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.
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