{"id":1476,"date":"2011-09-14T21:03:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T02:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2012-05-01T10:13:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:13:44","slug":"absinthe-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=1476","title":{"rendered":"Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2018Je me tiens toujours fid\u00e8le<\/em> \u00e0 la sorci\u00e8re glauque<\/em>.\u2019 Thus speaks Enoch Soames, eponymous anti-hero of Max Beerbohm\u2019s marvelous short story, the first one in Seven Men<\/em>. Soames is a dim, talentless, fiercely pretentious poet who clings desperately to the very edge of the Edwardian arts scene. He is from Preston in Lancashire but he slips into French whenever possible. The \u201cglaucous witch\u201d he refers to is absinthe, the<\/em> drink of Bohemian Paris at the time, the tipple of choice of Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, etcetera, etcetera. The craze for la f\u00e9e verte<\/em> was never quite so strong in England but in France it bewitched everyone, regardless of their wealth or status. It was supposed to have hallucinogenic properties (Oscar Wilde said it made him feel as if he had tulips growing on his legs) caused by the compound thujone found in Grande Wormwood (artemisia absinthium), its principal ingredient, and some physicians diagnosed a unique disease they called absinthism as a more virulent and demented form of alcoholism. The Bohemians rather cultivated this wicked legend and there are many contemporary paintings showing an absinthe drinker contemplating a transparent, naked green nymph who winds herself about the table \u2013 the green fairy herself.<\/p>\n

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Absinthe ended up being banned in many countries including France and Switzerland (it was first distilled in Switzerland by a Dr. Pierre Ordinaire) and the U.S. (it had quite a cult following in New Orleans). Now it\u2019s back \u2013 and not just in the form of the faux, dyed, Eastern European infusions of the last decade. There are several versions that faithfully recreate the traditional French methods using real herbs including Grande Wormwood, anise, hyssop and the dozen or so other plants that tinted and flavoured the stuff. Analysis of surviving bottles from the Belle Epoque reveals astonishing news: the amount of thujone was tiny \u2013 so small that it would pass current U.S. and Canadian laws without any problem. So what was all the fuss about back in the day? Why, in the story, did the artist Will Rothenstein say to Enoch Soames: \u201cIt is bad for you.\u201d?<\/p>\n

Current supporters of the new absinthe propose that the reason was a lot of cheap, fake absinthe pushed in those days, coloured green not by herbs but by copper or other toxic chemicals that induced the astonishing visions and tremors.<\/p>\n

Hmmm\u2026 My personal jury is still out on that one (the counter-evidence from the day is rather overwhelming; then again, modern scientific analysis is sometimes accurate). Meanwhile, however, I have been enjoying my bottle of Lucid Absinthe Sup\u00e9rieure. It is the creation of a remarkable man from New Orleans \u2013 Ted Breaux \u2013 who has spent much of this century on a mission, first to recreate, precisely, traditional, high-quality French absinthe, and then to plead its innocence to the wider world. He makes it in France using the original stills designed by Gustav Eiffel in the 1830s.\u00a0The U.S. admitted it as legal in 2007 \u2013 the first absinthe allowed in America in 95 years\u2026 And now it\u2019s available at the LCBO in a dramatic black bottle adorned with cat\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

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la sorciere glauque - or not so glauque since I don't do the sugar-cube thing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And there are other absinthes now, but Lucid is the bottle on my personal back rail. Like all the best old absinthes, it\u2019s pretty alcoholic \u2013 62% alc by vol, as opposed to, say, vodka, which is usually 40%… That\u2019s because it\u2019s not meant to be swigged from the bottle but served in a much more elegant way (that has always reminded me of the preparation of a ball of opium \u2013 but that was before Mr. Breaux persuaded me that absinthe was entirely innocent). You need a reservoir glass shaped like a thistle with a bulbous base that can hold about an ounce of la f\u00e9e verte<\/em>. You pour her in. You put an ornate slotted silver spoon across the rim of the glass and set a sugar cube on the spoon. Then you dribble ice-cold (very very important, that it\u2019s very very cold) water over the cube, dissolving it down into the spirit. As with ouzo or Pernod, the spirit clouds \u2013 the French call the effect the \u201clouche<\/em>\u201d \u2013 a beautiful word to describe a beautiful thing. It\u2019s like gazing into an opal or into the swirling clouds in a witch\u2019s crystal ball but the clouds don\u2019t part to show an anxious Auntie Em; the liquid just stays cloudy – a\u00a0pale nacreous green – while giving off suddenly powerful herbal aromas. My favoured ratio is three parts water to one part absinthe, but some fans prefer five parts water\u2026 Then you sip. If you like ouzo or Pernod or pastis or raki or some forms of arak \u2013 or sambucca, come to that \u2013 you will love Lucid absinthe. It\u2019s like the sophisticated but sexy older sister of those tongue-tingling fennely herbal types. The name refers to the legendary state of \u201clucid intoxication\u201d that absinthe was supposed to inspire, a condition brought about by the rare balance of stimulants and depressants in the herbal recipe of the drink. I cannot speak to that, of course. Lucidity was never my strongest suit.<\/p>\n

As for sweetness \u2013 I don\u2019t feel I need the sugar cube. I like the startling bitterness of the wormwood without the toothpaste-mitigation that sugar brings. Needless to say, the old Czech student prank of igniting the absinthe before drinking it should be avoided. Unless you want an elaborate pattern of scar-tissue around your lips.<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t so taken by the flavour of anise, try mixing it up as part of a cocktail Ernest Hemingway invented called Death in the Afternoon. He left precise instructions: \u201cPour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Lots more to discover at www.drinklucid.com .<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u2018Je me tiens toujours fid\u00e8le \u00e0 la sorci\u00e8re glauque.\u2019 Thus speaks Enoch Soames, eponymous anti-hero of Max Beerbohm\u2019s marvelous short story, the first one in Seven Men. Soames is a dim, talentless, fiercely pretentious poet who clings desperately to the very edge of the Edwardian arts scene. He is from Preston in Lancashire but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[98,1,100],"tags":[488,489,487],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}