It is a firmly established fact about human beings that we want what we cannot have. Once stores run out of Furbees or fetal Cabbage Patch babies or giggling Elmos, suddenly every mother’s child must have one. When exorbitantly-priced iPhones hit the market already in limited supply, people line up at 2 a.m. I’ve heard this is even a paradigm used by sex therapists: by telling even a couple they are not allowed to have sex for a week, experts say they can get even the most disinterested spouse to churn with desire.
And so it is with absinthe, the drink preferred by Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which supposedly drove each of them crazy and was outlawed in the United States in 1912.
It is supposedly the wormwood in Absinthe that makes it so deliciously dangerous. An herb that’s poisonous in even moderate amounts, pure wormwood contains trace amounts of thujone, a ketone with hallucinogenic properties — and it’s possible, I suppose, that absinthe provokes delusions in very rare cases. Though the same can be said of sugar, sleep deprivation, over-the-counter cold medicines, and love.
Laws restricting the sale of absinthe have been loosening for years, since 1972 when the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act lifted the ban on the liquor itself and focused instead on concentrated thujone, which occurs naturally in sage, thyme, and rosemary. Once distillers realized that the absinthe they’d been drinking in Spain and Portugal (and believing had mystical properties) actually contained such a negligible amount of the hallucinogen it qualified for sale in the U.S., they were faced with a conundrum. The very thing that made this substance legal might lessen its appeal.
In other words, without the naughty element of absinthe, what is it but a bright green syrup with a nearly lethal level of alcohol?
I am a confirmed wine drinker AND I do not care for the taste of anise. Keep these two facts in mind. But my experience tasting absinthe for the first time left me truly puzzled as to what all the fuss is about.
It smells herbal with a touch of sweetness, like bakery in the middle of a stand of fir trees. This I truly liked. . . .But the first sip was like dragon effluvium: livid, scorching, and green. It burns for a long time (a looonnnggg time) on the tongue and in the throat and later in the gut. The predominant taste is licorice and leaf and something vaguely scotch-like — if your scotch were subject to a nuclear flash.
Most disturbing, for me at least, the flavor lingers for hours. Neither breath mints nor vigorous tooth (and tongue) brushing can expunge it. With an alcohol content of 62 percent — that’s 124 proof — it’s as if the imprint is soldered onto the inside of your mouth.
I tried drinking it straight and as an absinthe drip, a process that reminded me of every heroin-cooking scene I’ve ever seen on TV. There is dramatic ceremony to this drink — no doubt one of the things that made it popular among the writers, artists, and actors of yore. Traditional preparation requires a slotted spoon and a sugar cube. You trickle ice water directly over the sugar, allowing it to melt into the liquor through the spoon’s vents. This creates a "louche," or pale white cloud, topped with a ring of iridescent chartreuse.
It’s pretty. But the fact is, I liked the absinthe even less this way, preferring the pain and boldness of a flavor I found confounding to the watered-down and sugary slurry edged in green. The only way I could imagine liking this liquor, frankly, is in coffee with a heavy dollop of whipped cream — which would not only soften the flavor with mocha but might thankfully heat off some of the alcohol as well.
Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., Surdyk’s will begin selling Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, one of only two varieties currently available in the United States, for $70 a bottle. And Jim Surdyk, who has an exclusive on the introduction of absinthe to the Twin Cities, says he expects a line around the block by 7:45. "It’s interesting to people, the whole mystique of it," he said. I agree. I also think this is a rather dangerous drink, not only for the pocketbook but for public health. It is a fascination: a century-long withheld novelty that will make you very, very, very drunk very, very, very fast.
And this, in addition to depression, schizophrenia, and syphilis (respectively), likely is what caused the madness of Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.
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