#Absinthe legal in us full

#Absinthe legal in us full

Then, behind a table full of books on absinthe, I spotted a diminutive auburn-haired lady who turned out to be Marie-Claude Delahaye, founder and director of le Musée de l’Absinthe, probably the world authority on the Green Fairy! We chatted and she invited me to the museum in Auvers-sur-Oise. Serious collectionneurs bought and sold glasses, labels, spoons, and other ephemera. It was necessary out of politeness to sample two of the Guy family’s products before moving on to other parts of the Festival which I did with some difficulty.Ībsintheurs are, in the main, a jolly lot, ready to chat and share. The bouquet drifts up and time seems to stand still. The water trickles through the cube and into the liquid, creating the la louche, the opalescent conjunction of water, distillate and herbs, from which initiates conjure the Green Fairy. A sugar cube is rested on the spoon upon which a delicate drip-drip of iced water is directed from an absinthe fountain (a tall glass bowl with small taps, often styled in correct period fashion). Next an absinthe spoon, flat with decorative perforations, is placed across the top of the glass. The emerald liquid is poured into a Pontarlier glass, with its bubble reserve at the base indicating an exact measure. The comparison with opium smoking cannot be discounted. Much of the allure is in the preparation, the slowing down of time, the anticipation, the various accoutrements. All my research had made me both eager and slightly wary of what it might do to me. The Festival of Absinthe comprises film-shows, museum exhibitions, discussions, a collector’s market, but most importantly, tastings. Its absinthe twin-town Couvet is just across the border up the Val de Travers, an ancient, and, I was soon to discover, very active smuggling route.

Pontarlier sits in the foothills of the Jura, close to the city of Besancon. Pontarlier and its modern day absinthe festival Reading more about the social history I began to recognise similarities with the banning of gin (‘Mother’s Ruin’) in London in the mid-18thC due to widespread drunkenness and the consequent moral outrage. As I boarded the Eurostar from St Pancras I reflected how Oscar Wilde had fled to Paris after his trial, taking refuge in absinthe.

Where better than Pontarlier’s annual Festival of Absinthe. Together they challenged the 80 year-old ban through the European court, won, and, in 2000, launched the first traditionally distilled absinthe commercially produced in France since 1915 called La Fée Parisienne. He teamed up with cellular biologist Marie-Claude Delahaye, herself fascinated by the legend after buying an absinthe spoon in a flea-market in 1981. Yes! A Brit entrepreneur by the name of George Rowley who, from his base in Prague, became interested in the legal validity of the ban.

Or was she? Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder Two World Wars followed, the Green Fairy was dead and forgotten. in 1912, and France, unequivocal epicentre of absinthe culture, in 1915. Public morality was outraged, bans followed: Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Switzerland in the early 1900s, the U.S. High in alcohol, cheap, seductive, reputedly hallucinogenic, it was blamed for epilepsy, tuberculosis, crime and madness. Drinkers solved that problem by moving to another, and another and another…īut, the Green Fairy’s effects were being felt in society, much as cannabis is today. A single absinthe was tolerated by the waiters. This was the l’Heure Verte – the Green Hour, origin of our ‘Happy Hour’. With a high alcohol content (73°), it was quite a success.Ī stroll through Montmartre at 5.00pm in the 1860s would have revealed tables with men and women, often alone, contemplating their glasses of the spirit. Invented by a French doctor in the late 1700s, it was really propelled to fame by Henri-Louis Pernod (yes, that Pernod) who opened a distillery in 1805. I had naively always visualised an actual worm in the drink, squirming in the wooden barrels in which it was stored, so I had never tried it, but now my appetite was well-and-truly whetted. Until that point my conception of absinthe was scant: a perilously potent drink containing wormwood, banned for its reputation for causing madness – Vincent Van Gogh’s insanity was a result of drinking it to excess. It told of madness, creative genius, smuggling, fairies, suicide and debauchery in le demi-monde of Montmartre in la Belle-Époque. I listened to a radio programme in the wee small hours entitled ‘Absinthe Makes the Art Grow Fonder’.