![]() "In urban areas, where they didn't have a lot of space for distillation equipment, people made absinthes from cheap industrial alcohol, using chemicals that would induce the green color. "As absinthe became immensely popular, there was a drive to make it cheaper," he says. Breaux, who has studied absinthe for 14 years, explains what led to the drink's decline. Six years later, America followed suit.Įnvironmental chemist T.A. European countries began banning absinthe in 1906. But the tide of public opinion had shifted, spurred on by negative digs from prohibitionists and the wine industry, not interested in the competition. Absinthe didn't make him do it - any more than a bipolar who hacks up his neighbor after drinking Jamesons has been deranged by Irish whiskey. (Think "Reefer Madness" for fin-de-siècle Paris.) In 1905, a disturbed Swiss man, drunk on absinthe, murdered his entire family. In 1890, the book "Wormwood: A Drama of Paris" vilified absinthe, portraying the downward spiral that inevitably follows a drink. Degas' famous 1876 painting, L'Absinthe, is a portrait of overindulgence and isolation: a woman slumped over her cafe table in front of an absinthe glass, face gone slack. But things went sour for absinthe as the end of the century approached. Absinthe may not cause hallucinations, but its buzz has been likened to a kind of "waking drunk," in which inhibitions are lowered but synapses fire faster, the perfect companion for a lively barside debate. At the time, the French wine industry had been decimated, and absinthe, with its otherworldly color and reputation for spurring creativity, matched the decadence and glamour and artistry of the era. And you start to understand why people might think it contained a little bit of black magic, too.Ībsinthe was the drink of 19th-century Paris. ![]() Watching this - on the right night, in the right light-you start to understand why artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Rimbaud and Verlaine found inspiration in the stuff. Absinthe even has its own verb, "louche," to describe the milky cloud kicking up when water hits the drink. Absinthe has its own special glasses, slotted spoons and drips. (The similarity is not coincidental Henri-Louis Pernod first commercialized absinthe in France in 1805.) Absinthe's flavor comes from its muscular key components - anise, wormwood and fennel - and though it's certainly an acquired taste, there's also something appealing about the ritual and presentation of it. It is most reminiscent of Pernod, a kick of licorice with a lingering menthol taste. It will not cause you to lop off your ear, unless (possibly, on the off-chance) you are a deeply disturbed painter racked by poverty, heartbreak and mental illness. Much is said about absinthe very little of that is true. That allowed absinthe to become something of an urban legend, something to talk about in whispers, with wide eyes. Eight years later, Prohibition levied the same fate on all spirits, but while beer, wine, and liquor made a triumphant comeback - expanding into an industry that can cozily encompass both a Courvoisier XO and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon - absinthe languished in exile for nearly a century, a casualty of bad publicity, special-interest lobbies and mythology. Well, now would be a good time to get one.Ībsinthe is legal in the United States for the first time since 1912, the year it was banned in America. Perhaps you don't have a story about absinthe at all. Or perhaps you've never even touched absinthe, maybe you just read about it, and became interested in the lore of the Green Fairy - how it was a muse to the artists of the belle epoque, how it made people mad, made them hallucinate, made them slaves to the drink, how it drove Van Gogh to cut off his ear. You sipped it in a gloomy underground Czech bar, where everyone looked like spies, and the bartender lit the sugar cube aflame. You tried it at a party where someone mixed a batch in the back room, and it was caustic stuff, as mean as moonshine. You smuggled a cheap bottle back from Spain and brought it out at cocktail parties like a magic trick. You drank it in New Orleans one foggy night, too full of fumes to remember much aside from the cloudy green swirl of the drink as water drip-dropped into the glass. Perhaps you already have your own absinthe story.
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