I know absinthe isn’t exactly kitchen related, but after reading an article in the most recent issue of Gourmet, and then watching a video on gourmet.com on how to prepare absinthe, I decided to finally relieve my ignorance in this area of the beverage world.
The video on gourmet.com is basic but informative, and instructs how to make an absinthe drip cocktail. Mixologist, Jim Meehan, shows how this is done, what equipment you need and gives other useful tips. Here are some interesting points from the video:
- Choose absinthe that has a natural green color and not that fake bright green hue, and look for bottles between 60-68 percent alcohol.
- Absinthe glasses are often designed to pour the proper amount of absinthe, so there will possibly be a rim or design difference in the lower portion of the glass to mark the proper level to pour.
- Pour the absinthe, place a lump of sugar on an absinthe spoon, and drip ice-cold water over the sugar. A drip cocktail should take about 3 – 10 minutes depending upon how fast you drip the water.
That video whet my appetite a bit, so I searched for more in-depth information and found a 30+ minute episode on Wine Library TV with a representative from the Wormwood Society and GaryVaynerchuk. They present a lot of information and have a tasting of three domestic brands. Just watching these two videos will get you half way to a functional knowledge on how to make the cocktail and simply know about this drink’s history.
If you are inspired at this point, the next step is buying some absinthe. The Wormwood Society has a pretty good article on buying absinthe, but because of the society’s desire to be neutral, they don’t really recommend any absinthe brands. Too bad. But the article will break down some additional myths and make it seem like you should at least pay attention to which brand you buy.
If you want to buy a bottle, however, a good place to start is on the Wormwood Society Review Directory. Just skip the pre-ban vintage ratings unless you have $2,000-7,000 to spend on a bottle of spirits, and simply sort the reviews for ‘traditional absinthe’ instead. This site is very user friendly. As a back-up resource, you can go to La Fée Verte’s buyers’ guide. This guide is more extensive than the Wormwood Society’s, but it is not as user friendly. The complete list, however, allows you to click on each brand to see reviews and ratings if you have already narrowed down your search.
Ok, so now you can make a drip cocktail, you may know some basic history and what not to do with absinthe, and you just may have bought a bottle. At this point, everyone at your party is going to be asking you about absinthe, and you will either take that final educational step or just start making cocktails until no one cares.
If you are the former, there are two heavy weight sites out there. One I have mentioned already is the Wormwood Society. This site is very well organized and though it has a lot of information, it is not too overwhelming in that you can focus on certain areas of interest. It has 15 pages of FAQs, complete instructions if you want to taste and review absinthe, a list of suppliers, 150+ cocktail recipes, a forum for nerd talk, and a lot more.
The second heavy weight site is Oxygénée. One writer properly said that oxygenee.com probably has the most information about absinthe on the planet. I personally believe that claim, BUT this site is very frustrating. There are numerous sister sites with redundant information, the website design does not flow well for finding what you want, and the layering of information and web structure drags you into anise-scented green vortex of absinthe detail. Go straight for the FAQs or the vintage absenthe section if you have a boat load of money to spend.
If you want the CliffsNote approach, I would recommend the website of Tempus Fugit Spirits, which is a company that imports absinthe from traditional areas of France and Switzerland. The FAQ section on Tempus Fugit is much shorter but has the most crucial information. You will get 80% of the information in a fraction of the time, and the narrative is written better. Here are some interesting facts from the website:
- Absinthe was first a cure-all medicine and that is one reason for its high alcohol content.
- During the French-Algerian War, the French prescribed absinthe as a disease preventative and to cleanse water. The returning soldiers to France helped popularize the drink.
- Absinthe gets it name from the French word for ‘wormwood’ which is ‘grande absinthe’.
- Wormwood grows best in the mountainous area between Switzerland and France, hence those areas were the historical production centers.
- The green color of absinthe comes from chlorophyll, though lower quality absinthe uses green dye. Again, choose a natural green and not a fake green absinthe.
- The bad reputation from absinthe came mainly from poor distillers that sold inferior and sometimes dangerous products and the negative media hype that focused on drug effects and even ‘absinthe murders’.
- The Temperance Movement also played a large part in getting the spirit banned, and the movement teamed up with wine producers to help ban it. Wine makers were suffering after the spread of the phylloxera louse destroyed much of Europe’s vineyards, so wine prices were high. Wine was losing market share, and absinthe was gaining in popularity and cheap.
- By 1912 it was banned in the US and in 1915 it was banned in France. It was never banned in the UK, Spain, and Portugal. Absinthe was only re-legalized in its home of Switzerland in 2005 and in the US in 2007.
The history of absinthe is a case study of misunderstanding at the wrong time in history. Phylloxera, wine politics, the scourge of WWI, and prohibition all created a climate for a popular drink to disappear for decades. And challenges still exits even after legalization. A lot of the distilling knowledge, techniques, and equipment have been lost, and the herbal raw materials are more scarce. Much of today’s absinthe does not resemble the drink of the past, and there is a reason the highest rated absinthe comes from pre-ban bottles.
The irony is that subsequent testing of old bottles of absinthe have proven that these spirits were chemically harmless in terms of secondary drug effects. It turns out, the reason people ‘lost their mind’ was that they drank too much and absinthe was really strong. Makes sense to me.
With that said, there are 50+ legally available brands of absinthe in the US, and the suspect chemical compound from wormwood called thujone has to be under 10 parts per million for it to be legal. And those old bottles tested, well, the level of thujone in them was was around 1 part per million.
Nowadays, absinthe is making a comeback as classic cocktails are back in style and it is again legal. The licorice scented aperitif spirit will be surprising to many. For years the drink was taboo, subject to misinformation, and illegal but when you first smell licorice you think of candy and your childhood and not images of psychedelic drugs or an illegal substance. But if you don’t like licorice, you won’t like absinthe. Find something else.
If you want to purchase absinthe domestically, DrinkUpNY has an excellent selection and they ship all over, and you can also find a few other brands if you have it shipped from the UK at absintheonline.com.You can buy absinthe barware at Amazon
