Great (aniseed) Balls of Fire! (Absinthe)

Member Name: johninnit

Product:	Absinthe
Date:	19/07/01 (2767 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tough stuff, Fun ritual, Tasty!

Disadvantages: Not cheap (!), Hardly anyone else liked it, Hardish to find

I first tried it in a new trendy bar in Oxford's Cowley Road (a kind of model-village Brixton for us provincial types). It was Sebor (I think), which is a little lower in alcohol (a paltry 60% - that's percent, not proof!!) than the two other main brands; Hills' (Czech) and La Fee (French), but makes up for it by having a higher wormwood content (the other active ingredient, a mild poison which is claimed to have a hallucinogenic effect). After one, the fact that it was a fiver a shot (the barman probably guessed we weren't the flushest of punters and kindly warned us first) meant that we called a stop to our experiments, but not before we'd witnessed the Czech ritual performed by a professional:

1 - Pour a measure of Absinthe
2 - Dip a long handled spoon of sugar into the spirit
3 - Light the sugar and watch it caramelise
4 - Stir the sugar in, causing the spirit to catch light
5 - Add a measure of water, producing a smooth milky green short drink

Easily impressed, I rushed to the offy and parted with £40 for a bottle of Hills', an elegant, tapered, four sided bottle, looking like a memorial column for foolhardy drinkers. Over a few days at New Year's, I managed to get through it without ever reaching the perfect state of barpersonship demonstrated at the Cowley BaBa. My routine went more like:

1 - Pour a measure
2 - Try to keep a pile of sugar from falling off a teaspoon whilst dunking
3 - Light sugar. Watch half of it go crispy black whilst the other half fails to even get warm
4 - Burn fingers holding a short teaspoon as close to flaming drink as poss
5 - Add water. Wonder why the flame still won't go out, even though it's now half water
6 - Blow out the flame, ruining any remaining shred of barperson cool
7 - End up with a clear yellow-green drink with a pile of uncaramelised sugar at the bottom

By the end of the bottle, I'd tried every variation
on the ritual with only slight success. The best I came was my very last measure, using a light brown FairTrade sugar (tried everything in the house and pinched all the pub sugar sachets I could find, looking for the right sugar). The ritual made the drink quite fun, even if I was useless at it (though my other fave is flaming sambuca - a pyromaniac anise theme perhaps). I tried drinking it neat in a fit of frustration, but pretty soon went coughing back to the fire and water method (it cures all known cold germs I should imagine).

It's an aniseed spirit (like Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard or Sambuca), with a harder taste, and I think a bit less oily. The strength is one of the main characteristics of it though, and even Jilly Goulden would be hard pressed to describe it in terms any more subtle than "Ouch!" when taken neat.

The obvious question though is: Is it hallucinogenic, DOES IT WORK? Legendarily widely banned, and regularly abused by artists and decadents everywhere, I didn't notice too much of an effect. I probably only had a third of the bottle at a time, and as I was on the G&T as well, the main effect I noticed was to be very happily drunk indeed. Things like furniture did seem to become very 'real' for me, and I noticed objects and especially edges of objects and the space between them in a way that I didn't normally and found very interesting. No pink elephants though or indeed green faeries, and I didn't suddenly reawaken my dormant creative gene or discover anything particularly profound (except for my new taste for absinthe).

Experiments will no doubt continue when I've saved up enough for another bottle! The plus side though is that as no-one else will touch it, I get the whole bottle - unlike my gin, which falls victim to gin-fairies very quickly in my shared house. Somewhat easier to find now, and a little cheaper (£30 for La Fee at our local Tesco's), I may be able to report back from
VanGogh land in the nearish. I wonder how many DooYoo miles I need for a bottle...

Summary: