Absinthe is back. After having been banned in most of Europe and all of the U.S. for nearly a century, it’s now enjoying a legal renaissance. If you like Pernod, anisette, and the other anise-flavored liquors, you’ll like absinthe.
Absinthe started out as a home remedy, a cordial good for combating fevers, indigestion, and other common ailments. It was also good for getting a bit tipsy, like most home remedies of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.When the Pernod family began making the green liquor commercially in 1805, the drink went from homey to haute. Called the green fairy, green muse, or green goddess, it was the toast of Paris.
In later years, its reputation plummeted. Absinthe was said to cause madness and hallucinations and was blamed for everything from the high crime rate to alcoholism to Van Gogh’s self-mutilation. By the time it was outlawed in 1915, it had become known as the green devil.
Why did it enjoy such celebrity before its fall from grace?
During the Algerian War (1844-1847), the French government gave its soldiers a ration of absinthe to fight fevers and purify drinking water. The soldiers brought a taste for absinthe back to France after the war. But artists, novelists, poets, and courtesans were the ones who made the drink très chic. They wrote about absinthe or depicted it, and they sipped it very visibly in sidewalk cafés. In fact, in Paris, five o’clock became known as l’heure verte, or the green hour.
Part of the allure of absinthe was that it was drunk with almost sacramental ritual. First you poured the vivid green liquor into a clear glass. Then you placed an ornate slotted spoon atop the rim of the glass, and placed a lump of sugar on the spoon. Then. slowly and carefully, you poured water over the sugar to dissolve it. As the water swirled into the glass, the green of the absinthe paled into a milky yellow. Oscar Wilde described it as shimmering “like southern twilight in opalescent colouring.”
No wonder the Impressionists who were experimenting with color and light in their work were afficionados of absinthe. Or that everyone from Baudelaire to Fitzgerald to Verlaine both drank and wrote about it.
I know that if I had been in Paris in those days and had seen Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec sipping a verre vert, or green glass, in a sidewalk café, I’d have stopped and had one, too.
You can drink absinthe in the traditional manner or mix it into a cocktail. Hemingway is said to have mixed his with Champagne. I like having a creamy absinthe smoothie for dessert. Feel free to adjust the ration of absinthe and cream to your own taste.
Absinthe Smoothie
One cup of ice, one and half ounces absinthe, three ounces of light cream. Combine in a blender and mix until frothy. Serves two.
Privat-Livemont’s 1896 poster advertising absinthe. http://commons.wikimedia.org.