it justice, and neither do these photos. The main body of the drink can take on the colors and iridescence of an opal, somewhat opaque but still able to reflect light in interesting ways:
This next picture shows one feature of the louche a little more clearly. Around the meniscus, there is a thin layer of un-louched liquid, as though the opaque solution were suspended in a clear pocket. Or, as though the drink were, I don't know, alive and allergic to glass, or something. Ahem. As you pour the water and the solution gets dilute, the aroma will blossom even more fully, spread through the room, and take on quite a bit more complexity than the pure liquor.
So how does it taste? Ok, you have to like licorice. I mean, you have to REALLY REALLY like licorice. It tastes as powerful as it smells, if not more so. There are many nuances to the flavor beyond the anise hit, and it will bloom on the tongue like a good wine. The various herbs hit at different times; I catch mild minty notes, some pepper, a little numbing bitterness at the end. The finish is long, and it stays with you. I like it. I can't imagine it as an every day or every meal or a dependency-causing drink, but I do like it.
Also, recall, it's 124 proof. So purely as an alcoholic beverage, it is as strong as it smells and tastes. For me, it goes straight to the forebrain, creating a lovely, nearly instantaneous social high, but without any of those pesky verbal or motor control issues. Lucid is aptly named; it captures my experience of the effect perfectly without resorting to the usual mythological hype about crazy hallucinations and so forth. It does not pander. It just gives you a rather unique drink, filling an obvious niche in between strong but drinkable liquors at 80 proof or so, and various nasty tasting stunt-drinks like Bacardi 151, Grain alcohol, most moonshine, etc. One glass of this stuff is plenty for someone with my BMI; I doubt I would drink more than two under any circumstances. In terms of these effects, it is very like the underground stuff we had available in the 90s, but I *much* prefer the taste of this stuff. Plus, at least theoretically, I know what's in it!
But hey, don't just take my word on it. Surely, I say, SURELY, there is a web site somewhere with ridiculously comprehensive tasting notes for every variety of legal, illegal, and Czech absinthe available, and they will have plenty to say about Lucid, the first legal product on American shores in nearly a century. Right? Damn Right. We heart the Internets.
Finally, I would note that even in this enlightened household, not everyone cares for the ritual, aroma, or taste of the traditional preparation. I present the following evidence without comment:
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. The company name is Lucid, and the chemist behind the operation is Ted Breaux from...go on, guess...New Orleans. His absinthe recipe starts with a beet liquor, which is apparently very neutral, which is then distilled with a number of natural herbs including Grande Wormwood, which is the key ingredient that gives the drink its name. The stuff is 124 proof; 62% alcohol by volume. The bottle is um, kind of cheesy? It looks slightly better in real life than in this picture, taken before the preparatory ritual has begun:
The first thing you will notice upon opening the bottle is the aroma. If you didn't know, one of the hallmarks of absinthe is a strong anise/fennel flavor. These are not common herbs and flavors for the American palate, to put it mildly. So if the words "black licorice" make you blanch just reading them, then um, this is definitely not a drink for you. The smell almost jumps out of the bottle at you. From there, pour a shot or so into a glass. It has a very distinct yellowish green color, fairly well captured here:
You may be tempted to taste it straight at this point. Go for it, and more power to you. Me, I take it diluted about 3:1 with ice water, poured through a slotted spoon over sugar cubes, in the traditional manner. I picked up this particular slotted spoon in an antique shop on Davisadero street sometime in 1998, roughly when an underground market for absinthe, fueled by the Burner crowd, was emerging in San Francisco.
Next comes the louche (not a Moby song). I tried to capture the louche action but my camera and I are complete failures at this. So you get the literary version instead. If you are able to drip the water instead of pouring, and if you have a tall enough glass to see the effect, each drop of ice water will plummet to the bottom of the solution, leaving a cloudy trail in its wake. It's really quite lovely. As ice water collects in the glass, the color will shift to a milky white. Actually, that doesn't do it justice, and neither do these photos. The main body of the drink can take on the colors and iridescence of an opal, somewhat opaque but still able to reflect light in interesting ways:
This next picture shows one feature of the louche a little more clearly. Around the meniscus, there is a thin layer of un-louched liquid, as though the opaque solution were suspended in a clear pocket. Or, as though the drink were, I don't know, alive and allergic to glass, or something. Ahem. As you pour the water and the solution gets dilute, the aroma will blossom even more fully, spread through the room, and take on quite a bit more complexity than the pure liquor.
So how does it taste? Ok, you have to like licorice. I mean, you have to REALLY REALLY like licorice. It tastes as powerful as it smells, if not more so. There are many nuances to the flavor beyond the anise hit, and it will bloom on the tongue like a good wine. The various herbs hit at different times; I catch mild minty notes, some pepper, a little numbing bitterness at the end. The finish is long, and it stays with you. I like it. I can't imagine it as an every day or every meal or a dependency-causing drink, but I do like it.
Also, recall, it's 124 proof. So purely as an alcoholic beverage, it is as strong as it smells and tastes. For me, it goes straight to the forebrain, creating a lovely, nearly instantaneous social high, but without any of those pesky verbal or motor control issues. Lucid is aptly named; it captures my experience of the effect perfectly without resorting to the usual mythological hype about crazy hallucinations and so forth. It does not pander. It just gives you a rather unique drink, filling an obvious niche in between strong but drinkable liquors at 80 proof or so, and various nasty tasting stunt-drinks like Bacardi 151, Grain alcohol, most moonshine, etc. One glass of this stuff is plenty for someone with my BMI; I doubt I would drink more than two under any circumstances. In terms of these effects, it is very like the underground stuff we had available in the 90s, but I *much* prefer the taste of this stuff. Plus, at least theoretically, I know what's in it!
But hey, don't just take my word on it. Surely, I say, SURELY, there is a web site somewhere with ridiculously comprehensive tasting notes for every variety of legal, illegal, and Czech absinthe available, and they will have plenty to say about Lucid, the first legal product on American shores in nearly a century. Right? Damn Right. We heart the Internets.
Finally, I would note that even in this enlightened household, not everyone cares for the ritual, aroma, or taste of the traditional preparation. I present the following evidence without comment:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 09:21 pm (UTC)