Louche life

Thursday, 19th November 2009

Dave Broom rediscovers the ritual of absinthe

It recommenced with the finding of a bottle. The art nouveau label showed a beauty, hair swirling, holding a glass in which a green liquid glowed. ‘Fleurs du Mal’ read the text. It was a thing of beauty. It was absinthe, a drink which, they say, promotes visions, heightens creativity, creates illusions. It’s said to contain a green fairy. I thought back to my first time, on the French-Andorran border looking for a drink which was so dangerous it had been banned. It was the spiritous equivalent of laudanum. It was, the rumours went, legal in Andorra. Damn right it was. I drank it in bars until they threw me out, I came back with a litre that cost £1. Drank that. There were no visions, but the hangover the next day seemed to have severed my brain stem.

Now, older and wiser, I’m starting again. First up, Un Emile. Clear as water, but dusty like a dry wood, herbal and exotic with a bitter finish. Drip in some water and it slowly becomes milky, a gold spot in the centre like sun through thin cloud. You add the water to cut the strength, to make it drinkable, to release the fragrant aromas. The cloudy effect is called louching, which seems appropriate for a drink with such a decadent history. (It happens because some of the aromatic essential oils come out of solution when water is added, but who wants science?) If it ain’t louching, it ain’t absinthe, as I believe Baudelaire once wrote.

There are no visions though, so let’s try Verte de Fougerolles. This is a pale olive green. Intense, with that dustiness, but also chamomile tea, fennel. The louche is slow and mysterious, the green fairy awakening, out comes sage, Japanese green tea, and angelica. Complex, yet elusive. Things are slightly floaty, but it’s hard to say if it is the alcohol or the fairy at work.

The dusty aroma and bitter end is coming from grande wormwood (aka Artemisia absinthium), the liquorice from green anise and/or fennel. Producers use this base along with aromatics such as petite wormwood, hyssop, lemon balm, chamomile, mint, calamus, coriander, angelica, star anise, veronica etc., etc; it’s steeped in alcohol, distilled and then the scented liquid is given a final dressing of ‘esprit vert’, a selection of other herbs which gives the green colour (absinthe blanche omits this). You could of course just add essential oils and colouring to your spirit and give it a quick stir, but that would be cheating.

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