One of the highest-profile spirits at this past summer’s Tale of the Cocktail event in New Orleans was also one of the newest arrivals. Absinthe, once nearly the signature drink of the Crescent City, is back, a fact that was strongly evident at seminars, at the celebrated Old Absinthe House and at more than one private party.
Long the scourge of polite drinking society because of its allegedly hallucinogenic and deleterious qualities, absinthe was banned almost everywhere in the Western world some time around the start of the twentieth century. Over the past decade or so, however, it has been experiencing a revival of sorts in Europe, becoming popular first in the United Kingdom and Spain, where it was never officially banned, and then elsewhere across the continent.
In the United States, it took the efforts of Ted Breaux, absinthe historian and celebrated drinks chemist, to prove that the amounts of the chemical thujone—the oil found in wormwood and other plants, long-supposed to be the cause of absinthe’s alleged toxicity—present in real absinthe passes well below current FDA standards, thus making the drink de facto legal.
If the excitement generated in New Orleans by the spirit known as ‘The Green Fairy’ is any indication, it’s safe to expect absinthe to appear soon at a supplier near you.