Absinthe, legend has it, starred in the very first cocktail. Pale green, potent and deadly alluring, the drink in its day spawned a verb, a disease and, in Paris, its very own intoxicating time of day - L'heure Verte. To painters, poets and their imitators, absinthe became liquid muse, sipped, swirled and savored with passion until its ban a century ago.
American importers and distillers, thirsty to revive a taste of the past, last year persuaded the government to end the 100-year prohibition. Their challenge now, perhaps more formidable, is to make the storied beverage relevant, if not romantic, for the prosaic modern drinker.
To that end, makers of the first legalized brands are touring the country, hitting town after town, including Baltimore, trying to get people not only to notice absinthe at the bar, but to buy into the whole green hallucinogenic fairy tale.
"What other drink has got this kind of history and romance and aura about it?" asks Gwydion Stone, a distiller who loves absinthe so much that he founded a society to honor it. "It's the most interesting drink that you can imagine."
At Ixia in Mount Vernon, the powers behind Kubler, the second absinthe approved for sale in the United States, recently invited guests to cross a velvet rope and sample their contemporary spin on the drink.
Combining the fantastic with the vulgar, the Swiss company filled the space with glowing, under-lit absinthe fountains and "green fairies," models who flitted about the bar with wings pinned onto their backs and "shirts" painted onto their breasts. They served absinthe as the French used to - choreographed and slow - even as they mixed it into cute-named cocktails like the Van Gone and the Red Fairy, with raspberry soda, flavored vodka and Red Bull.
Kubler officials watched a waiter prepare a classic absinthe by dripping water languidly from the fountain into a glass of the greenish drink. Before hitting the absinthe, the water passed over a sugar cube poised atop a slotted silver spoon. Drop by drop, the liquid clouded, swirling in the glass like witch's brew.
"Table theater," importer Rich Dorkin declared with a wink.
Denis Nash, a Baltimore banker, sipped a Hemingway, a mix of absinthe, raspberry vodka and fruit juices. Though it might have offended the writer, he of the big guns and the big game, to have his name on such an effete drink, Nash pronounced this one quite tasty - if not a bit disillusioning. After nearly the whole glass, he was neither hallucinating, erupting in poetry or even all that tipsy.
Creative devotees
Today's absinthe vendors would thrill to the testimonials that artists and writers once lavished on the spirit. Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Verlaine. Arthur Rimbaud. Vincent Van Gogh. Pablo Picasso. These people didn't just drink the stuff - they grabbed paintbrushes and pens to prove how absinthe inspired and wrecked them.
Czech painter Viktor Oliva focused on the fantasy, creating a translucent green fairy perched on a table, invisible to the besotted man sitting there. The fairy in Albert Maignan's "Green Muse," more brazen, actually runs her fingers through a poet's hair.
Depicting the drink's darker side with sad, muddy colors, Edgar Degas painted a sullen woman sipping the cocktail. Manet portrayed a top-hatted drunk standing in the shadows, an empty bottle lying in the foreground.
French poet Rimbaud, who seems to know the feel of the fairy's touch, called his drink of choice "a liquid jewel."
"The darkest forest melts into an open meadow," he wrote. "Waves of green seduce. Sanity surrendered, the soul spirals toward the murky depths, wherein lies the beautiful madness - absinthe."
Oscar Wilde famously summed up the absinthe experience like this: "The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things."
Even Hemingway, no waster of words, wrote of an absinthe'd evening: "Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks."
Absinthe's mythology is both blessing and curse for marketing departments. If not for the stories, who would pursue the drink? But if not for the stories, who would be disappointed in it?
Other drinks are served with an emotional twist - Guinness stout and certain wines, for instance. But for Paul Clarke, a Seattle writer behind the Cocktail Chronicle blog, only absinthe, with its vivid historical bouquet, so clearly evokes both a specific place - Belle Epoque Paris - and an era.
"When you serve a glass, you're pouring a whole rush of background along with it," he says. "When you smell it as it slowly louches, it's a highly distinctive and beautiful scent - it's almost impossible not to think of an art nouveau print while you're pouring."
In fact the French appropriated the word "louche" to help people articulate the soft roiling and misting as water droplets hit a glass of absinthe. It had been an adjective meaning "shady" or "disreputable."
Flavor and intrigue
The spirit was banned in this country and most of Europe by the early 1900s, largely due to fears of its hold on the mind and body. The blame for the ailment known as "absinthism" got pinned on a chemical called thujone, which is found in wormwood, absinthe's key ingredient.
It's quite possible that, in the 100 years absinthe was away, society sobered up some, or the idea of putting a cocktail on a pedestal fell out of vogue.
It's hard to find romance in a Jagermeister shooter - even harder to imagine Red Bull and vodka bringing out anyone's inner poet.
But Lance Winters, the first U.S. distiller granted approval to make absinthe, St. George Spirit's Absinthe Verte, can tell you - and in intricate detail - how his tongue interprets a sip of it.
"I describe it as opening up with black licorice and then going very quickly to a light citrus-y musty taste and then a grassy, very herbaceous thing with sort of a menthol cooling effect on your palate and ending with a real pleasant numbing sensation," he says.
Beyond the exquisite, complex flavor, he says there's not much to talk about - which is not to say there's nothing.
He compares absinthe intoxication to that of a forceful tequila rather than a subtle vodka - he can feel it coursing through his body. There's no creative wave and certainly no hallucinations, but everything around him seems to sharpen and snap into focus.
It's no accident that one of his competitors, an import from France, is named Lucid.
"In my experience, that's very real," he says. "It's very far from the hallucinations most people hope for but it's also very interesting."
While absinthe was banned, the intrigue escalated. As people smuggled it bottle by bottle into the country, it became a connoisseur's collector's item and a forbidden thrill. For young people seeking a fast buzz, the steep alcohol content - reaching 140 proof - became an attraction in itself.
For those customers, absinthe's fledgling legality might cut into the appeal. Or so Clarke hopes.
"I'm curious to see if once the gild comes off the lily," he says, "if it won't be cool anymore and people like me who really enjoy it for the flavor can just sit down and enjoy it."
If nothing else, absinthe's price and dominant flavor will complicate its comeback. The taste of licorice, certainly at about $50 a bottle, is not for everyone.
As she tentatively sipped an absinthe at Ixia, Celeste Corsaro, marketing director for Baltimore Eats magazine, probably answered for a number of folks when she said, "I'm trying to like it."
Peter Karl, who exports Kubler from Switzerland, wants to become absinthe's Martha Stewart - pushing fresh cocktails and cooking with it. He swears by mussels steamed in absinthe and is trying to team up with French chefs to publish a cookbook.
By early summer, Stone expects his absinthe, called Marteau, will be available for sale in this country.
While experimenting with the recipe, his quest was to create a traditionally styled absinthe that wouldn't be such a licorice bomb, one that would take better to mixing.
He's already infatuated with an Obituary - a dry gin martini with a splash of absinthe.
As it stands, though bars such as Ixia and Patterson Park's Three have made room for absinthe fountains and shops such as Hampden's Wine Source are selling out of cases of Kubler and Lucid, absinthe sales are a mere fraction of this country's total spirit sales.
Winters says he hopes to sell 10,000 cases this year - compared to 2 million Grey Goose - just one vodka brand.
Once the hired fairies have pulled off their wings and the fraternity brothers have figured out absinthe's only side affect is a lucidity their grandmother might find in a stiff cup of tea, most predict a quiet, distinguished future for the drink of legend.
"It's a beautifully complex thing to drink," Winters says. "When all the dust from the hype settles, people will be putting absinthe on the bar. It's got long-term prospects."
jill.rosen@baltsun.com