My bottle of Lucid should arrive today I'm eager to see how it compares with some of the other bonafides out there, but from reports I've seen from folks who've tried way more absinthes than I have, Lucid looks pretty good. Our sense is that absinthe's legend is grander than the drink itself, and increased availability should do much to return absinthe to its proper place in the world of cocktails - that of being a fine, and common, ingredient in a really well-made mixed drinks, such as the Sazerac, rather than being some semi-mystical, hallucinogenic drink of artists and madmen. But because absinthe's illegality made the liquor prohibitively expensive, we've tended to make our frappes with pastis, such as Herbsaint, which was, after all, originally an absinthe, or at least pretended to be. We at the Bottle Gang are fans of absinthe, particularly a refreshing cocktail invented in New Orleans called the absinthe frappe, which was a so popular in the United States back in 1904 that Victor Herbert wrote a hit song named after the drink. It shall be interesting to see how this all plays out. According to what we have read, this is consistent with the European Union's rulings on thujone, and therefore there is a wealth of European absinthes that may now be eligible for legal import to the United States. It has been approved for manufacture and sale by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and this opens the doors for the manufacture, sale, and, presumably, importing of other absinthes that are likewise made with less than 10mg of thujone per liter. We shall, however, reserve judgment until we actually sample the stuff, and, in some ways, what Lucid tastes like is rather beside the point. To purists, this is a bit like reducing the flavor of juniper in gin - anise is one of Absinthe's defining flavors. Lucid is based on pre-ban recipes - it was designed by chemist Ted Breaux, a New Orleans-born fellow with a talent for reverse engineering absinthe recipes from old bottles of the stuff.įans of European absinthes might take issue with the resulting drink, as, according to a New York Times article, Breaux has reduced the drink's strong anise flavor to suit the American palette. And, as it turns out, most pre-ban absinthe had less than that. As it turns out, the US laws had a little loophole of their own: Drinks were only illegal of they contained greater than 10mg of thujone per liter. Because there is a new absinthe being marketed, made in the United States, called Lucid, and, unlike Absente, it contains thujone. There is no law against owning or drinking absinthe in the United States, but it is illegal to manufacture, sell, or import absinthe (a notable exception is Absente, a drink that greatly resembles absinthe, but is made with wormwood's thujone-free relative, southernwood Absente, however, is not well-liked by hardcore absinthe fans).ĭid we say it is illegal to manufacture, or buy, or import absinthe? We meant, it was illegal.
These have not been hard to get in America, although they have not been legal, precisely.
In the time since the ban, absinthe's reputation has grown, and the drink enjoyed a massive revival in Europe in the Nineties, with European distillers discovering a variety of loopholes in the law that allowed them to put absinthe back on the market. Absinthe was blamed, and was banned never mind the fact that Lanfray, along with a sandwich and two glasses of absinthe, had also drunk five liters of wine, six glasses of cognac, one coffee laced with brandy, and two crème de menthes. There was, for example, Jean Lanfray, who in 1905 murdered his pregnant wife and two children. It didn't help the drink's cause that absinthe was the preferred liquor of Victorian artists and other layabouts, or that there were a few notable cases of people going on murderous rampages after drinking the green spirit. The anise-flavored spirit has been banned in the United States since 1912, primarily because of overstated concerns about the psychoactive quality of one of its ingredients, thujone, a ketone of wormwood, which is present in true absinthe in small amounts. SO THE ABSINTHE COMMUNITY is all a-twitter, and, perhaps, with good cause.
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