Swallowing

It is an established fact that we human beings want what we cannot have. When exorbitantly priced iPhones hit the market—already in limited supply—people line up at 2 a.m. And by telling a couple they are not allowed to have sex for a week, therapists say they can cause even the most uninterested spouse to churn with desire.

So it is with absinthe, the drink preferred by Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which supposedly drove each of them crazy and was outlawed in the United States in 1912.

It is supposedly the wormwood in absinthe that makes it so deliciously dangerous. An herb that’s poisonous in even moderate amounts, pure wormwood contains thujone, a ketone with hallucinogenic properties. It’s possible, I suppose, that absinthe provokes delusions in very rare cases—though the same can be said of sugar, sleep deprivation, over-the-counter cold medicines, and lust.

Laws restricting the sale of absinthe have been loosening for years. In 1972, the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act lifted the ban on the liquor itself and focused instead on concentrated thujone (which also occurs naturally in sage, thyme, and rosemary). Then American distillers realized that the absinthe they’d been drinking in Spain and Portugal—and believing had mystical properties—actually contained such a negligible amount of the hallucinogen that it qualified for sale in the U.S. They were faced with a conundrum: The very argument they could use for making the case that absinthe should be legal might also lessen its appeal.

In other words, without the naughty element, what is left of absinthe but a foul-tasting green syrup with a nearly lethal level of alcohol?

I am both a confirmed wine drinker and someone who does not care for the taste of anise. Keep these two facts in mind. But my experience tasting absinthe for the first time left me truly puzzled as to what all the fuss is about.

It smells herbal with a touch of sweetness, like a bakery in the middle of a stand of fir trees; this I truly enjoyed. But the first sip was like dragon effluvium: livid, scorching, and green. It burns for a long time (a looonnnggg time): on the tongue, in the throat, and later in the gut. The predominant taste is licorice and leaf and something vaguely scotch-like—if your scotch had been subject to a nuclear flash.

Most disturbing, absinthe’s flavor lingers for hours. Neither breath mints nor vigorous tooth (and tongue) brushing can expunge it. With an alcohol content of sixty-two percent—that’s 124 proof—it’s as if the imprint is soldered onto the inside of your mouth.

I tried drinking it straight and as an absinthe drip, a process that reminded me of every heroin-cooking scene I’ve ever seen on TV. There is dramatic ceremony to this drink—no doubt one of the things that has made it popular among writers, artists, and actors. Traditional preparation requires a sugar cube placed on a slotted spoon that is set over a glass of absinthe. You trickle ice water directly over the sugar, allowing it to melt into the liquor through the spoon’s vents. This creates a “louche,” or pale white cloud, in the drink, topped with a ring of iridescent chartreuse.

It’s pretty. But I actually liked the absinthe even less this way, preferring the pain and boldness of a flavor I found confounding to a watered-down, sugary slurry edged in green. The only way I could imagine liking this liquor, frankly, is in coffee with a heavy dollop of whipped cream—a variation on Irish coffee that would not only soften the flavor but might thankfully burn off some of the alcohol as well.

On December 27, Surdyk’s opened early and began selling Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, one of only two varieties currently available in the United States, for $75 a bottle. And when Jim Surdyk, who had a five-day exclusive on the introduction, opened his door at 8 a.m., twenty-five people were already lined up to buy. (The day after New Year’s, Haskell’s began selling Lucid for $69.99.)

“It’s just interesting to people, the whole mystique of it,” Surdyk says. I agree. I also think absinthe is a perilous drink, not only for the pocketbook but for public health: a century-withheld novelty that will make you very, very, very drunk very, very, very fast.

This—in addition to depression, schizophrenia, and syphilis (respectively)—is likely what really caused the madness of Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.


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