Absinthe Mania

In high school, before good taste catches up with the mere novelty of liquor, I remember a certain misguided group of friends eschewing the high culture offerings of Prague to find a dingy tourist bar offering ‘real strong absinthe,’ which they consumed straight, hoping to feel the eyelid flutters, teeth grinding and mild neck stiffness that results from low doses of hallucinogens. Alas, all we drank was naaasty green shit.

When I was in college, a certain misguided group of friends thought that Absinthe was the bomb diggity, searching the black and grey markets and falling into every manner of internet scam trying to chase the dragon. They also drove to Canada, stoned out of their minds, and attempted to pay for the stuff with, as the dumb ass put it, ‘real money’ (as in American, not Canadian. what a tool). They would also drink anyone’s homebrew, leading to some serious claims of real hallucinatory effects, though to the unbiased observer (read: me), it looked like severe alcohol poisoning. I never really got the fuss, since my friends preferred the straight stuff.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m listening to Mitch from Integrity Spirits tell me the story of how Absinthe got off the US Government’s shit list. That’s not quite accurate; the story goes that some enterprising young turk tested vintage absinthes of great renown and discovered that the infamous psychoactive property imbued from wormwood, thujone, was in such low concentrations that the perceived threat was about as real as Godzilla, the Boogie Man, or Ahmad Rashad. Apparently the concentrations of Thujone are so low that it’s within the margin of error of the FDA test, such that even if it’s there, they can’t conclusively say so.

So down come the walls keeping the Faerie out of the EU, and later the US, hacked down by distillate raconteurs and dragon chasers wishing to find out for themselves that Van Gogh & Poe were actually completely fucking crazy with or without the wormwood.

As with anything you were once told not to do, the country has been swept with absinthe mania. There are now three certified legal producers of Absinthe in the United States (soon to be four; with Integrity’s Trillium, out now, House Spirits is working on a brew to be available soon, which gives Portland half of the US absinthe distilleries), importation has begun in earnest, and booze geeks and mixologists are fetishizing the devil’s drink in fantastical ways. Case and point? the Gummi Bear, or my friend Robin’s new Absinthe-centric blog.

Robin and I thought it would be a fitting launch to her new site to get together at the Green Dragon, which, it should be noted, is not named for Absinthe, surprisingly enough, but after the tea/alehouse in which Ben Franklin and friends fomented revolution against the Redcoats, according to founder Jim Parker.

So how is the Trillium Absinthe? Frankly, fucking delicious. There is a sharp herbaceous flavor, and it has less of an anise/licorice flavor than Ouzo, or even Pernod. Drinking a whole glass (mixed with water, properly), one experiences a strange succession of smells and flavors. Vanilla, ‘french fries and ketchup’, Lemon, perhaps something resembling grapefruit… It’s an amazing sensory experience, and you’re certainly punch drunk after a while, even if you would ‘blow under,’ so to speak.

We’re now going to make a point of trying other absinthes as they come available. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m pretty sure my liver is not too excited.