Absinthe with Leave: An Overview of the Devil's Drink, Its History, and How to Enjoy It

In the early nineteen-hundreds, the temperance movement was in an uproar. Drink was the devil - and one drink alone invoked their worst ire. Absinthe, the Green Fairy, the soul of the Impressionists and the French cafes, was going to go down. Some cartoons of the era portray a death's-head rising out of a green glass. Others picture women feeding it to their babies, in a bathetic appeal to family.

It's easy to see why it might have been a target. At a staggering alcohol content of between 55 and 70 percent, absinthe was the strongest thing on the market.

Doctors noted the disease of "absinthism", now thought to be simply alcoholism plus the side effects of hair-raising additives such as copper sulphate and antimony chloride. Researchers drugged mice with huge doses of wormwood-derived thujone, the infamous "active ingredient", though actually only one of many herbs that add to absinthe's mild mood-altering effect. Devotees tend to believe anise is more central to the beverage's appeal, if not its impact; absinthe is in a family with other anise-based liquors.

In the end, the drink was banned. The Green Fairy fled Switzerland in 1910, tiptoed out of America in 1912, and finally crawled out of France in 1915.

Prohibition came and went, and absinthe slowly trickled back into the market, first as European countries gradually let their regulations slide - the Czech Republic famously, Spain, and France - and then in the US through a legal gray area: import for personal consumption. It was never added to the DEA's schedules of blacklisted substances; merely banned for retail sale.

For quite some time now, US connoisseurs have enjoyed a running argument about the legality of mail- or internet-ordering a bottle for personal use from Europe. It's clear that a majority of those bottles come through, though sometimes a drinker finds their hundred-dollar indulgence waylaid by Customs.

In the parties I attended as a youth, I was lucky enough to have more than one friend with sufficient income to travel abroad. I had the privilege of sampling Czech absinthes. My friends taught me the ritual, as it should be: first the absinthe, then a slotted spoon held over it with sugar inside, then cold water poured over the spoon, creating the clouding effect called "louche." As Oscar Wilde noticed a century before, drinking absinthe always felt clearer and more euphoric than any ordinary booze.

This pleasure has just gotten a little bit cheaper and a lot more local for Stateside fanciers.

Law limits wormwood and thujone content in most countries where absinthe is on sale, and the US has a particularly stringent regulation. The US absinthes on the market usually use relatives rather than the traditional artemisia absinthum. But a recent visit to a local bar found Lucid, Absente, and La Tourment Vert - three variants on the beverage - and when I sampled the latter blend, I was surprised to find a familiar state of brightness and warmth at the bottom of the glass. It isn't all in the thujone, after all.

Though absinthe is called the Green Fairy, it comes in many colors now - white, blue, even one bright red concoction, Serpis, from Spain. Formulations vary as well. The difference between an absinthe and an absinth lies in when the anise might be added, and every manufacturer has their own secret blend and ratio of ingredients. And there are more manufacturers every year. What was once forbidden and half-forgotten is now a booming market, and I encourage any curious drinker to try a glass.