France revives absinthe friends

Jon Henley in Paris

Guardian (London) Saturday January 6, 2001

    The hallucinogenic green liquor which inspired Verlaine,
 Baudelaire, Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec to poetry and painting (and Vincent
 van Gogh to chopping off his ear) is back, in a recipe authenticated by a
 lecturer in cellular biology at a Paris university.
     Absinthe, the fin-de-siècle tipple of artists, intellectuals and the
 man in the pavement cafe, was banned in France, Belgium and Switzerland in
 1915.
     But with the help of Marie-Claude Delahaye, director of the world's
 only absinthe museum outside Paris, a British company has succeeded in
 recreating the secret blend of wormwood, anise, lemon balm, hyssop and
 other aromatics.
     "This is 68 proof, none of your rubbish," Ms Delahaye said proudly. The
 elegant bottles of La Fée - honouring absinthe's original nickname la fée
 verte (the green fairy) - will bear her signature.
     Green Bohemia, the company responsible, says it is breaking no laws
 because absinthe is not banned in Britain and its manufacture is permitted
 in France, providing it is for export only. It plans to sell the
 terrifying tincture by mail order and the internet.
     Introduced to France in the 1790s, the aniseed-flavoured spirit
 exercised an all too fatal charm on the French.
     Accused of inducing hallucinations, convulsions, fits, insanity and not
 infrequently death, it was widely blamed for the French army's more than
 usually dismal performance at the beginning of the Great War.
     Much of the appeal probably lay in the complex ritual of drinking it,
 known as "strangling the parrot". Special glasses with a hollow bubble at
 the bottom held the liquid, and drinkers, who asked for un train direct
pour Charenton - a non-stop ticket to the Paris lunatic asylum - put a
 sugarlump on a perforated silver spoon and doused it with water, diluting
and sweetening the drink to taste.
     The revised version will not, Ms Delahaye promises, induce quite the
 same effects. Her carefully adapted formula contains only the legal level
 of the active ingredient, thujone.