BANNED in France 93 years ago for its ability to make famous artists cut their ears off and still banned in the US and other countries, the old ‘green fairy’ is making a comeback. The manufacture of the ‘wicked’ drink, made from the herb wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), is almost legendary in its Bohemian qualities to produce hallucinations in the drinker, induce erotic dreams and stir the creative muse in us all. So I had always wanted to try it.
The active ingredient in absinthe, which does the damage, is thujone, still outlawed in many countries, including the US, but since 1988 it has been legal for EU distillers once more to make the drink. Few, it seems, are able to replicate its original potency or subtlety as the French. There was a time, after phylloxera had destroyed the vineyards of France, that absinthe was drunk more than wine, and absinthe addiction was blamed for the degeneracy of a whole generation, so the word still carries a stigma and bottles are now labelled “Spiriteux aux Plantes d’Absinthe”.
It’s cold in Le Marais district of Paris, but in the unassuming and dignified Rue Roger Verlomme from one doorway there are peals of lively laughter and that sound of bubbling conversation that makes you want to enter. As we push open the door of Chez Janou, it’s as if the years have been rolled away to reveal the Belle Époque of Baudelaire and Toulouse Lautrec. Men in berets, students in scarves all sit at wooden tables drinking and eating such delicacies as veal’s head with rice, and cheese stuffed Provencal mussels.
We order our espressos, and then we notice the row on row of bottles. Eighty varieties of Pastis and 20 or so elaborately beautiful bottles, bedecked with art nouveau designs, of green devils and seductive temptresses… Absinthe. “Ooh, I have always wanted to try it,” I say, like a kid with a first cigarette behind the bike sheds.
Officially, ‘L’heure verte’ is between 5 and 6 pm, but if you are going to be a Bohemian, who cares what time of day you try your first taste of the forbidden fruit. Richard chooses Les Fleurs du Mal from the famous erotic Baudelaire poems. I ask the owner to recommend me one. He gives me La Fée Parisienne, greener and more fragrant, smelling of a garden after rain. Of course we drink it without the traditional rituals, no burning sugar cube on a silver spoon through which to drip water to make it release its magic shaped clouds. But the small glass is the traditional hyacinth bulb shape, and as the water from the ice melts, the colours change from electric green to creamy lime. It tastes of herbs, fennel and hyssop, with just the slightest hint of bitterness. Not sweet, but dry like a good ouzo.
They say you would need to drink 25 glasses for the neurotoxins to have any effect, but, even so, after my one large glass, I am feeling surprisingly light headed, maybe the green goddess has wreaked her magic. I wait for words of wisdom to come. But no, I am brought down to earth.
“That’s not the absinthe you daft bat… that’s drinking at 3pm on a cold day on an empty stomach. Time for lunch, it’s a bloody good aperitif.”
