You’ve heard it all before: It’s powerfully addictive. It can cause hallucinations. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear after consuming it. The legends and myths prevail to this day. And, in essence, these same legends and myths are helping to drive a modern resurgence in the very liquid they haunt—absinthe, the romanticized spirit that Hemingway wrote of, and that legislation once again legalized in this country a little over a year ago.
The absinthe lore is based mostly on its original makeup. It is an anise-flavored spirit that gets its name from the base herbal ingredient Artemisia absinthium, also known as wormwood. This gives it a natural greenish color, and thus its well-worn nickname, The Green Fairy. Absinthe contains small quantities of the chemical thujone, which was blamed for most of the perceived ill-effects and hallucinogenic results following human consumption as witnessed in the late 1800s. New Orleans-born environmental chemist T.A. Breaux, who has studied absinthe for nearly 15 years, presented a better explanation in an interview given to Salon.com in December of 2007: “As absinthe became immensely popular, there was a drive to make it cheaper. In urban areas, where they didn’t have a lot of space for distillation equipment, people made absinthes from cheap industrial alcohol, using chemicals that would induce the green color. There were people who had an interest in capitalizing on this, and they failed to make a distinction between these cheaper drinks and real absinthe. It’s a little bit like using Mad Dog as a reason to ban Bordeaux.”
In 2007, the U.S. government approved the sale and consumption of absinthe in America after a near century-long ban that was based on such faulty data (it was deemed illegal in 1912, a precursor to Prohibition). Though absent no longer in the American marketplace, it will take more than just manufacturing and distribution to make this spirit prominent again. The marketing game was (and is) key, and the government’s concession was bridled with some minor product alterations that would only make such a task even more challenging. Several American importers and manufacturers have since chosen to undertake that task, and some of them recently explained to Bar Business just how they will bring absinthe back, and how bar owners throughout America can climb aboard for the ride.
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