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A POTENT DRINK
The green drink's revival has provoked astonishment among alcohol-awareness campaigners who accuse such firms of giving young people the ammunition to drink to dangerous excess. However, other high proof spirits sich as 151 Bacardi rum and 136 proof Chartreuse Green liqueur -- a close cousin of absinthe, were already on the market. Adolescents out to seriously abuse their hepatic systems usually prefer cheap 95% grain neutral spirits and grape juice, a concoction known as Purple Passion. These absinthes are simply out of that price class. 40 to 76 sterling for a liter of 55 to 70 proof absinthe simple can't compete for the cheap-drunk market.
Imported from Switzerland (where it started as a patent medicine) to France in 1797 by Henri Louis Pernod, the light green drink is made by steeping dried herbs, including some common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), in ethyl alcohol and then distilling the steep liquor. The distillation is esential as wormwood contains extraordinarily bitter compounds called absinthins which must be excluded from the distillate. Fortunately absinthins are alcohol insoluble, while the rest of the essential oil is volatile with alcohol vapor. The principal herbs are familiar culinary spices anise and fennel, their essential oils being mainly anethole. The product is then treated with Roman wormwood (A.pontica) and other herbs in a delicate and difficult final step. These add finishing flavors and fragile chlorophyllic green pigment -- easily denatured by light or heat. Less traditional brands use food coloring and usually go for a dramatic emerald green (or blue, yellow, even red!) Really authentic absinthe is a pale vivid green like the gemstone Peridot. A New Orleans chemist and microbiologist, Ted Breaux, has spent seven years studying absinthe and has replicated the recipe for one of the most important Belle Epoch brands, Eduoard Pernod. Breaux is a perfectionist about absinthe making, and owns two bottles of century old premium Pernods, which greatly facilitated his efforts. Breaux' absinthe (soon to be commercialized outside of the US) is believed by many to be the finest the world has seen since 1915.
The presumed active ingredient in wormwood's oils, alpha-thujone, has a similar molecular structure to menthol, a-pinene, eucalyptol, camphor and other monoterpenes. Formerly believed to have a THC (cannabinoid) structure-activity relationship and mechanism, a-thujone is now known to modulate only an entirely different receptor site, the GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) system. GABA moderates the firing of neural synapses; a-thujone mildly antagonizes such inhibition.
The traditional method of 'presentation' (drinking) involves charging a perforated 'absinthe spoon' with a sugar cube and placing it over an 'absinthe glass' which greatly resembes a modern parfait ice cream glass. The glass has a line around it demarking the proper amount of absinthe it should contain so that when full, the glass will hold the proper 5 parts of water fo 1 part absinthe -- almost no one ever drinks this liqueur neat, save for a few show-offs. The water is trickled from a carafe or 'absinthe fountain' over the sugar cube which slowly dissolves. As the sugary water dilutes the alcohol, the herbal oils in the high proof alcohol solution come out of solution, being almost insoluble in water. This liberates the hugely floral bouquet and produces a milky off-white drink similar to Greek ouzo or Mideastern arak or European anisette -- all anise based drinks like absinthe. The clouding effect is termed the louche, and is of great aesthetic appeal to absintheurs. Modern variations involving setting the absinthe alight are mere cheap melodrama.
Absinthe rose to popularity in the mid 19th century only after the decades long phylloxera blight of the vineyards caused the price of wine to soar and its availability to plummet. By the late 1800s, La Fˇee Verte - the Green Fairy as absinthe was nicknamed - was being consumed with such fervour by the Parisian artistic and literary set (and nearly everyone else) that the cocktail hour was renamed L'Heure Verte. Among its devotees were Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Pablo Picasso, Artur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Alistair Crowley, and Charles Baudelaire. Van Gogh's ear-cutting incident is popularly attributed to absinthe intoxication. However, Van Gogh was also fond of eating his oil paints and drinking turpentine (principally a-pinene) and had long been highly unstable and self-destructive.
