A fabled spirit with its own fairy story

Atop a secret staircase, guarded by a lithe and lovely Siamese cat, a tiny lounge beckoned. The cat threaded itself about my ankles as we made sense of the skeleton key and entered what had once been a simple, two-room apartment overlooking New Orleans’ most famous street.

Customers chatted quietly on velvet furniture. Candles burned. There was a couple on the ornate balcony beyond its long, tall windows. The tiny kitchen had been converted into a bar, cluttered with tiny bottles and Pontarlierstyle reservoir glasses. A graceful absinthe fountain towered beside them.

The sugar cubes were given their spirited baptism and lit with ceremony. Blue flame swirled in the dark and the spigots were gently opened, bleeding fire droplets into the glasses for a showy split second.

Illuminating the drinks with a palm-cupped flashlight, our barkeep showcased the that mystical emulsification, as cold water found the glass, each drop a glinting flash that slowly turned the clear beverage translucent. Not to mention sippable. Without dilution, absinthe usually falls between 110 and 140 proof. This one was 130. Standard whiskey, for clarification, is 80.

I sipped and sighed at the flavor — anise, fennel, all at once sharp and herbaceous, sweet and near tranquilizing. Entranced by the legendary “Green Fairy”, so nicknamed for its color (and its magic, dark or light — it depends on who you ask) all was perfect.

Except, it turns out, the fire I had come to know as tradition.

Often cited as the Czech or Bohemian method, the practice of burning the sugar, says Arthur Boothe, owner of Sanford craftcocktail haven Bitters & Brass and the new Suffering Bastard tiki bar, is “the bad seed of the absinthe world.”

Even so, it’s pretty cool, says Billy Masker, bar manager at The Courtesy, noting that it taps into our primal, pyro-driven instincts.

“I’m all about fire,” he notes, laughing, “but it does absolutely nothing for the drink. It’s just taking away from the flavor of the absinthe.”

In fact, says Boothe — whose first forays into absinthe, like mine, featured fire — that’s precisely why it became a custom. This showy new-era ritual’s roots lie in eastern European moonshiners’ practice of caramelizing the sugar to conceal the telltale signs of a subpar spirit.

Absinthe, you see, had a rise and fall.

But, the “Green Fairy” has arisen anew. And as fans proliferate, the spirit’s historians (often bartenders) find themselves dispelling the rumors that saw it banned from consumption for a century.

Once upon a time

Absinthe originated in Switzerland in the late 18th Century. It’s a botanicallydriven spirit, the most famous of which — wormwood

— gives it its name. Wormwood has been used for medicinal purposes at least as far back as ancient Egypt and in fact, absinthe was, as well.

“The French would give it to the soldiers as part of their kits,” says Boothe, a self-proclaimed absinthe nerd whose fascination was borne of middle school reading assignments and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

“They were colonizing Africa, everyone was getting sick and it was considered medicine that would clear out parasites (it didn’t), but it did sometimes make the water safe to drink — so this is where we begin to see the tradition of dilution come in.”

Absinthe didn’t peak in France, however, until there was room at the top. In the mid-1800s, it got its chance.

was brought to Europe by botanists who had brought clippings from North America,” Boothe explains.

The non-native aphid fell hard for Europe’s beautiful vineyards, decimating France’s wine industry for more than a decade.

“You’re talking about an industry that employed one in six people, a place where everyone’s drinking wine all day because the belief is that it’s safer than the water,” he says. “All the stuff that goes into making absinthe is essentially shrubs, plants that were unaffected by the blight. And the returning soldiers already had a taste for the stuff.”

Historically, artists have a well-documented penchant for playing with their body chemistry — and in lieu of wine, absinthe became a potent muse.

Also, artists are cool. They set trends. They have through the ages.

“They start drinking it — they begin writing about it, painting about it,” Boothe says. “Eventually, it builds. And then everyone’s drinking it.”

It was 1859 when Édouard Manet’s “The Absinthe Drinker,” now considered his first major work, was submitted to the Paris Salon and almost unanimously rejected — thereby making it one thousand times cooler. Absinthe’s meteoric rise was in motion.

In fact, it was around this time that the idea of drinking absinthe in the cafés after work, roughly 5 p.m., became known as

(the green hour), and it’s considered one of several happy hour origins.

“When vine grafting began to see success in France, and the wine industry began to churn back to life,” Boothe explains, “they had to find a way to get people back to drinking something that at the time was more expensive.”

It was a whirlwind, says Boothe, a culmination of grinding anti-absinthe PR from the wine industry made stronger by the growing temperance movement, that prompted absinthe’s downfall. Thujone, a chemical present in wormwood, was branded as toxic and hallucinogenic (that’s since been scientifically disproven).

“There’s more thujone in sage than there is in wormwood,” says Boothe, pointing out that it’s also the main ingredient in vermouth. (vermouth) the German word for wormwood — but these things were never outlawed.”

In 1905, French national Jean Lanfray, in a drunken rage, slaughtered his family in Switzerland, then made a failed suicide attempt.

“They found he’d consumed something like seven glasses of wine, six Cognacs, crème de menthe … ” says Boothe, rattling off a list that seems fatal, quite honestly. “And also, two ounces of absinthe.”

Already under scrutiny and with a French vintnerpainted target on its proverbial back, absinthe became the scapegoat for Lanfray’s murderous rage.

It was banned in its birthplace in 1910. The U.S. and France followed within five years.

Absinthe in O-town

Absinthe has been back in business in the U.S. since 2007, with an increasing number of imported and domestic varieties available for purchase.

Bitters and Brass offers 10 on its classic menus — including Pernod, which Boothe often recommends to first-timers as ubiquitous. This French absinthe dates to 1805, “and as I grew up in the South, I’ll often say it’s like walking into a place and ordering a Coke. In its peak era, you would request a Pernod and you might not get Pernod, but you’d get absinthe,” he says.

Now in the know, Boothe eschews the Bohemian

Two sisters

■ 1 dash lavender bitters

■ .5 ounce passionfruit syrup

■ .5 ounce lemon juice

■ 1 ounce Swiss absinthe (they use Kübler )

■ Top with sparkling rosé (the drier the better)

■ Shake ingredients (minus sparkling wine) with ice, and strain into a champagne flute. Top with sparkling rosé and garnish with edible flowers.

method, but you will still see the spoon, the sugar, the dilution.

“Pernod is middle-ofthe-road and the best example of what this spirit is about,” he says. “Kübler, from Switzerland, is botanical and floral, it’s little less herbaceous, a little less bitter.”

There are others, as well, and the cocktail option — one oft favored by Ernest Hemingway, who famously dabbled in all kinds of spirits. His offering for “So Red the Nose … or Breath in the Afternoon,” a 1935 cocktail recipe book featuring libations invented by literary notables was the now-famous Death in the Afternoon:

That does sound like Hemingway.

Bitters and Brass has its own version (plus others — we’ve included a Boothe original here for your experimentation), as does The Courtesy, which offers 10 varieties, as well. “The Sazerac is probably the most famous absinthe cocktail,” says Masker, who also cites the lesser-known La Louisiane, also from New Orleans, as an excellent way to sample.

As someone who’s been “doing it wrong” from the start, my advice for newbies matches Masker’s: Don’t be intimidated. Good bartenders delight in educating.