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.