Absinthe

[beans]

SAUMUR, France There are few business models for marketing a product that has been banned and blamed through the decades for an assortment of miseries, from serial murders and insanity to the careless brush strokes of Vincent van Gogh.

 

But absinthe makes a seller try harder - especially since this fabled jade-colored aperitif of fin-de-siècle Paris is finally coming back to holdouts like Switzerland and the Netherlands, which are only now dropping near-century-long bans that most other West European countries eliminated in the 1980s.

 

Nicknamed the Green Fairy, the original absinthe was a potent blend of mountain herbs soaked in 170-proof alcohol - and the muse of artists and writers like van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, whose semiautobiographical character Jake observed wearily in "The Sun Also Rises" that "absinthe made everything seem better."

 

Now, a group of American, French and British business people, operating under the Jade Liqueurs brand, is trying to make absinthe better, and to widen its appeal. They have embarked on a quixotic quest to recapture the heady taste of the 19th century, guided by rare bottles of pre-prohibition absinthe discovered in a Corsican cellar.

 

Full article can be found here.

 

 

 

Cheers!

[Carolyn Tillie]

I've been a huge fan of absinthe for years...

 

We can only hope that it will be legalized soon.

[omnivorette]

"In Switzerland, the prohibition of absinthe was even written into the constitution in 1907, following a popular initiative. In 2000 this article was repealed during a general overhaul of the constitution, but the prohibition was written into ordinary law instead. Later that law was also repealed, so from March 2, 2005, absinthe is again legal in its country of origin, after nearly a century of prohibition. Evidence suggests absinthe has never stopped being produced in Switzerland and clandestine home distillers have produced it since the ban."

 

I guess I'll keep my eye out...

[ranitidine]

"In Switzerland, the prohibition of absinthe was even written into the constitution in 1907, following a popular initiative. In 2000 this article was repealed during a general overhaul of the constitution, but the prohibition was written into ordinary law instead. Later that law was also repealed, so from March 2, 2005, absinthe is again legal in its country of origin, after nearly a century of prohibition. Evidence suggests absinthe has never stopped being produced in Switzerland and clandestine home distillers have produced it since the ban."

 

I guess I'll keep my eye out...

No, don't rub it on your eye.

[Suzanne F]

No doubt the poison in it will counteract the effects of the salmonella in the chicken sashimi.

[little ms foodie]

I have friends in Suisse and they bring us absinthe, we have some that we use to make certain cocktails.

 

While in europe over the holidays we saw that absinth and red bull are all the rage, red bull being illegal in France and the absinthe was a legal version, different than you can buy in Suisse.

[bloviatrix]

The March 13th issue of The New Yorker has a piece about Ted Breaux, an environmental chemist from Louisiana, who spends an inordinate amount of time in the town of Saumur, in the Loire, making absinthe the old fashioned way - slowly macerating the herbs and distilling the product in alembics once owned by the Pernod Fils distillery.

 

It's a thoughtful article that puts to rest many of the old myths about the dangers of wormwood. And the description of Breaux's product makes me want to go search some out.

 

Unfortunately, the article isn't available on-line, but for those of you with copies -- I urge you to read it.

[srhcb]

What's wrong with a hit of windowpane and a case of Blatz?

 

SB

[omnivorette]

I bought a bottle of the real stuff in Switzerland. Made by an old Absinthe-making family, from the region where Absinthe was first made. So far, I haven't opened it...

[hollywood]

I bought a bottle of the real stuff in Switzerland. Made by an old Absinthe-making family, from the region where Absinthe was first made. So far, I haven't opened it...

And this from the woman who ate the killer barracuda!

[Maurice Naughton]

I remember sitting, thoroughly ticked off, on a hotel terrace in Murcia in 1968, drinking absinthe (never illegal in Spain) while my wife was taking the sun by the pool and a genius mechanic in a nearby garage was making (!) a new motor mount for my '67 MG-C.

 

The absinthe method in Murcia differed a bit from the usual French technique of using a perforated spoon. The waiter set a stemmed glass in front of me and added to it a dose of lovely green spirits from a dusty bottle. Then he set a little glass dish with a small hole in its center on top of the goblet. He put two sugar cubes in the bowl of a spoon and soaked them with a little water from a carafe. After a minute or two of suspense, he put the wet sugar in the center of the little dish, over the hole and added a little more water. The sugar water began to drip through into the absinthe, where it made little pale jade clouds on contact. The waiter told me to add water by drops till the sugar was dissolved and percolated through to my taste. As I was doing this, he left and came back a couple of minutes later with a dish of ice cubes, and explained that ice was not traditional, but Americans seemed to demand it.

 

In the event, I used a little ice.

 

Preparing absinthe to drink like this is a leisure-time activity and can't be rushed. But I managed to complete the process (diverted by my Murcia map and guide) a goodly number of times. I didn't notice much except that the streets on the map had begun to writhe a little, till I got up to go to my room. The floor was rolling a bit, but it didn't bother me much. I was walking about six inches above its surface.

 

I didn't make dinner that night, sadly; my wife said the lamb chops, about twenty ribs with a coin of meat in each about the size of a nickel, a bit of char on the outside and juicy pink flesh within, were among the best she'd ever had.

 

By the time I'd recovered enough to function the next afternoon, the engine was again secure in my car and we left for Tarragona. I didn't try absinthe again that trip.

 

 

Edited to tart up an infelicitious phrase.

Edited March 10, 2006 by Maurice Naughton

[Lippy]

An interesting article.

 

I never thought I'd see a howler like "wretch" for "retch" iin the New Yorker.

[Evelyn]

The Green Fairy.

[hollywood]

Maurice, where are you?

[Guest Aaron T]

It has been more than 6 weeks since he has logged in here...