Absinthe Mens Book April 08

FOOD DRINK SPIRITS

ABSINTHE WITHOUT LEAVE The return of “madness in a bottle”

BY CAMPER ENGLISH PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID WALDORF

SWEET TOOTH: A cube full of sugar helps the absinthe go down—as does a judicious dose of water.

People went a little crazy when Lance Winters began selling his pet project just before Christmas. To get the first bottles of legal, domestically made absinthe in 96 years, hundreds gathered outside St. George Spirits distillery in Alameda. News helicopters hovered above. Lines snaked out the door. The distillery sold 1,800 bottles of its new Absinthe Verte in the first day. Why all the fuss over a libation? “No other alcoholic drink has inspired so many geniuses or ruined so many lives,” says Barnaby Conrad III, author of Absinthe: History in a Bottle (Chronicle Books). “The 19th-century poets called it ‘the Green Fairy’ and claimed it inspired great art. Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Wilde abused it while writing some of the great poetry of the age. Van Gogh drank it while painting his masterpieces in Arles, but also while cutting off his earlobe. Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin drank it to excess. Manet, Degas, and Picasso painted haunting pictures of downwardly mobile absinthe drinkers.” Much of the hysteria centered on the ingredient wormwood. The chemical thujone, isolated from Grand Wormwood, was believed to cause artistic visions and malicious insanity. Though absinthe never contained large doses of the chemical, crusaders conspired to outlaw the drink. “Absinthe was the first alcoholic liquor in the world to be banned—in Switzerland, Belgium, France, and the United States (in 1912)—and thus served as a prototype for Prohibition in America,” Conrad says. That’s now changed. Today, absinthe can be sold if it meets the U.S. government’s criteria of having a legally negligible amount of thujone and a bottle label that doesn’t promise hallucinatory excesses—like monkeys beating on human skulls, which was the original bottle illustration for St. George Absinthe Verte. (Now the monkey plays a cowbell.) St. George’s product wasn’t actually the first absinthe to be sold in the States in the 21st century. San Francisco launch parties for Swiss-made Kubler and French-made Lucid took place only weeks before St. George’s absinthe was introduced. But the local distillery certainly drew the biggest crowds. That’s vindication for Winters. St. George's distiller spent 11 years—practically the whole time he’s worked at the company—perfecting his formula for absinthe. He also produced Hangar One vodka and other liquors. Unbeknownst to many people who lined up to buy it, modern absinthe does not provide a mythical, psychedelic experience—just a pleasant buzz. St. George’s version is a high-proof, anise-flavored spirit made bitter with wormwood. The base liquid ingredient is a grape brandy; Winters augments the wormwood’s grassiness with stinging

ABSINTHE AND ACCOUNTED FOR: FORBIDDEN ISLAND, 1304 LINCOLN AVE., ALAMEDA, 510.749.0332 ELIXIR, 3200 16TH ST., S.F., 415.552.1633 ABSINTHE, 398 HAYES ST., S.F., 415.551.1590 BOURBON & BRANCH, BOURBONANDBRANCH.COM DALVA, 3121 16TH ST., S.F., 415.252.7740

The finally legalized spirit (below) is on tap at its namesake bar and restaurant, Absinthe, in Hayes Valley (above and left).

nettle and meadowsweet, and amplifies the slight citrus quality in star anise with lemon balm. His resulting product is quite different from others on the market, and bartenders who’ve tried it say it tastes fantastic. “It’s incredible,” says Jackie Patterson, bar manager at Orson. “It’s like the difference between single-vineyard wines and mass-produced wines.” At the now appropriately named Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in Hayes Valley, bar manager Jonny Raglin says they’re switching from pastis Pernod Fils to St. George Absinthe Verte in their Death in the Afternoon cocktail (absinthe with champagne). French Pernod was the first commercially made absinthe ever produced, but it became a less alcoholic, sugar-sweetened, wormwood-free pastis after absinthe was banned in Europe. Other mixologists substitute the anise-flavored Absente, which is made without Grand Wormwood. Now that the Green Fairy is loose again, they should find themselves making substitutions for those substitutions. One of the bar’s most popular cocktails is the Sazerac, a drink from New Orleans made with Herbsaint, an absinthe substitute. But Raglin says he won’t use the real stuff in it: “We found that nothing could hold a candle to Herbsaint, although I would never drink it by itself.” Absinthe and its ilk are included in many other cocktails in minute quantities, which enhances the flavor of the drinks. In the case of tiki drinks, it also adds a bit of mystery. Martin Cate, co-owner of the Alameda tiki bar Forbidden Island, serves old, complicated tropical cocktails concocted from recently unearthed recipes. He says the creator of the original tiki-cocktail craze, the secretive Don the Beachcomber, was from absinthe-loving New Orleans. “Absinthe, and later Pernod and Herbsaint, was part of Don’s secret arsenal of flavors that provided the mysterious backbone in his most famous creations. Don’s original 1937 Zombie called for absinthe, as well as several of his less famous drinks,” Cate says. He's switching from Pernod to absinthe in his cocktails to create “an additional layer of complexity and dynamism.”

Tiki drinks containing absinthe were not actually born in foreign lands, but were designed to evoke the feeling of them. However, many countries do have a tradition of anise-flavored spirits. France has pastis, like Pernod Ricard; Greece has ouzo; Italy has sambuca; and Turkey has raki. All of these are often served, as absinthe is, over water or ice, so the essential oils come out of the solution and form a ghostly white liquid. The standard way to drink absinthe is to drip ice water from a tabletop fountain over a sugar cube on a slotted spoon resting on top of the glass. Unlike anise liqueurs, absinthe can tolerate this technique, which both sweetens and dilutes the absinthe—at 120 proof and up, the liquor is far too “hot” to drink on its own. Just don’t light the sugar cube on fire—that’s another piece of really bad advice handed down in absinthe lore. For now, legal absinthe is still a novelty, but after people try it and realize they won’t see green fairies or cowbell-ringing monkeys, they can turn to the old recipes to find new uses for the rest of the bottle. “Absinthe’s real high comes from its artistic associations,” says Conrad. “It is forbidden fruit with hints of decadence, debauchery, and the occult. It’s not going to turn you into an artistic genius overnight, but seek help if you begin sawing off your earlobe with a butter knife.”

3