Photograph from _heather_r_ on Flickr This past Sunday at an event in Seattle sponsored by the Washington State Bartender’s Guild, distiller Gwydion Stone and I presented a one-hour session on absinthe. Too bad nobody told us that, less than two years after its return to the United States, the once-forbidden spirit is passé. That’s the sense you’d get, anyway, from reading the drubbing absinthe has taken in the past month in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. But as Jason Wilson noted last week at Table Matters, much of this criticism is coming from those who built up their own expectations (along with those of their readers) of absinthe’s return in 2007 with breathless repetitions of...
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Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer that inspired the absinthe brand. Around 18 months after Lucid entered the U.S. market—the first legally available absinthe in 95 years—more than a dozen additional brands have hit American liquor stores, with plenty on the way. This summer, the first so-called "Bohemian," or Czech-style absinthe entered the market: Absinthe Mata Hari, manufactured in Austria. French-Swiss Vs. Czech-Bohemian Absinthes The distinction between French-Swiss and Czech-Bohemian styles has been a contentious topic among absinthe manufacturers, marketers, and enthusiasts in recent years. The French-Swiss style is typically an anise-flavored spirit made with other ingredients that add herbal complexity and a light bitterness. This was what van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and other regular faces in absinthe advertising drank....
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Where to find hard-to-find "forbidden foods" in Chicago including absinthe, foie gras, Iberico bellota ham, raw milk, Szechuan peppercorn, and unpasteurized cheese....
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I wasn't able to make it to the recent absinthe tasting at LeNell's Ltd. liquor store in Red Hook, Brooklyn, but owner LeNell Smothers was kind enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions about the green fairy, the business of bars, and booze. How would you describe the experience of drinking absinthe to someone who had never tried it? Are you talking about the myth of hallucinating? That's bullshit. It's a high-proof alcohol, so you're getting more of a buzz, but it's not the same as taking a hallucinogenic drug. Do you subscribe to the traditional method of drinking absinthe, with the spoon, the sugar, and the dripping of cold water? It depends. Sometimes I just...
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Few things in the world of drink inspire as much curiosity—and as much breathless hysteria—as absinthe. Banished from the U.S. in 1912 as a warm-up exercise by Prohibitionists, absinthe was absent from the U.S. market (legally, at least) until just this past spring. When Viridian Spirits rolled out Lucid, the first (and so far, only) absinthe to meet regulatory approval in almost 100 years, newspapers and magazines immediately began to circulate many of the old, exaggerated claims and contemporary urban myths about the spirit called the "green fairy." Last week, the Colorado Springs Gazette joined the fray, but with a difference: Reporter Mark Arnest sought to lay many of these rumors to rest, ranging from the Prohibitionist rhetoric that absinthe...
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Now that absinthe is legally available in the U.S. again, you might be at a loss as to the proper way to drink it. Time Out New York comes to your rescue. Just don't ... ... set it on fire. Yes, it was very cool to light your absinthe-laced spoonful of sugar on fire before stirring it into your glass in that dingy Prague pub, but that’s how the Czechs drink it. The only (legal) absinthe you’ll find on these shores is produced in the French style, and thus should be consumed the French way....
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Louisa Chu of Movable Feast was recently a juror at the annual Absinthiades festival in Pontarlier, the birthplace of French absinthe, and got to taste ten absinthes in the course of two hours. So what's judging an absinthe contest like? "During the judging, I made good use of the giant sand-filled spit buckets but my mouth still went numb and I did experience the infamous lucid intoxication - then again I was just terrified that I might pass out. I did stay surprisingly sober, and even managed to scribble some hopefully comprehensible notes." Alas, real absinthe is still illegal to distill in or import into the United States, so American afficionados resort to smuggling it in or buying it from...
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