![]() ![]() The Original Old Absinthe Bar in New Orleans, July 1961 (Photo by Frank Gordon/Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) And we also took green knowledge from Laura Bellucci, the Bar Director at New Orleans’s Belle Epoque, an absinthe-forward cocktail lounge in the courtyard of the legendary Old Absinthe House. He’s also the brains behind The Real Absinthe Blog, an indispensable online resource on all things related to “ la fée verte” (the green fairy) since 2007. To learn about absinthe-forward cocktails, we spoke with Alan Moss, an absinthe company owner ( La Clandestine, which offers 200ml bottles that are ideal if you’re just using absinthe as a rinse or a mixer), brand ambassador and a Tales of the Cocktail seminar leader on the anise-flavored spirit. If you’re only used to drinking absinthe with a sugar cube or as a rinse for a Sazerac, you’ve been missing out on the green spirit’s cocktail potential. Turns out the anise-flavored spirit’s not only misunderstood on its own - no, sipping it won’t make you hallucinate - but also as a component of stirred and shaken drinks. Using modern analysis on old bottles, a number of pre-1915 absinthe brands would have been legal in the U.S.-including the iconic absinthe brand, Pernod Fils.In honor of Absinthe Day (March 5), we’d like to suggest a novel way to celebrate: cocktails, with absinthe front and center.The law prohibits the sale and/or consumption of any drink that contains an excess of 10ppm of thujone.There is no law that prohibits use of the name, absinthe.In 2007, the first American absinthe, Lucid, was distilled distributed in the U.S. ![]() In the early 21st century, research conducted on pre-prohibition bottles of absinthe showed the thujone levels to be a fraction of what was original thought-too small an amount to have any negative effect. “Green Muse,” a painting by Albert Maignan (1895) depicts a Parisian poet succumbing to the lure of the green fairy.Īnd so it went for more than 90 years, with an occasional bottle smuggled into the country. By 1915, absinthe had been banned in the United States and in most European countries. ![]() Read more about “her” here.īut the spirit-and its perceived large quantity of thujone-was denounced by politicians and other leaders as a dangerous, addictive, psychoactive drug. Artistic types claimed that "la fée verte" (French for “the green fairy”), as absinthe was often called, helped spur their creativity. Charles Baudelaire, Amedeo Modigliani, Arthur Rimbaud, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Verlaine and Oscar Wilde were fans. The spirit became popular in the artists-and-writers community of Paris. The troops returned home with a taste for it, and absinthe was on its way to claiming its place in history. In the 1840s, absinthe was given as a malaria treatment to French troops serving in tropical climates. As with many spirits, its original purpose was medicinal. ![]() Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor residing in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792. The distillation into the spirit absinthe was done by Dr. Long before it was distilled into absinthe, wormwood was used in ancient Egypt and Rome for stomach and liver maladies, as an antiseptic and to counteract hemlock and poisonous mushrooms. With all its bad press, wormwood is an attractive shrub, with silvery green leaves and tiny yellow button-like flowers. As you’ll read shortly, new testing on the properties of thujone made it clear that the chemical was not responsible for the ills attributed to it. Any extra psychoactive properties have been greatly exaggerated.įrom 1915 through 2007, it wasn’t legal to import absinthe into the U.S. General alcoholism, possibly in combination with other medical maladies, were the most likely causes of hallucinations and madness.Īlthough absinthe was denounced at the highest levels, there is no proof that it is any more dangerous than any other spirit. While thujone can be dangerous in large quantities, there is far too little of it in absinthe to have any negative effect. However, recent studies show this to be erroneous thinking. Nineteenth-century scientific studies blamed a potentially toxic chemical component of wormwood, thujone, for the hallucinations and madness. ![]()
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