One of the first absinthe brands to finally crash the US market is a new one, formulated by one of the leaders of today's absinthe community, T..A. Breaux. Called lucid(sic) Absinthe Supérieure, it is imported by Viridian Spirits and has quite the slick web site. We purchased a bottle at the local liquor store (be still our beating hearts!) for about US$65, not necessarily an impulse buy price to be sure. We have had a couple of sessions with lucid and these are our impressions.

The bottle is pretty striking, although to these conservative eyes, it brings to mind the story of the Mexican beer that first had the bottle designed and then the beer to fill was sought out. It seems to draw too much attention to the overhyped "mystery" of absinthe, but hey, we'll let it go, I guess.

The initial aroma of lucid is rather tame, an indicator of things to come. It certainly smells of anise and other herbs, but in a restrained manner, like it is afraid to scare you away. Pouring it into a glass confirms this shy, retiring mannerism, as the color is equally restrained, being a light pale green. While certainly absinthe, its affect on the eyes and nose belie the aggressive stance hinted at by the bottle.

The louche is good, with the final color being, again, very pale, a white with emerald hints. It does release more of that wonderful absinthe fragrance we've all come to enjoy. Even now, many tasting sessions later, we still get an almost Pavlovian reaction to the redolence of absinthe, even one as quiet as we get from the lucid.

And drinking lucid re-emphasizes the laid back nature of its recipe. Perhaps aiming to not scare off the nearly virgin American palette, lucid is an easy on the tongue, relatively low alcohol (62%) verte absinthe. We have been drinking it with one cube of sugar, but our next glass perhaps should be sans sugar, to give the taste a chance to stand out more. As it is, a pleasant if not particularly outstanding drink.

A ground breaking liquor in its own right, Viridian deserves kudos for creating a good absinthe aimed squarely at the American market. A solid product, creatively marketed, lucid should go a long way towards easing fears of the "devil in a bottle". But I don't think we are being absinthe snobs here at InAbsinthia when we say that it isn't a specially challenging absinthe, with its pretty laid back nature. But that is, we believe, its destiny and, as such, it does a good job. We will have to try it without the sugar to get more of its taste, but I don't think it will be leaping to the fore of our liquor shelf.

The cover story for the Jan/Feb issued of Imbibe magazine is absinthe - "Absinthe is Back: Find Out What You've Been Missing". We're still waiting for our copy to show up here at InAbsinthia, but in the meantime, be sure to click the "Take a Peek Inside" link for more info on this cool new magazine.

The author is Paul Clarke, whose Cocktail Chronicles blog is a regular stop of all imbibers. The article has been getting good reviews on the Wormwood Society forums, and not just because they are prominently mentioned inside! Perhaps there is still hope for truly fair and balanced coverage of our controversial green fairy.

Imbibe | The Ultimate Drinks Magazine

Be sure to check out their blog as well:

Imbibe Unfiltered

La légende de l'Absinthe
 by Aleister Crowley

Apollo, mourning the demise of Hyacinth,
Would not cede vicotry to death.
His sould, adept of transformation,
Had to find a holy alchemy for beauty.
So from his celestial hand he exhausts and crushes
The subtlest gifts from divine Flora.
Their borken bodies sigh a golden exhalation
From which he harvest our first drop of - Absinthe!

In crouching cellars, in sparkling palaces,
Alone or together, drink that potion of loving!
For it is a sorcery, a conjuration,
This pale opal wine aborts misery.
Opens the intimate sanctuary of beauty
- Bewitches my heart, exalts my soul in ectasy

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was a bon-vivant of the highest degree. His experimentations with the occult, sexual peccadilloes, and general scandalous behavior made the gossip pages of the time with some regularity. He was so (in)famous, he was given the moniker of "the wickedest man in the world", while Somerset Maugham described him as "a fake, but not entirely a fake". So of course, he was an absintheur as well!

This is a pretty wacky page about absinthe. It is what The Onion would write if it told the story of absinthe. Some pretty funny stuff, and, unfortunately, for all its satire, the information here shows up too often in the mainstream press.

Absinthe - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

Absinthe is distilled from bits of wood, worms, green crayons, 11 secret herbs and spices according to a secret lesbian recipe.

Salsa blogs about being one of the lucky ones to pick up the second batch of absinthe made by St. George Spirits. Sounds like it is rounding out to be a solid entry on the absinthe shelf:

Salsa's Absinthe Blargh: St. George: Second Release of Absinthe Verte

I've had an almost empty bottle of Jade Edouard sitting in my cabinet for about a year and a half. I had stoppered it with the original cork and thought that it would be OK for quite some time.

It seems like I was wrong about that.

When I poured myself a glass recently the absinthe looked a little cloudy but I didn't pay too much attention to it. After adding sugar and water, and after taking a small sip I realized that something was amiss. I looked again at the absinthe and saw that a very ugly brown scum had formed on the surface and the rest of the absinthe had a brownish tint to it (instead of the usual pearly green).

I'm not sure why this happened but I took some pictures (click the "more" link below).

Any thoughts?

Pretty solid reportage from CBS Sunday Morning. Of course, TA Breaux has to be in it! This was shown just the other Sunday, on January 6.