Bitter sweet—absinthe-filled chocolate

A friend was holidaying in Switzerland and noticed this curio—I’m not sure if this was just in a regular shop or in the weird, fluorescent hell-cave of the duty-free shop at the airport, where all concept of value and worth are mysteriously sucked out of your brain. Yet she battled through the fog to realise that this was destined to be brought back for me.

On the face of it one should have no fear. The Swiss famously make great chocolate and their country (or rather the wormwood habitat that straddles the country’s border with France) is the home of absinthe, so what could go wrong? The packaging features a bucolic scene with a cow calmly munching some grass and NOT going off its nut on mind-bending substances, and even if you examine the image with a magnifying glass there is no trace of the 1905 bloodbath wherein Swiss labourer Jean Lanfray murdered his family—allegedly after an absinthe bender—which finally led to the banning of absinthe throughout much of Europe. OK, so the glass of absinthe in the foreground is sloshing around maniacally, as if it is sitting on the dashboard of a pickup doing 105 kilometres per hour along a busy Swiss arterial road, as the driver mutters to himself that what is about to happen is HER fault and she MADE him do it. There is even an absinthe spoon on display for verité, though you sense that, while the artist has probably seen one, he/she has no idea what you actually do with it, so it has been left leaning jauntily against the glass. The same glass that is about to lose its contents in a green tsunami as the pickup revs ever closer to its destiny…

Anyway, this is absinthe-filled chocolate, called “Larmes d’Absinthe”, or “Tears of Absinthe”. Which I admit does not sound that positive. In fact it has a hint of “we warned you” about it.

We’re all familiar with liqueur-filled chocolates, and this uses the same technique—I guess the nodules of absinthe are lined with some sort of sugar shell, which you can feel crunching as you bite into it, right before the liquid centre spills over your tongue. Needless to say, it is very good chocolate, and although the absinthe brand is not named it tastes authentic enough in the context. I admit that there is something disconcerting about it: precisely because we are familiar with liqueur-filled chocolates, each time I bite into one of these I am taken aback by the bitter pungency of the absinthe. But overall it does work—the chocolate and the sugar offer more than enough sweetness to balance the bitterness of the absinthe, and the chocolate is proper dark stuff, so overall it does seem like a decadent, grown-up treat.

Experimenting with monkey glands

Early in one’s drinking career one will encounter spirits lengthened with mixers—gin and tonic, rum and coke, perhaps whisky and ginger ale (or whisky and soda water, if you are of a different generation). It was when I was a student that I first encountered gin and orange juice. I was sceptical, as I was inclined to think of OJ as a wholesome breakfast beverage, not a louche partner-in-crime to the Demon Drink, the innocent-faced, outwardly respectable enabler that distracts you from the hard spirits you are guzzling. It didn’t not work, but it was clearly intended as a way to mask the flavour of the spirit.

It was later, when I had found a copy of Cocktails and How to Mix Them (1922) “by ‘Robert’ [Vermeire] of the American Bar, Casino Municipale, Nice, and late of the Embassy Club, London”, that I first encountered the Monkey Gland cocktail. The name comes from experiments conducted at the time by surgeon Serge Voronoff, who believed he could boost longevity/virility by surgically implanting monkey testicle tissue into men. The cocktail was created by Harry MacElhone, who opened Harry’s Bar in Paris (though Vermeire identifies him by his tenure at Ciro’s in London) and I assume the name was chosen to suggest that the effect it had on the drinker was invigorating, even rejuvenating—and not that it left you feeling like you’d just woken up from surgery (or, even worse, feeling the way the monkey did when, and if, he woke up).

It’s a mix of gin and orange juice, with grenadine and absinthe. Recipes vary, but it is roughly equal parts gin and OJ, with small quantities of the other two ingredients. I tried it at the time, using Pernod (this was the 1990s and absinthe hadn’t made its triumphant return by then) and commercial grenadine, and I don’t think I was terribly impressed.

I was reminded of this drink again when Mrs H. recently gave me a copy of An Anthology of Cocktails, put out by Booth’s gin in 1935.* It features a whole list of celebs of the time with a recommended cocktail for each one and a cheesy testimony from them on the glories of Booth’s. For example, man of the turf Lord Westmorland declares, so we are led to believe, “A cocktail without Booth’s is a cocktail under a handicap,” while actress Sybil Thorndike asserts that, “A cocktail in which Booth’s plays a leading part receives an enthusiastic reception from the most captious critics,” while racing driver Brian Lewis blurts, “A party without Booth’s is like a car without wheels.” Quite how the Great and the Good were persuaded to lend their names (and indeed their signatures, printed alongside) to these abortions of the copywriter’s art boggles the mind.

The volume also includes a list of London clubs and theatres that serve Booth’s and a list of top barmen from the city with their favourite Booth’s recipes. You can see a page-turning PDF of the whole book at https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1955-An-Anthology-of-Cocktails.

The Monkey Gland as such does not appear—the cocktails recommended by Booth’s for the celebs do tend to have a name that is relevant (Brian Lewis gets the Self Starter, winter sportsman the Earl of Northesk gets the Snowball, Ivor Novello gets the Star, etc), so I doubt that any of them would have appreciated being paired with the Monkey Gland—but it does feature a number of cocktails that similarly feature fruit juice not as a mixer to lengthen but as an ingredient, in amounts less than that of the base spirit. The Star, for example, is half-and-half gin and Calvados, plus a dash each of French and Italian vermouth, and only a teaspoon of grapefruit juice. The Smiler cocktail, recommended by horse breeder Tom Walls (“Would that the pedigree of a horse were as reliable a guide as the name of Booth’s on a bottle of gin,” he creaks) is essentially a Martini made with a blend of French and Italian vermouth, Angostura bitters and just a dash of Orange juice.

As it happens I had an orange looking for a purpose in life, and I was inspired to give the Monkey Gland another go. The upshot was most uplifting but I had to do a lot of experimenting to get there.

In the first instance I would say that the proportions are probably the most important part. Get the gin/OJ balance wrong and things go awry. Exactly how much grenadine you use may depend on how sweet your tooth is; but it is very easy to throw the whole thing out by using too much absinthe—in one attempt I escalated the absinthe to a whole ½ tsp and it ruined the drink. It should be a playful suggestion of pungent herbal flavours lurking in the background. The simplest way to keep that under control is to start by rolling some absinthe around your mixing vessel, then pouring it all out back into the bottle. What is left clinging to the sides of the shaker is all you need.

I also found that squeezing the orange juice freshly makes a big difference. It doesn’t exactly fail with commercial OJ from a carton, but this will make a more watery drink. Juice squeezed from an orange is sweeter and more intensely flavoured, with sharp aromatic notes from the rind oils. I imagine that when all these early cocktails with small amounts of fruit juice were developed, cartons of ready-squeezed juice may not have been available, so if a recipe specified the juice of a citrus fruit it was assumed that you would produce this by squeezing an actual fruit.

Monkey Gland
50ml gin (Adnams Copper House)
37.5ml freshly squeezed OJ
Absinthe rinse (La Fée new formula)
½ tsp grenadine
Coat the shaker with a rinse of absinthe and drain. Add the other ingredients and shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and squeeze a strip of orange peel over the top.

As mentioned, the gin/orange balance is important, so neither swamps the other, a balance of sweetness, fruitiness and spirit warmth. When it’s right, interesting chocolate flavours emerge. Maybe it’s the use of freshly squeezed OJ, but the spirit and juice seem to integrate in a way that suggests the rich orange character of curaçao. I also tried varying the gin brand, using Anno instead, and it still works, though I found that the approachable, fruity, floral character of Adnams Copper House sat more comfortably. I didn’t try varying the absinthe brand, but as long as it is real absinthe (avoid anything that is a bluish green, which is artificial; naturally coloured absinthe tends to be an olive green) I would imagine it’ll be OK in these proportions.**

Grenadine is traditionally a pomegranate syrup, and I have previously railed against modern commercial grenadines, which are actually based on “red berries”, and probably don’t even feature any real ones of those anyway. But it is easy to make a good one, not too sweet, with some of the tannic dryness of the fruit, by mixing equal parts by volume of 100% pomegranate juice (POM Wonderful is the brand I have used in the past) and granulated sugar, heated in a pan to dissolve, then cooled. I keep some in the fridge and it never seems to go off.

*Most of the recipes specify “Booth’s gin”, and more than once the text refers to the “mellow” or “matured” character—DBS tells me that Booth’s was actually rested in wood barrels (casks previously used for sherry or Burgundy, depending on the era) for 6–12 weeks to soften its rough edges. Some of the recipes, on the other hand, specify “Booth’s dry gin”; certainly by the mid-20th century Booth’s were selling their High and Dry Gin, claiming to be “the driest gin in the world”, though I’m not sure if, at the time this booklet was published, they were selling both versions. Sadly there is nothing actually about the product within its pages. Aged gin has become fashionable again (and in fairness Seagram’s have always rested their gin in wood for 3–4 weeks). In recent years a Booth’s Cask Mellowed Gin has been produced again.

** I see that the International Bartenders Association gives their prescribed recipe as even leaner: 50ml gin, 30ml OJ and just two drops each of grenadine and absinthe.

Introducing the Bognor Gothic cocktail

Bognor Gothic the font

A friend recently asked me to come up with a cocktail to go with a new font he had created.

You read that right. I don’t suppose many fonts come with a recommended cocktail, but you know what these creative types* are like. I suppose that, while many classic typefaces were developed to solve practical typesetting problems, others were intended to evoke emotions or associations in the viewer, so perhaps a prescribed drink might help achieve this effect.

To give you an idea of the mood, here is a room in my friend's
house done up in a Victorian Gothic/Arts & Crafts style

My friend lives in Bognor Regis, a town on the south coast of England. It became a fashionable resort in Victorian times and was later favoured by King George V for its healthy sea air, hence the “Regis” suffix. The font is called Bognor Gothic and seems to be a modern nod to the Victorian reinvention of the Gothic. This is what he has to say on the subject:

As Montmartre is to Paris and Soho is to London, so North Bersted is to Bognor Regis. Therefore it is no wonder that Bognor Gothic springs from this quaint “artists quarter” of the sprawling metropolis. It is deeply rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement, being a fine hand-crafted font brought about through a combination of both the belief in the integrity of the artisan and the eschewing of modern technology—albeit through the mechanism of not being arsed to Google other Gothic fonts. Bognor Gothic is a product of its environment, the desolate and blasted landscape of the Victorian seaside town, like the bleak moors but with more arcades and chip shops. Less “Wuthering Heights” and more “Withering Lows.”**

So something self-consciously rustic, artisanal and Victorian. “Our money is on something involving dark rum and absinthe,” he adds.

The Victorian angle put me in mind of some sort of punch or purl, a kind of ale infused with wormwood—particularly the variety that grows in coastal salt marshes—which used to be popular in Victorian times. The wormwood seems to have played the same role as a bittering agent as hops do today. Later the term purl was used for a mulled blend of ale, gin, sugar and spices. Simon Difford lists purl in his cocktail guide as simply gin and ale.

Monin's gingerbread syrup:
doesn't work here

Cocktails with beer are pretty trendy these days,*** presumably going hand in hand with the explosion of “craft” ales. So I start off with gin and beer, using Fuller’s London Pride simply because I have some in the house. Then I add some absinthe (La Fée Parisienne, the new formulation) in accordance with my friend’s suggestion, and as a nod to the original wormwood flavour in purl.

As for the spices, the simplest way to get them in is a spiced syrup. I happen to have some of Monin’s gingerbread syrup, so I experiment with that, but I have to abandon it in the end as it has too dominating a flavour. I don’t know how they make it, but it doesn’t just taste of gingerbread spices—ginger and cinnamon—but somehow of gingerbread. So instead I make an experimental quantity of simple syrup (100ml sugar and 50ml water heated in a pan till it dissolves) with about a teaspoon of Schwartz mixed spice (ground cinnamon, coriander seed, caraway seed, nutmeg, ginger and cloves) plus a few extra whole cloves.

I found that if you start with a double measure (50ml) of gin then you probably don’t want much more than 300ml beer before you start to lose the flavour of the gin. Absinthe always makes its presence felt, and I found that half a teaspoon was ample. A couple of teaspoons of the syrup got those mulling spices involved, and I chose to add a teaspoon of lemon juice for a tartness to balance the sweetness of the sugar. I tried it at room temperature though you could mull it—preferably by plunging a red-hot poker into it in the traditional way.

The Bognor Gothic No.1

The Bognor Gothic No.1
6 shots ale
2 shots gin
2 tsp mixed spice syrup
1 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp absinthe
Combine ingredients in a glass and stir gently.

It’s an interesting drink, with all the flavours discernible at the same time. Whether or not you’ll actually like it depends in the first instance on whether you like absinthe, which is a pretty divisive taste. Or beer, for that matter: between the beer and the absinthe there is a noticeable bitterness to this cocktail, as well as the sweet and sour “cocktaily” elements too.

London Pride has quite a caramel character to it, which made me wonder if the same cocktail might indeed work with dark rum instead of gin. I tried it with some Bacardi Carta Negra, but for some reason I didn’t think it worked so well. It may be that beer and rum aren’t comfortable bedfellows after all, so I decided to backtrack and start again with rum and absinthe as my friend had originally suggested. I didn’t find anything intrinsically quarrelsome here, so I then tried to bring in some spice again, this time using The King’s Ginger liqueur, then lime juice to balance its sweetness (and for a nautical nod).

The Bognor Gothic No.2

The Bognor Gothic No.2
2½ shots dark rum
¾ shot The King’s Ginger
½ shot lime juice
½ tsp absinthe
Shake with ice and serve in some sort of chalice, pewter tankard or hand-turned wooden bowl. Or a cocktail glass.

You may have to play around with the proportions depending on what rum you use. There is actually an existing cocktail called a Green Swizzle (mentioned in the P.G. Woodhouse story The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy) which is probably similar—I say “probably” as there doesn’t seem to be much agreement and Woodhouse doesn't name the ingredients—but with almond-flavoured falernum instead of the ginger liqueur (some modern versions use crème de menthe to get the colour and no absinthe) and presumably with white rum to allow it to be green. And you are also not far from the classic Dark ‘n’ Stormy, mixing dark rum, lime juice and ginger beer.

Once again the absinthe will divide people: Mrs H. hates the stuff, so I tried making one without it but for some reason it didn’t really add up to much, even after I added a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters (which went nicely with the ginger). I suspected it exposed the relatively mild flavour of Bacardi Carta Negra as a “dark” rum, and that one with more of a raspy pot-still character might work better. So I try the experiment again using Myer’s dark Jamaican rum and, although it is different, I again think that the absinthe-free version doesn’t quite come together but the full-on version does.

I couldn’t really say whether this cocktail will help you appreciate the font better, but it leaves me wondering what drinks should accompany other fonts. Times? Something establishment like a whisky and soda, I think. Courier, the classic monospaced typewriter font? Whatever a war correspondent drinks—a cup of cold coffee or anything from a hipflask with a dent from a bullet in it. Slab serif fonts remind me of politically correct textbooks from the late Seventies or early Eighties, so perhaps a Harvey Wallbanger (though the people who wrote those books probably drank chlorophyll smoothies or Fairtrade real ale with twigs floating in it). Gill Sans is one of my favourite fonts and it always reminds me of wartime information posters. What did they drink in the Blitz..?

Any other suggestions gratefully received!

Times

Courier

Slab serif font American Typewriter. Check out Rockwell too

Gill Sans

* Pardon the pun…

** On the subject of Victorian novels, Bognor—or rather the purpose-built resort of Hothampton developed there by speculator Sir Richard Hotham—is believed to be portrayed in Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon.

*** At a bar in St John's Square called The Bear (now closed down) I had an unlikely-sounding but very successful cocktail of gin, IPA beer and sauvignon blanc wine.

The purple reign of Parfait Amour

By chance I found myself with three different brands of Parfait Amour in the house recently—Bols, Boudier and Cartron. This liqueur is possibly most used in cocktails for its purple colour, but despite its similarity in this respect to crème de violette it is not primarily flavoured with flowers. Recipes vary and Bols, who claim to have invented it, do use rose and violet petals to make it, but the flavour that seems to link the different interpretations is actually citrus.

The Cartron website doesn’t give away the recipe but implies that this liqueur is all about the citron. The nose is strongly of orange and lemon, as is the palate, which is sweet, with a liquorice note and only the subtlest florality. It does make you wonder why someone would come up with a citron liqueur then decide to make it purple—and this sample is the most intensely coloured of the three—but the site has a quote from 1769 about the use of citron in Parfait Amour so it has clearly been made this way for a long time.

(Left to right) Boudier, Bols and Cartron

Boudier’s version also hits you with oranges on the nose and something sweet like crystallised angelica or parma violets. On the palate it is drier and seems more spiritous than its 30% ABV. There is orange here again and perhaps something nutty. The website has nothing to say about this liqueur, but I gather that curaçao oranges, rose petals, vanilla and almonds go into it.

Bols’s ingredients are much the same as Boudier’s—orange peel, vanilla, almonds and “flower petals (principally roses and violets)”—but their version is quite different. They speak of how many a lover’s quarrel has dissolved under the influence of this drink, and it does have the reputation of being a dainty tipple for ladies. (It’s interesting, then, that Cartron talk of how it is “ideal in light and fresh cocktails” and don’t actually suggest you drink it neat.) The Bols example has a more confectionary nose and is sweetest on the tongue. More than anything it reminds me of that nougat that has bits of candied fruit in it, a character that must come from the almond and vanilla as well as the citrus. I would say that the Bols version is the most distinctive—the others seem a bit vague by comparison—and is the only one I can imagine dainty ladies choosing to sip. The Boudier seems a bit too austere and the Cartron has that liquorice edge that might prove divisive.

Although I don’t have any to hand, De Kuyper also make a Parfait Amour that they describe as a marriage of citrus (lemon and bitter, fragrant curaçao orange) and vanilla. Marie Brizzard make one with sweet oranges, orange blossom and vanilla. Giffard make theirs with orange, vanilla, violets and geranium and Lejay use bitter orange peel and violet buds.

A Jupiter, made to Ted Haigh's proportions

There actually aren’t many classic cocktails involving Parfait Amour. The Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930 has just two (there are significantly more with crème de violette and, I suspect, more with Crème Yvette as well), the Jupiter and the Trilby No.2. No one seems to know anything about their origins, but I’m assuming the Trilby was titled after the play of the same name,* as was the wont with smash-hit plays in those days.

Jupiter
2 shots gin
1 shot dry white vermouth
1 tsp Parfait Amour
1 tsp orange juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. The first time I put a row of these together, using the different brands, I’m not sure what to make of it: it seems very much of the time when the Martini was the bedrock and many “new” cocktails were just slightly contaminated versions of it. The tiny quantity of orange juice doesn’t seem to add much apart from a cloudiness: it’s possible that this opacity in conjunction with the Parfait Amour is intended to create a pale sky colour (Jupiter is Roman god of the sky), though in the case of the dark Cartron you get something that looks like a severely polluted sky just before an ugly storm, while the others veer more towards orangey-pink.

A Trilby cocktail

The Boudier’s citrus character blends easily enough with the gin and does poke its head up now and then with notes of sweetness and stemminess too. The Cartron has a similar effect, though it gets a bit lost. The Bols version is certainly more distinctive: while the juniper/Parfait interface is not horrible, it will come as a bit of a shock to Martini drinkers. Overall it is more cloying and doesn’t seem to sit comfortably with the seriousness of the Dry Martini ingredients. Might go better with Babycham.

However, noting that Ted Haigh, in Forgotten Spirits and Vintage Cocktails (2009), champions the Jupiter but is very particular about measures—in his recipe the gin is at 45ml and the vermouth at 20ml—I have another go the next night, using his exact quantities (and Bols liqueur) and the result is indeed more elegant. I must have overdone the Parfait Amour previously, as this version is actually quite dry. This probably does make the best of the liqueur; its nougat character takes on a hint of (white?) chocolate in this subtle incarnation.

Trilby
1 shot Scotch whisky
1 shot red vermouth
1 shot Parfait Amour
2 dashes absinthe
2 dashes orange bitters

Again, the Carton and Boudier versions produced only a fairly subtle influence. The Bols Parfait Amour made its presence felt more, sitting in the mix with the malty rasp of the Scotch, the herbal sweetness of the vermouth and the pungence of the absinthe (I used just a rinse), though whether the end result is complex or conflicting is debatable.

A Blonde Bombshell

I have a feeling that Parfait Amour can be quite a busy blend of flavours in itself, and so might actually work better in simpler combinations. Experimenting, I found that just adding a dash or two to a glass of Champagne or sparkling wine was one of the most satisfying serves, enabling the flavours of the liqueur to open up but not overwhelm (and in fact Bols claim on their website that this combination is drunk at weddings all over the world). There are a number of cocktails that are basically this, plus another ingredient as well. The Blonde Bombshell, for example, recommended on Bols’s website, adds elderflower liqueur:

Blonde Bombshell
15ml Parfait Amour
15ml elderflower liqueur
Top with Champagne or sparkling wine

The two liqueurs do complement each other, with the prickly high notes of the elderflower slotting in with the Bols’s warm nutty and vanilla layers. But I find myself boosting the elderflower (I’m using St Germain) to get a good balance, and frankly the whole thing is a bit too sweet for me anyway. Adding more sparkling wine helps, as does squeezing a bit of lemon juice into the blend.

A Double Perfect

The Double Perfect does the same thing but uses triple sec instead of elderflower liqueur. Again they specify 15ml for each liqueur but, warned by the Blonde Bombshell, I start with just 10ml and frankly this is all you need (unless you’re using a very large glass).

Double Perfect
10ml Parfait Amour
10ml Cointreau
Top with Champagne or sparkling wine

The Cointreau cranks up the orange aspects already present in the Parfait Amour and controls the confectionary nougat elements, making for a relatively elegant, poised use of the liqueur, especially in these reduced quantities. (I’m using Bols, which has a broader flavour than the other two brands, which are more citrus to start off with, so I’m not sure how much point there would be to this blend using Cartron or Boudier.)

And as a final test, my eye was caught by this combo on diffordsguide.com, to which he gives a higher score than most other Parfait cocktails:

The Brazen Martini

Brazen Martini
2½ shots bisongrass vodka
¼ shot Parfait Amour

Once again it really only takes a teaspoon of the liqueur to do the job, though I’m not convinced that it is a job worth doing. The pungent herbal element of the vodka, with its bitter aftertaste, interfaces interestingly with the plump, sweet vanilla of the Parfait Amour in the same way as the absinthe does in the Trilby, but it is more thought-provoking than actually pleasant, and is really not a cocktail I would be keen to have again.

As you can probably tell, I can’t get terribly excited about Parfait Amour—and I’m in good company, as the great David Embury, author of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948), ranked it with Forbidden Fruit as his two least favourite liqueurs. The best delivery methods for it are the Jupiter, the Double Perfect or just a small 5–10ml dose in sparkling wine—but as you can see, the key here is to use it sparingly.

* The play, an adaption of the Georges du Maurier novel, played first at the Boston Museum in 1895 before Herbert Beerbohm Tree brought it to the UK, where it ran with great success at the Haymarket Theatre in London. Trilby O’Ferrall is the female lead. The Trilby hat gets its name from the play as well.

Absinthe, tequila…and cucumber

The experimental Maid in Jalisco. Looking at it, I think I should come up with a cocktail for St Patrick's Day,
garnish it in the same way with thin slices of cucumber, and call it a Four-Leafed Clover…

Cucumber in booze is nothing new—both Hendrick’s and Martin Miller’s gins include cucumber among the flavourings.* But synchronicity dictated that I receive two emails today that embraced the noble plant and, since it is summer and I am in England, what could be more apt?

Emerald Street, a well-written daily offshoot from Stylist magazine, today featured a number of inspiring things you can do with your blender, including a frozen Margarita that includes puréed cucumber (two peeled ones, the juice of five or six limes, 100ml tequila and four cups of ice cubes, whizzed together, plus agave syrup to taste).**

Meanwhile, a post on the Real Absinthe Blog takes a scholarly look at Hemingway’s consumption of absinthe and concludes that, in his writing at least, he only ever drinks it in the traditional way with water, plus the Death in the Afternoon cocktail (absinthe and Champagne). Absinthe has such a powerful flavour that where it does appear in cocktails it is often present in homeopathic quantities (typically the serving glass is rinsed with absinthe that is then discarded before the cocktail is poured in). Last year Gaz Regan in his Regan Report noted the importance of absinthe as a cocktail ingredient but likewise warned against adding too much. Anyway, the post included a link to an earlier item describing the Maid in Cuba cocktail:

2 shots white rum
1 shot lime juice
½ shot sugar syrup
Small handful of mint leaves
3 slices of cucumber
Absinthe

Vigorously shake the first five ingredients with ice and strain into a glass that has been rinsed with the absinthe. It’s essentially a melding of Cuba’s two most famous cocktails, the Daiquiri and the Mojito, with added cucumber and absinthe.

Absinthe is pretty complex stuff in its own right, so you might argue that it is best drunk on its own. However, that would be a coward’s way out, so I found myself wondering what it might naturally synergise with. Gin, with its botanical arsenal, seems a likely contender, and classic absinthe cocktails like the Corpse Reviver No.2 and the Monkey Gland (gin, orange juice, absinthe and grenadine) do tend to be gin-based.*** I wouldn’t say that absinthe had a particular affinity for the white rum in the Maid in Cuba, as it is pretty much a blank canvas, but just thinking about it you can suspect that the herbaceous nature of tequila is going to marry well. And you’d be right. Just try rinsing a glass with absinthe then pouring in some tequila and you’ll see what I mean—the flavours of the two ingredients merge seamlessly.

So, by splicing Emerald Street’s cucumber Margarita with the Maid in Cuba you come up with something we might call the Maid in Jalisco:

2 shots tequila
1 shot lime juice
Agave syrup to taste (½ shot perhaps, although this was too sweet for me)
3 slices of cucumber
½ tsp absinthe

Shake with ice and strain. I started off just rinsing the serving glass with absinthe but I felt that it needed another ½ tsp at least (I was using Jade Terminus). I think the absinthe really works, though I must admit I’m less sure about the cucumber. I think that just by adding absinthe to a Margarita you have something very interesting indeed.

* Evidently cucumber doesn’t work if you infuse it with the other botanicals and distil, so it must be added post-distillation. (See my exploration of how Hendricks is made.) This means that these gins can’t call themselves “London Dry Gin” as this is an EU-defined category that does not allow any additives after distillation. Some people get quite exercised about this and query whether the definition or terminology should be changed, but I have always said that consumers almost certainly won’t consider the term “London Dry Gin” to be a stamp of quality. If anything they will probably assume that it means it was made in London, which it probably wasn’t, as the term does not encompass any geographical requirement.

** Classically the Margarita uses triple sec (such as Cointreau) but it is increasingly common to use agave syrup instead.

*** With the noble exception of the Sazerac, of course, a New Orleans classic that adds a smidgeon of absinthe to rye whisky, Cognac or a blend of the two, along with sugar and bitters.

Absinthe and chocolate—the ultimate decadent pairing?

We gave last weekend’s Candlelight Club a “Resolution Busters” theme: apparently the third week in January is round about the time that a lot of people who made New Year resolutions give up and go back to their old ways. Something like the Candlelight Club was never really in a position to offer a self-improvement angle, so we decided to go the opposite way, and our cocktail menu this time was based around things you might have hoped to give up, or indeed take up. Our Roll-Up the Barrel cocktail featured Jade’s Perique tobacco liqueur (as a nod to those trying to quit smoking); our Off Down the Gin cocktail featured a Lucozade Sport reduction (the world’s first isotonic cocktail? Replaces the gin lost through exercise).

We also had a Girl’s Best Friend cocktail which smuggled in chocolate via a harmless, neutral vodka and absinthe base. Our mixologist these days is David Hamilton-Boyd of Organic Spirit and his recipe included La Maison Fontaine Chocolat, a chocolate and French absinthe liqueur. I know Jenny of Sip or Mix who distributes La Maison Fontaine’s absinthe here, but I did not know about this product and was interested to check it out—off the top of my head I could certainly imagine that chocolate and absinthe might go together well.

The back label tells how this beverage was inspired by a hand-written recipe for crème de cacao dating from the 1920s and discovered in a recipe book at the distillery, which leads me to expect an intensely chocolately experience, with a little absinthe blended in. But as soon as you uncork the bottle you are hit primarily by that white absinthe smell: it’s a fragrance that all bleu/blanche absinthes seem to have, something I can only describe as overripe buttercups. With a hint of Plasticine. Perhaps it is wormwood or some other herb, but it lends a characteristic sour, floral element, quite sharp in this case. On top of that this drink has orange, anise and coriander seed on the nose, plus chocolate too, of course (though the latter is not dominant). There are suggestions of rum and ginger as well, reminding me of rum and raisin ice cream. But on a more mundane level you could say sit smells like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange that has been kept in the same cupboard as a box of liquorice allsorts.

The same balance follows through on the palate, which is again ruled by the absinthe elements. It is also pretty sweet (and, at 25% ABV, much lower in alcohol that absinthe itself). The chocolate is definitely there in the mix, but it is relatively subtle. In fact, in my quest to establish to what extent chocolate and absinthe are indeed well matched, I find myself spiking this drink with Mozart’s chocolate bitters, which are very chocolately indeed, particularly on the aroma side of things.

This leaves me thinking that the two things do indeed go together, but in fact my curiosity drives me to try adding the bitters to a green absinthe, in this case La Fée’s new recipe Parisienne. Although this absinthe is less anise-driven than the old formula, it does work better. La Fée’s blanche absinthe seems a bit more anise-led, so I try adding a drop or two of the chocolate bitters to that and the effect is very pleasing and harmonious indeed. The bright aromatic thrust of the aniseed seems to partner perfectly with the warm richness of the chocolate.

As for La Maison Fontaine’s offering, it is a curious beast. If you primarily like chocolate you may be disappointed—and you certainly have to like white absinthe to enjoy this drink. But, as I say, comparing it to a couple of other white absinthes reveals that this beverage has a curious, pungent fragrance all of its own.

A Chocerac

On La Maison Fontaine’s website there are some cocktails and suggested serves, several of which focus on combining this liqueur with salt: either licked on the side, as if drinking with a tequila shot, or dropped into the drink, or in the form of cheese and dried meats consumed alongside. I try it with some shavings of parmesan and it does indeed work well, the sweetness balancing in the same way that sweet chutney, quince jelly or fresh figs might go with cheese. I even find that the sharpness of that characteristic white absinthe element makes a good foil against the intense savouriness of the cheese. For my money this is the most pleasant way to consume the liqueur.

My eye is also caught by another suggested cocktail, a Negroni variant called a Trinité that combines 30ml of the Fontaine liqueur with 20ml Campari and 25ml reposado tequila. This too is enlightened—there is a synergy, or perhaps just a family resemblance, between the pungency of the absinthe, the soft, smoky, herbal notes of the tequila and the bitter, earthy rootiness of the Campari, with the liqueur also bringing a balancing sweetness that comes from the red vermouth in a normal Negroni.

Whoever created the cocktail recipes and suggested servings has done a good, thoughtful and inventive job. But ultimately all these drinks are dominated by that odd flavour. I don’t have any normal La Maison Fontaine blanche to hand to see how similar it is, but checking a couple of other white absinthes it seems to me that in those, perhaps more anise-inflected, contexts the flavour in question presents a better, and less disconcerting, balance than it does in this liqueur.

As a final experiment, I make a sort of Sazerac, a classic absinthe cocktail, but incorporating the Mozart bitters as well:

Chocerac
25ml Bourbon (I know it should be rye but this was all I had)
25ml Cognac
12.5ml sugar syrup
2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
2 dashes Mozart Chocolate Bitters
3ml-ish La Fée Blanche Absinthe
Lemon twist garnish

Stir all but the absinthe with ice and strain into a chilled tumbler which has had the absinthe rolled around its inside. Squeeze a piece of lemon peel over the top; purists discard the peel rather than dropping it in. I actually added a bit more than just the absinthe residue, about a coffee spoon more.

This is a corker. Lift it to your nose and you get chocolate and lemon and dark, woody spices like cinnamon, plus a higher spice note from the anise too, and a hint of marmalade, all in perfect equilibrium. On the palate it is just the right level of sweetness for me, balancing the fire of the spirit, with all those spices darting around your tongue too. Probably the most satisfying Sazerac I’ve ever had. So there.

La Maison Fontaine Finest French Absinthe Chocolate Liqueur is about £30 a 70cl bottle.

The Green Fairy's new wings

I haven’t written about absinthe in a while, not least because the last time I did it revealed just how weird the absinthe world can be. I reviewed the whole of the La Fée range at the time, presenting what I thought was a pretty fair summing up—the high-end “XS” products are excellent, while the more mainstream “Parisienne” was OK for what it was, but I railed against the suggestion on the La Fée website at the time that its artificial colouring was a normal part of the absinthe tradition. The green colour of traditional absinthe derives from the fact that some of the botanicals don’t distil well, so they are infused into the spirit after distillation, and so leave their colour from the chlorophyll.*

Such is the craft, mystery and voodoo associated with absinthe and its romantic history, that it’s a divisive field. Many seemed to revile La Fée’s creator George Rowley, seeing him as a betrayer of the true spirit of absinthe. Unfortunately I had not been able to speak to George before writing it (apparently he never received my emails), but he later gave me an interview in which he answered some questions and denied rumours I had heard that La Fée was compounded from flavourings. I revised my review to put across these points—and incurred the scorn of the absinthe mafia. Some people genuinely seemed to think I had been bribed to update the review.

Old La Fée Parisienne on the left, new La Fée Parisienne on the right

So I will be interested to see what that camp makes of the latest development in the La Fée stable. I heard rumours earlier in the year that the new La Fée Blanche expression was very good—none other than Ted Breaux, of the high-end Jade range and the massive Lucid brand in the US, told me so. And now the brand’s signature Parisienne mainstream absinthe has been completely reformulated: the new version is all natural. Whereas the XS products are made on George’s behalf by boutique distillers (François Guy in Pontarlier makes the Française and Claude-Alain Bugnon in Couvet makes the Suisse), the new Parisienne is still made by its old producer, Cherry Rocher near Lyons.

When I spoke to George back in 2011 he was at pains to point out that he had tried many times to get natural colouring into his absinthe but it simply wasn’t stable enough. Producing something that was shipped to 38 countries in a variety of climatic conditions, he didn’t feel that his customers would accept the batch-to-batch variation he would get from natural colour.

Old La Fée on the left, new La Fée on the right, this time louched

When I met George more recently at the Boutique Bar Show, he seemed excited more than anything about the new bottle that La Fée Parisienne comes in. Instead of being clear glass, revealing the synthetic green colour of the old Parisienne, it is now an opaque green, with a high-tech UV-proof coating.** This apparently protects the colour of the new liquor.

But if you taste new Parisienne against a sample of the old stuff, the difference is vast in more ways than just the colour.*** Yes, the new drink is a paler, softer, more olive green, but the flavour profile has changed completely. Old Parisienne has a brassy nose of strong green anise with a stab of rooty wormwood, quite simplistic and one-dimensional. The palate is sweet with rubbery anise, some wormwood and a slight bitter edge on the finish.

Straightaway new Parisienne is different: much less green anise is used and the nose is delicate with dusty, woody dried spice, fennel, caraway, orange peel and liquorice.**** It’s complex and fascinating, drawing you in. It reminds me strongly of the smell of Aviation gin. The palate carries on the profile of the nose. It is sweet enough on the tongue but not really anise-driven. To me it is more about spices—fennel seed, coriander… It is not especially floral compared to some, especially the blue styles, but there is a hint of parma violets.

I have a couple of other comparisons to hand, Jade’s Nouvelle-Orléans and Artemisia’s Butterfly. Nouvelle Orleans has a sharper nose with floral high notes and pungent, aromatic layer like tarragon. The palate is lighter, drier, with less of the orange notes that strike me in new Parisienne. Butterfly has a bright nose of fresh mint and watercress and a weighty bitter-sweet palate—it makes me realise that new Parisienne is not heavy but ultimately fresh and refreshing. Back in the early days of its popularity absinthe was drunk as an aperitif by the middle classes in the “green hour” after work, and I can imagine this recipe working well in that role.

I’m actually surprised that the new Parisienne is so different from the old one—there are other natural absinthes out there that I think are closer to the flavour profile of the old one. I wonder what loyal consumers will make of it.

The new La Fée Blanche was actually released before the new verte. Tradition has it that colourless absinthes are a Swiss thing—more usually known as La Bleue over there—deriving from the fact that, not being green, they were easier to disguise after absinthe was prohibited. But in fact colourless absinthe was being made in both France and Switzerland before the ban. The La Fée family already has a bleue in the form of the XS La Suisse (around £80 a bottle), but the new one is made on an industrial scale by Cherry Rocher and as such can be had for about £35 a bottle.

The label describes it as being made with more fennel than most vertes and as such being sweeter and softer. It’s true that most bleues do seem sweeter and to me often more floral. But La Fée Blanche strikes me, like the new Parisienne, as marked by dried spice, pleasantly pungent with savoury hints almost like onion, but also with both mentholic freshness and wafts of mint and cucumber. (OK, it’s beginning to sound like a curry dinner.)

I try it up against two other white absinthes, La Clandestine from Artemisia and an obscure bottle called La P’tite (a fairy reference, I think) that I must have picked up years ago. This last example has a sweet, floral nose, quite understated, and a palate that is likewise sweetish, offering anise but not much else. La Clandestine is more hefty, with a nose of rubbery “overripe buttercups”—I smell I get from a lot of white absinthes, though I’ve no idea what it is. It suggests alpine wildflowers. Unfolding also are vanilla and banana, plus perfumed, floral notes—altogether more complex than La P’tite. This carries over on to the palate, which is sweet and weighty.

By comparison, La Fée Blanche strikes me as lighter and drier. As with the new Parisienne, it is more about high spicy notes, fennel seed, coriander, even turmeric, and less about green anise sweetness.

I think that both of the new absinthes are splendid additions to the market, but my favourite is probably the Parisienne. It’s the sort of absinthe that you keep coming back to as new aromas and flavours unfold. (Try coming back to an empty glass that has had neat absinthe in it and give it a sniff…) If this is going out at the old Parisienne price of about £38–40 then it could be game-changing.

* Colour is one thing that never passes through distillation—any spirit is colourless as it comes off the still. Whisky is only brown because of the years it spends in contact with wood after distillation. Absinthe is made by taking an alcoholic spirit and soaking a blend of plants in it; then the spirit is redistilled, taking the flavours with it. In this respect the process is exactly like that of making gin. But traditional green absinthe then macerates further botanicals in the spirit after this stage, hence the colour.

** I assume it also offers some thermal protection, because in my last interview George was saying that it was temperature variation as well as light that damaged natural colouring in absinthe.

*** For the record, I tried all the samples with a ratio of one part absinthe to 2½ parts water.

**** The label says there are nine herbs and spices involved, but only reveals four—Grand Wormwood, fennel, green anise and star anise. (The website adds hyssop and coriander seed.) The label for the Blanche only says that it uses more fennel than a typical verte, though the website elaborates that there are 11 botanicals—the same ones as for the verte but adding mint and lemon balm.

Kocktails for Kettner's Kabaret

Left to right, Green Fairy, Herr Collins, Perfectly Marvellous and Wilkommen

Tomorrow sees a special event in London, a collaboration between myself and Kettner’s, a long-established restaurant in Soho. This establishment dates back to 1867 and in its time has been a favourite haunt of Oscar Wilde, Bing Crosby and Agatha Christie. It was also where Edward VII used to come for assignations with Lillie Langtry—allegedly there is still a secret tunnel from the Palace Theatre next door where she was performing!

In those days restaurants did a lot more private dining and Kettner’s has two floors of rather sumptuous rooms: for this occasion we are taking over the whole lot of them and putting on a 1920s-themed event, with different things going on in different rooms. Like the Candlelight Club there will be a live band and DJ playing period jazz, plus complimentary swing dance lessons, but in another room there will also be a bill of cabaret acts, plus a vintage photo studio in another room and an absinthe bar in yet another, dispensing samples from the house of Pernod. We also have Oli Hambling, a genius at close-up magic, drifting through the venue amazing and delighting all. And because Kettner’s is, of course, a restaurant, there is also a fine dining option, with a special Germanic five-course menu plus exclusive cabaret performances for diners.

Joel Grey in Bob Fosse's 1972 film version of Cabaret

In keeping with the cabaret element, we’re giving the whole thing a Weimar Berlin theme and calling it Herr Kettner’s Kabaret. Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome…

Of course there will be cocktails too, devised by Brendan, Kettner’s bar manager. I’ve got hold of the recipes, so I thought I would try them out at home and see what we can expect tomorrow. (I only have a list of ingredients and proportions so in terms of the actual presentation, I’m just guessing!)

Wilkommen
15ml St Germain elderflower liqueur
5ml Funkin raspberry purée
110ml Prosecco

I didn’t have any of the Funkin purée to hand so I just puréed some raspberries (which is why it looks a bit bitty in the photo). This is a delicately balanced drink, with the elderflower and raspberry flavours clear but subtle, and they complement each other perfectly, lending the Prosecco backdrop both a floral layer and a tangy fruit layer, without adding a cloying sweetness. In fact, coming back to this drink from the others I was struck by the earthiness of the combination. If I had to choose a favourite from this collection it would probably be this one—and I believe that this is the welcome cocktail that everyone gets free on arrival, so that is just as well.

Come and unleash your inner Dietrich

Perfectly Marvellous
35ml Plymouth gin
15ml Crème de fraise de bois
50ml passion fruit juice
25ml grapefruit juice

Like the last one, this is named after a song in Cabaret. And it also presents another unexpected pairing, with the intense florality of the passion fruit juice cut through by the bitterness of the grapefruit, plus the buzz of strawberry fruit. In fact it’s striking how much passion fruit and strawberry have in common—once the idea is put into your head you can almost smell strawberries before you add any of the liqueur to the passion fruit juice. The gin itself takes a back seat, providing the engine rather than asserting its character. Again, it’s not heavily sweet like many fruity cocktails, but refreshingly dry, probably helped by the crispness of the grapefruit.

The Green Fairy

10ml Pernod absinthe
10ml Cartron crème de pêche
110ml Prosecco

Elsewhere I’ve seen a recipe that specifies an absinthe-soaked sugar cube. I’ve tried it both ways and to my palate the sugar isn’t necessary, but then I don’t have a terribly sweet tooth. But, as with a classic Champagne Cocktail, it is fun having the sugar cube fizzing away at the bottom of the glass. This is another interesting combo, partnering peach flavours (as in the Bellini cocktail—peach and Prosecco) with absinthe, with its strong anise flavour plus the earthy wormwood and herbaceous fennel. An interesting discovery that works very well.

Herr Collins
40ml Bourbon
25ml lemon juice
15ml gomme syrup
100ml soda water

A classic bourbon Collins (also known as a Colonel Collins), essentially a whiskey sour lengthened with soda water. The muscular woodiness* of the bourbon stands shoulder to shoulder with that classic cocktail building block of lemon and sugar combined, adding an appetising sweet-and-sour body.

After I took the photo, I heard that an extra cocktail had been added, known as the Green Beast.

The Green Beast
1 part Pernod absinthe
1 part simple syrup (here given as equal parts sugar and water)
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice
4 parts water
Build in a glass in order. Add ice and garnish with four thin slices of cucumber.

As the name suggests it is another absinthe-infused potion, this time showcasing the combination of Pernod absinthe, lime and cucumber. Absinthe itself can be a pretty complex drink—twice now I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge on the Spirits Business Absinthe Masters panel, and some examples unfold almost like a walk through the woods, with rooty notes followed by meadow flowers, then moss, then citrus.** So making cocktails from absinthe can enable you to pull out any of these different elements. Here the lime highlights fruit notes and adds body from the tartness combined with sweetness from the sugar, while the cucumber gives a juicy, rather floral emphasis. Not really very bestial, though—actually quite refreshing.

* OK, so something can't logically be muscular and woody at the same time but you know what I mean.
** All right, I don’t know where this wood is that combines all these things…

La Fée: A flight of the Green Fairy

Our last mass blind tasting of absinthe consisted simply of what we had to hand, and inevitably missed out some likely contenders from the current marketplace. We’re in the process of acquiring samples of drinks that really should be considered—then we’ll probably add the top three from last time and stage another blind tasting.

In the meantime, George Rowley, the man behind La Fée has sent us a flight of his whole range to taste: the original La Fée, now called Parisienne; the Bohemian Czech-style; the two X•S “ultra-premium” absinthes, both Française and Suisse versions; and NV, a relatively new, lower-strength product.

George Rowley occupies a unique position in the modern history of absinthe. He was the first to bring an absinthe back to the UK, in the form of Hill’s, a bitter Czech concoction. I was one of many who spotted a bottle of Hill’s (in my case in Prague) and thought, “Wow, real absinthe”—then, after tasting it, thought,  “Is that what all the fuss was about?” Today George freely admits that he was effectively duped by creator Radomil Hill into believing it was a traditional Bohemian drink, whereas in fact it had just been made up.

But it caught on, and suddenly there was rush of imitators. George’s response was to give up on Hill’s and try to find a way to recreate real absinthe, as would have been drunk in the heyday of the Belle Epoque. He enlisted the help of Marie-Claude Delahaye, proprietor of the Musée de l'Absinthe in Auvers-sur-Oise, and the result was La Fée, the product that is now La Fée Parisienne.

George admits that for a long time his company has been deliberately cagey about what they do and how their products are made—in response to experiences of having his ideas stolen. The absinthe world is indeed extraordinarily political, filled with bitching, mud-slinging and some dogmatic beliefs in what absinthe is and should be. In the few years that I have been interested in this beverage I have heard rumours from more than one source that La Fée is concocted from neutral alcohol, flavouring essences (like aromatherapy oils) and green dye, and is not really distilled at all (even though the label and website state that it is). If you look at a forum like that run by the US Wormwood Society, you could believe that George is the Devil incarnate, a betrayer of the true spirit of absinthe by tricking consumers into believing that a mass-produced cipher is the real thing (in the same way that I myself was initially turned off absinthe by my experience with Hill’s and similar Czech “fauxsinthes”).

To George these attacks are deliberate campaigns of misinformation by his competitors. Who knows? Perhaps they are. But I also suspect that his policy of tight-lippedness has created an information vacuum that is easily filled with rumour.* At this point I have to admit that what you are reading is a revised version of the original post: I emailed George some questions at the time about his range and, when I received no reply, wasn’t entirely surprised—given the reputation for secrecy. But I should really have tried harder to get in touch because, after I posted, George was quick to respond. (It turns out my original email was diverted into a spam folder and never read.) And in fact he was keen to set up a meeting to tell his side of the story.

So two weeks ago DBS and I sat down with him and his Business Development Manager Oscar Dodd. He’s still pretty defensive and controlling, and wouldn’t let me record the interview. (“I don’t like microphones,” he said, eyeing mine suspiciously.) But we were given some interesting details about his products that I’ve never heard or read before.

The technique of making an “absinthe” from a cold mix of alcohol and essential oils is pretty common at the lower end of the market, but George insists La Fée is not and has never been made that way. La Fée Parisienne is fully distilled; a herb bill that includes Grand Wormwood is macerated in sugar beet alcohol, then comes off the still at 78% ABV, before being diluted down to 68% with demineralised water. It used to be made at Suprex near Paris but is now made by Cherry Rocher near Lyons, where they have been distilling since 1705, mostly making fruit liqueurs. The use of beet alcohol is apparently historically authentic—after the devastation of Europe’s vines by the phylloxera insect, grape alcohol was too hard to come by. Oscar also says that they like the mouthfeel.

A bottle of Parisienne with an

absinthe spoon. If it were viable

George Rowley would like every

bottle to come with one, to

encourage absinthe to be drunk

diluted rather than neat

The La Fée website describes the development of Parisienne as a move to “revive the concept of ‘real absinthe’ of impeccable provenance, faithful to the original recipes and method of distillation”. But of course there is one major sticking point here: the colour. The reason verte absinthe is traditionally green is that some of the botanicals don’t distil well, so they are macerated after distillation, leaving a green colour from the chlorophyll. (Colour doesn’t pass through distillation, so any spirit that is coloured has had something done to it after the distillation process.) La Fée Parisienne, on the other hand, is coloured artificially: they are open about this, but then going into the American market they are obliged to declare artificial colours on the label anyway. There are plenty of other modern absinthes that are coloured this way, including Pernod and Absente, two of La Fée's main rivals. But there are very many modern absinthes, admittedly many of which are perhaps aimed at a more rarefied market, that are coloured in the traditional way.


George is frustrated by all the attacks on La Fée’s use of artificial colour. Parisienne is a mass-market product: he set out to make a “solid”, “robust” absinthe (as opposed to a “refined” one), of a kind that might have been drunk by the mass market 100 years ago. The problem is that not only is there more regulation today but he feels customers have changed too. “The average consumer does expect a product to be consistent. Chlorophyll-based colouring is both light-prone and heat-prone—no matter how dark the bottle it will still be heat-prone. Our product is shipped to 38 countries worldwide, in a variety of climatic conditions: this is the only way we can maintain consistency of colour from batch to batch. We do regularly review our processes to see if there is a way to get the colour qualities we want naturally—most recently six months ago—but so far it has not been possible.” George acknowledges that some consumers actually like the batch-to-batch variations that you get with hand-crafted absinthes, but Parisienne is aimed at a “broader market” that requires stable colour—and is probably not that keen on the look of naturally coloured absinthe anyway. 

“In best conscience,” he says, “it’s the best quality we can do. We’re passionate about it and we try really hard to define a quality portfolio that meets today’s market requirements.”

That market is a complex one, with a broad range of styles, qualities and production processes all setting up shop under the banner of “absinthe”. Some producers and consumers are concerned with nothing but historical authenticity at any cost, others with absolute quality, while some makers want something aimed at modern tastebuds, with no qualms about tradition, but that borrows from absinthe’s mystique. Personally I don’t have a problem with any of these approaches, as long as there is honesty about what is on offer: it’s a shame if a new customer tastes a mediocre or completely inauthentic “absinthe” and comes away believing that that is as good as absinthe gets.

But absinthe is one of those areas, like hi-fi, where those who are most vocal tend to be the hardcore enthusiasts. While it may be commercially meaningless to compare a £20,000 audiophile hi-fi—using vintage valves, rare hardwoods chosen for their harmonic character, handwoven asymmetrically braided silver-plated cables and the whole thing floating on a cushion of air—with a sub-£100 boom box, hi-fi nerds do like to bond in their derision of mass-market products. So it can be with absinthe. 

George Rowley believes that mass-market absinthe products not only service the mass market but also sustain the rarefied markets too. “The industry isn’t going to be here unless you have products aimed at the bar environment,” he says. “Boutique products may accept colour variations as natural but without the mainstream market you will not have a boutique market. The only reason you have all these forums is because of the work Marie-Claude Delahaye** and I did to bring the product back.” Doubtless forums like the Wormwood Society would take issue with this statement, and in any case absinthe never truly went away but continued to be produced and drunk in Spain all through the Dark Ages between the ban and the revival. George does seem pretty miffed for not getting more credit for his undoubted role in modern absinthe history, but a consumer will always choose from what is available now, and you can’t expect to rest on your laurels. Meanwhile, Lucid absinthe, made in France, manages to command some 60% of the US market—without the use of artificial colour. In fairness, Lucid is about £55 a bottle in the UK while La Fée Parisienne can be had for about £37. As George himself says at one point, “you can tell by the price point how something is made”, and ultimately you pays your money and takes your choice.

So what does it actually taste like?

La Fée Parisienne is a vivid green and louches (goes cloudy and paler) when you add water. Neat it has strong anise and fennel aromas, plus the earthy, rooty smell of wormwood. There’s a hint of some dry spice, almost like cumin, too. Add water and the wormwood element almost overpowers the anise. It’s like horseradish without the heat. On the palate it is basically wormwood plus a strong liquorice element. It’s a pleasant enough drink, though rather one-dimensional and a bit rough.

Last February I was asked to be a judge in the Absinthe Masters awards, organised by The Spirits Business magazine. Overall the La Fée portfolio did quite well—on the company’s website you can see a curious photo of me looming blurrily through a tasting glass—but while Parisienne received a silver medal for its packaging, in the actual blind tasting it actually scored the lowest marks of all the absinthes present. This is not to say it is terrible, but it was in the company of some very strong contenders. We instantly recognised it, not least from its garish colour (all the others were, I would say, coloured naturally rather than dyed, having muted olivey hues), and its simplistic taste also stood out in a far more sophisticated field.

The spurious, and rather pointless, “Czech fire ritual”

If entering La Fée Parisienne in that competition seemed an odd decision, inventing La Fée Bohemian at all seems even odder to me. Today George distances himself from the Hill’s days, admits that the “Bohemian” absinth style was a 1980s confection and that  the “Czech fire ritual”—where you soak a sugar cube in absinthe and set fire to it before stirring it into your drink—was just made up as a marketing gimmick. Yet La Fée Bohemian is an attempt to get to the heart of this style, which he defines as having little or none of the aniseed that is conventionally used in verte styles to balance the bitterness of the wormwood, and favouring mint instead. George admits that this is a product born not of passion but a desire to service a market he had more or less inadvertently created with Hill’s. “It’s a nod to the style that made it happen,” he says. “It broadens the market.” Apparently it’s very popular in Australia.

La Fée Bohemian is a synthetic blue-green, reminding me of some window cleaning fluid that I’ve got in the cupboard. Neat it has a sweetish, medicinal smell with a whiff of citrus and a bit of fennel; overall much less of a smell than the Parisienne. Add water and I am reminded of the smell of Humbrol enamel paints from my youth painting Airfix models. It is a resinous, turpentine smell. On the palate it tastes of… well, not much at all, to be honest. Slightly astringent, elements of orange and cinnamon. Crude, bitter aftertaste that lingers unwelcomely.

If this all seems rather damning, hold your horses. We haven’t got to the good stuff yet. At the Absinthe Masters blind tasting there were a couple of categories—“Coloured Amer” and “Non-Coloured Amer”—which confused us. We cautiously guessed that “amer” might be a polite name for some of the foully bitter East European offerings, but it turned out to be a (frankly little-used) EU category that allows a higher thujone*** level than “absinthe”. In each case there was just one entry, and we were heartily impressed. In fact we all agreed the entry for the Coloured Amer was the best product of the whole competition. This turned out to be La Fée X•S Française, George’s “Ultra Premium” verte product. The Non-Coloured Amer was his La Fée X•S Suisse bleu. These are lovingly batch-distilled from grape alcohol. Officially it’s a secret who makes these products—and George himself is unable to comment for contractual reasons—but it’s a pretty open secret that the Française is made for him by François Guy in Pontarlier and the Suisse by Claude-Alain Bugnon in Couvet.

In appearance these two absinthes are pretty similar—both a pale, jade green, but the Suisse is whiter, a rather beautiful colour; to call it opaline is hardly original but it does remind me almost of a fire opal, as if there are flashes of coloured fire within its milkiness. The nose is sweet, almost candied, until you encounter a sour-rubber bloom, but also fresh in a sappy, menthol sort of way. It’s worth lingering over the nose, as new things keep emerging. I remember thinking at the Absinthe Masters that some of the bouquets were like a walk in the woods, with new smells cropping up all along, ferns and bracken here, flinty soil there, alpine wildflowers there. Even an empty glass that has held the neat absinthe has a smell that continues to evolve.

The palate again strikes you as quite sweet initially, perhaps from the anise which is pronounced. I certainly feel there is no need to sugar this drink. A slightly powdery feeling in the mouth, the warmth of the alcohol balancing with the herbal freshness and the sweet-dry mouthfeel, makes for a surprising complex sensation, with that characteristic nose, that I can only describe as over-ripe buttercups or marigolds, that bleu styles seem to me to have.

The Française has a vinous whiff neat, and seems initially similar to the Suisse but sharper, more peppery on the nose and a greener colour—but a soft, stoney, muted, greyish green, as opposed to the electric washing-up-liquid green of the standard La Fée Parisienne. The palate is sterner, more astringent, seemingly more alcoholic than the Suisse (indeed it is, 68% as compared to the Suisse’s 53%). Then there is that earthy wormwood note. The Suisse is definitely softer, sweeter and more approachable, but both have impressive poise, balance and sophistication. Especially compared to many other “absinthes”, they are both smooth and complex.

At a time when respectable producers are trying to play down the significance of thujone and emphasising that it is not some hallucinogen, why do the X•S products make such a big deal about being amers? “To go beyond premium, you have to do something different,” George explains. “We felt the only way to lift it was to switch into wine spirit and do it as an amer, a category that allows you to go much heavier on the central ingredients. But you have to be all the more creative in striking a balance. The Francaise is more complicated to make than the Suisse—the different ingredients are distilled individually then recombined—but until recently there were actually two types of Suisse, one being for the French market because the French regulate the amount of fenchone which is found in fennel.”

Interestingly La Fée NV comes in an identical 

bottle to SW4, “The Gin of Champions”…

Of course there is a price for all this: the X•S products will cost you over £80 for 70cl****. Moreover, the higher thujone content is still illegal in some markets, such as the US and Canada. How does this compare with the competition? Our favourite in the “Coloured Spirit” category of the Absinthe Masters was Studer Original Swiss Absinth, which is a verte from Switzerland, though, I seem to recall, it’s not really very green at all. As far as I can tell, it isn’t commercially available in the UK right now. Gold gongs went to Enigma Verte (£40ish) and Libertine (about the same). In the Non-Coloured Spirit arena, the top dog was Blanche de Fougerolles (about 50 Euros—not sure if you can buy it in Blighty either) followed by Enigma Blanche (confusingly, now apparently the same product—at the time of the tasting they would not tell us what the samples were, so I’m going by the write-up in The Spirits Business).

But there is one more product in the La Fée portfolio, named NV (not “non vintage” but meant to stand for “envy”—the green-eyed monster, geddit?—and intended to be “textable”, which gives you an idea of whom it is aimed at). It is bottled at 38% and meant to be drunk simply on the rocks (and engineered to louche in the presence of ice). I imagine its lower intensity might also make it useful in cocktails. It’s a pleasant, approachable drink, but doesn’t have much in common with absinthe. I can’t detect any wormwood (though I gather it is in there): there’s plenty of anise and that warm, dark, sweetness from liquorice, plus something chocolatey. The empty glass smelled almost as if it had actually contained crème de cacao. Of all five products this was actually DBS’s favourite—though he did recently conclude that he probably prefers pastis to absinthe.

“While Parisienne is intended as an authentic recreation,” George explains, “with NV we are more doing our own thing. It has all the primary core ingredients but is an accessible absinthe aimed more at the modern palate.” The key idea was to create something with a lower ABV, partly to make it more affordable to 18–21 year olds and partly to produce something intended to be drunk neat, making it more appropriate for bar environments where there is little scope for education about how higher ABV products should be served. So, cheaper and more appealing to inexperienced palates—a sort of My First Absinthe? “The whole category will only grow if you have entry products like this,” George insists. “NV is the fastest growing product in the portfolio.”

There actually used to be a 45% ABV version of Parisienne but it was unstable at that low alcohol level and there were problems with the anise crystallising out. Fearing it was damaging the brand image of the main product, La Fée pulled it. NV has taken four years to develop. It is made with an intense distillation of botanicals and this “concentrate” is then cut with water and grain alcohol to arrive at the bottling strength.

You get the impression that George Rowley is genuinely proud of the original La Fée product, now Parisienne, and smarts when absinthe mavens slag it off. It’s as if he made the X•S products just to show that he can forge a top-notch artisanal beverage if he wants to, but isn’t much enthused about trying to bring such high-maintenance items to the world. Instead, with Bohemian (a product that even the La Fée website seems to suggest is best just for setting fire to) and the youth-oriented NV his focus is on finding groups of people who basically aren’t drawn to absinthe, and creating an absinthe for them. Will this strategy later bring them to “real” absinthe? Watch this space.

As for the basic Parisienne, it’s a simple drink that’s not offensive but it falls way short of what absinthe can be—for a taste of that, try the X•S products. Although you’ll sadly need a second mortgage.

* When I wondered out loud on the Wormwood Society forum why there were so many rumours that La Fée was an oil mix, the reply of Brian Robinson, one of the moderators, was "Because it tastes like it is?" You be the judge.
** Marie-Claude Delahaye is a genuine authority, and most absinthe manufacturers I speak to consider her such. However, La Fée's emphasis on her endorsement of their product should be tempered with the fact that she is also a co-owner of the brand,
*** Thujone comes from the wormwood. You will hear hushed discussions on the internet about how this chemical is the element in absinthe that gives you hallucinations and drives you mad; in truth in high doses it is harmful, but you would have to drink so much absinthe that the alcohol would get you first. I am one who was mug enough to buy a bottle of King of Spirits Gold, which boasts a thujone content of 100 parts per million (ten times the EU limit for regular absinthe), and I can vouch that it has no psychoactive properties.

**** This was a cause of some outrage among absinthe enthusiasts when these products were released, the suggestion being—why pay £80 for the Suisse when La Clandestine, made by the same man at the same distillery, can be found for around £40? Of course it's not the same product, and there are reasons why properly-made absinthe will always be pricey, partly because of the elaborate process and partly because the high ABV means higher duty. But there are plenty of absinthes out there that are basically made in a vat from industrial essences, bulk alcohol and some dye, but which slap on a high price tag because they are calling it absinthe. George Rowley himself has played an interesting role in this: because his products were the first on the market he pretty much set the benchmark. The historical section on the La Fée website notes that when setting the price of the first product they had to take into account that “absinthe would clearly command a premium, owing to the complexities of the many herbs and spices which are used in the distillation process”; but the primary concern seems to have been that “if [the price] was too low, the elements which make absinthe special would evaporate as it became the next source of cheap alcohol on the street”.