Taste Test: The Green Fairy

[At left, the Green Fairy by Albert Maignan]
 

I've enjoyed the taste of licorice since I was a child. Licorice, as well as Root Beer and Bubble Gum, were my favorite flavors of ice cream, which I almost invariably ordered whenever I went to Farr Better Ice Cream in my home town of Ogden, Utah. As an adult, in the U.S. Army, I traveled to Crete and I soon discovered ouzo, which also tastes like licorice, but, although I heard about absinthe while serving in West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, I didn't taste it until I was serving on Temporary Duty, in Brownsville, Texas, circa 2010. My boss invited me to go with him to a liqueur store to get a bottle and an absinthe spoon. Later, at my apartment, he showed me how to drink it with fire, water, and sugar. I've been drinking it ever since, and was lucky enough to enjoy a wide variety of absinthes in Texas and California. 

Unfortunately, it's hard to find absinthe where I currently reside, in southern Virginia. Where I can find it, there are only two brands:  Absente, and the State's own Mt. Defiance. Fortunately, I've had the privilege of residing in California and Texas, which had larger selections, so I've tasted all of the following absinthes:

 

Absente

 Grande Absente

 

Kubler

 

Le Torment Vert

 

Lucid 

Mansinthe

 

Mount Defiance

 

Pernod

 

St. George

Perhaps the most important thing I've learned about drinking absinthe, is to cut it. The first time I tasted it, a fellow U.S. Army Staff Sergeant took me to a liquor store in Brownsville, Texas, where we each purchased a bottle of absinthe. If I remember correctly, he bought a bottle of Lucid, and encouraged me to buy the gift set by Absente, which came with an absinthe glass and a sieve spoon, so that, when we arrived at my apartment, he could show me how to place the spoon across the mouth of the glass, stack sugar cubes on it, pour absinthe on them, light it on fire, douse it with cold water, and watch the louching in the bowl of the glass, between the stem and the mouth.

That was so good that, despite his warning, after he left, I tried some absinthe on the rocks. I began hallucinating. I never did that again!

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Blog post by William Mortensen Vaughan