Kate Simon - Absinthe Cocktails. 50 Ways to Mix with the Green Fairy

50 Ways to Mix with the GREEN FAIRY

BY KATE SIMON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARA FERRONI

I had the pleasure of working with so many absinthe-minded people on this book; it was a group effort. Immense thanks to Gwydion Stone for his guidance and support. Thanks also to Ted Breaux, not only for sharing his knowledge with me but for kindly reintroducing absinthe to a thirsty public. Others who helped make this book a reality include Erik Adkins, B. Alex, Eric Alperin, Faye Bender, Marc Bernhard, Jeff Berry, Greg Best, Sarah Billingsley, Chris Bostick, Jamie Boudreau, Lu Brow, Jackson Cannon, Laura Cassidy, Santino Cicciari, Anne Donnard, Lucy Farber, Lara Ferroni, Ted Haigh, Chris Hannah, David Hawk, Sarah Hearn, Christian Hodgkinson, Jeff Hollinger, Amber Holst, Daniel Hyatt, Charles Joly, Misty Kalkofen, Ben Kasman, Gregory Ryan Klein, Ravi Lalchandani, Bill LeBlond, Scott Leopold, Brian MacGregor, Toby Maloney, Jim Meehan, Brian Miller, Kamal Mukherjee, Doug Ogan, Ales Olasz, Peter Perez, Julie Reiner, Jim Romdall, Mark Rutherford, Peter Schaf, Riccardo Semeria, Dave Shenaut, Daniel Shoemaker, Allie Smith, LeNell Smothers, Marcos Tello, Jerusha Torres, Charles Vexenat, Thad Vogler, Phil Ward, Alyssa Winters, Evan Zimmerman, and the members of the online communities at the Wormwood Society, the Virtual Absinthe Museum, and La Fe Verte, whose message board discussions and product reviews proved both enlightening and entertaining. Cheers to the late cocktailians and distillers who left a legacy of delicious drinks, and to the booze historians who have kept the recipes alive.

Mention absinthe, and people do funny things with their eyebrows. When I confessed that I was compiling a book of absinthe cocktails, most people responded with one of three facial expressions. Most common was the skeptical, single-brow raise: You make cocktails with that stuff? Isnt it illegal? Isnt it a hallucinogen that will, like, make you go crazy? The more adventurous, but still misguided, would raise both brows enthusiastically and then invite themselves over for research: Absinthe, huh? The green fairy! My buddy brought a bottle back from Amsterdam one time that stuff is insane! Do you light the cocktails on fire? Then there was the furrowed brow, and the wince: Oooh, never again. I tried absinthe once. It tasted like licorice-flavored cough syrup. I dont know how people drink that stuff.

Poor absinthe. Its a victim of its own shoddy publicity. Starting in the 1990s, companies selling fake absinthe on the Web created a whole lot of hype about the spirit, most of it humorously false. They were recycling the bogus, politically charged claims that got absinthe outlawed in the United States and other countries eighty years earlier. Even worse, the hideous, bright green booze they were selling wasnt absinthe at all. Scammers would mix cheap grain spirits with food coloring and artificial flavors and charge $100 a bottle, promising hallucinogenic, aphrodisiacal, Ecstasy-like effects. They would even invent bizarre rituals, like lighting sugar cubes on fire. The fact that absinthe was banned in the United States and other countries, and that very few people knew anything about the true absinthe of old, was a boon to these swindlersit bred intrigue.

But things are changing. Authentic absinthe is now available legally. And when I tell people about this book, theres a fourth group that responds with a more welcome facial expression: a look of recognition. Increasingly, people are tasting true absinthe and learning that just like any other premium spirit, its not a hallucinogen, and when its served the proper way, its no stronger than a glass of wine. Its only slightly sweetdue to the naturally sweet herbs anise and fenneland slightly bitter. True to its reputation, absinthe does have flavor characteristics similar to black licorice, among other herbal notes.

Absinthe was a standard cocktail ingredient from the late nineteenth century into the 1920s. It lent depth and a whisper of anise to mixed drinks. By 1915, absinthe had been banned in the United States, France, and several other countries, but it continued to enhance cocktails at Londons Savoy Hotel and bars in Cuba and Spain, where it remained legal. Eventually, with absinthe outlawed in several key countries and production slashed, bartenders turned to a new crop of anise-flavored substitutes, known as pastis. Pastis is sweeter than absinthe and less complex, notably lacking the herb wormwood, which lends absinthe a unique bitter element. Gradually the classic absinthe cocktailsnow made with the less dynamic pastisfell out of favor. By the 1960s, cocktail culture was fizzling out altogether, trumped by beer and colorful, two-ingredient vodka drinks.

In recent years, cocktails have made an impressive comeback, but absinthe, still unavailable, was left out of the mix until 2007, when it made its long-awaited reprise. Classic cocktails like the rye whiskeybased .

Cocktail hour has merged with lheure verte, the storied green hour of the Belle poque. Absinthe, the green fairy, the emerald muse, is painting our cocktails in shades of pale, opalescent green. The myths have been exposed, and some of the mystique has faded, but the romance remains. Dust off the vintage glasswareits time to drink to history.

Absinthe is a distilled spirit made with a variety of herbs, defined by its anise-forward flavor and its slightly bitter wormwood note. Its character is herbal and slightly sweet. Most absinthe is pale green in color, its pigment derived from herbs, but some absinthe is colorless. And still others are colored artificially. (For a full description of the three types of absinthe, see the Absinthe Buying Guide later in this chapter.)

Absinthe is bottled at a high strength60 to 68 percent alcohol by volumeand designed to be tempered with water and enjoyed as an aperitif or mixed into cocktails. (.) When water is added, it reacts with the anise and fennel oils and the absinthe shows its louche, transforming into an opalescent, milky white color. Its a marvelous metamorphosis, and its easy to see why this peculiar drink attracted such mystique in its time. It was like magic.

Absinthe was born in the eighteenth century in western Switzerland and was first produced on a large scale in eastern France, all of its early life centered near the Franco-Swiss border. Like many herbal spirits, it was conceived as a folk remedya tonic designed to cure a variety of ailments. It became known as la fe verte, the green fairy, and by the mid-nineteenth century, Europe was entranced. This green goddess was favored, famously, by French writers and painters, becoming notoriously linked to the Parisian artistic class. But its reach wasnt limited to artists. Absinthe flowed like wine during the decadent, high-living Belle poquebeautiful erathat started in the 1890s and partied hard until the First World War. With French wine production devastated by widespread vineyard disease, and some absinthe brands available cheaply due to new methods of mass production and a switch to inferior ingredients, la fe verte reigned. Its said that in the 1890s, absinthe was served in as many as 30,000 cafs in Paris alone.

Bartenders took notice of this robust spirit. Just a dash of absinthe in a cocktail could deliver a vibrant bouquet of herbal flavors, at once bitter and sweet, and a bigger dose lent cocktails a savory wallop and an otherworldly opalescence. In 1930, bartender Harry Craddock listed more than 100 absinthe cocktails in his