The Dedalus Book of Absinthe

by Baker, Phil

  ‘Your turn, my Infanta!’

  Placing one hand on her hip with a graceful curve of her arm, the Infanta lifted the pitcher rather high, then, with infallible skill, she let a very thin jet of cool water – that came out of the fowl’s beak – fall on to the lumps of sugar which slowly began to disintegrate.

  The poet, his chin almost touching the table between his two hands placed flat on it, was watching this operation very closely. The pouring Infanta was as motionless as a fountain, and Isabelle did not breathe.

  In the liquid, whose level was slowly rising, I could see a milky mist forming in swirls which eventually joined up, while a pungent smell of aniseed deliciously refreshed my nostrils.

  Twice over, by raising his hand, the master of ceremonies interrupted the fall of the liquid, which he doubtless considered too brutal or too abundant: after examining the beverage with an uneasy manner that gave way to reassurance he signalled, by a mere look, for the operation to be resumed.

  Suddenly he quivered and, with an imperative gesture, definitely stopped the flow of water, as if a single drop more might have instantly degraded the sacred potion.

  The dose of spirit is often said to be around 30 ml (according to the British Medical Journal) or one fluid ounce, according to most American authorities (an ounce being fractionally less, at 27.5 ml; the British measure 1/5 of a gill comes just between the two at 28.5 ml). If anything, this seems to err on the side of caution and to be based on the modern single spirit measure. I own an absinthe glass, of standard size and form, which is marked to take around 75ml, or a generous double, and this seems a more natural measure, given the eventual volume of diluted fluid shown in contemporary pictures of absinthe glasses in use.

  The traditional proportion of water was somewhere around five or six to one, but it varied to taste. Pernod 51 is brand named for the 5:1 ration, but 4:1 has been recommended, and La Fée recently advised between six and eight to one. One of the highest proportions has been prescribed by Barnaby Conrad, talking to an American newspaper in 1997: “one to two inches of absinthe… the proportion of absinthe to water should be about 1:2 … it should be drunk slowly. And put on period music, like Satie or Ravel, to get in the mood.” A ritual indeed, complete with a full psychic setting.

  All this fetishistic fuss about the dripping of water meant that the preparation of absinthe was not only a pleasure in itself but a decorous affair involving something like skill, in which it was possible to make mistakes. Semi-professional advice was fortunately at hand in the form of “absinthe professors”, particularly in little seedy dives, who hoped to be treated to a drink in return for their judicious advice and assistance.

  There is an odd sidelight thrown on this social aspect of the absinthe ritual by Henri Balesta, in Absinthe et Absintheurs, with its Zolaesque case histories. Amid all the horrors of his book – exaggerated, but perhaps not unfounded – there is an interesting picture of the “professors”. By late morning

  the professors of absinthe were already at their station, yes, the teachers of absinthe, for it is a science, or rather an art to drink absinthe properly, and certainly to drink it in quantity. They put themselves on the trail of the novice drinkers, teaching them to raise their elbow high and frequently, to water their absinthe artistically, and then, after the tenth little glass, with the pupil rolled under the table, the master went on to another, always drinking, always holding forth, always steady and unshakeable at his post.” [my emphasis]

  Peer-group pressure makes the novice drink, so it is important to do it properly:

  It is a solemn trial for the amateur. This is the moment to show himself, to take his place in the esteem of others, to gain the good opinion and respect of his contemporaries. Waiter, an absinthe “panachée”. Good!!!.

  What a moment for the beginner! He is going to realize the dream of two years. He raises his glass slowly, looking for the last time at the contents, then raises it to his lips. He is going to drink. He drinks. The desire is satisfied, the dream realised. Absinthe is no longer a myth to his palate. Ugh! How awful it is, says the poor devil to himself, making a face, and yet everyone drinks it. But he is being watched. Delicious, this absinthe, very novel, I have never drunk anything like it, he exclaims with a delighted expression, which is indeed against his heart and against his stomach. The second swallow goes better. The third is better yet.

  In every circle of young men one finds a veteran whose speciality is “making the absinthe”. As soon as he picks up the carafe, the conversations are suspended, the pipes go out, all eyes are on the absinthe-maker, following all the details of the operation to which he devotes himself without missing a single one. The waiter himself, hands behind his back, a four-sous-tip smile on his lips, puts on a good show and nods approvingly. The absinthe-maker, feeling himself the point of cynosure of all eyes, secretly enjoys the admiration that he inspires and strives to be worthy of it. He holds the carafe in a free and easy manner, raising it up to eye level with an elegant sweep of the arm, then he lets fall the water drop by drop into the glasses with a judicious slowness, in such a way as to gradually effect the combination of the two liquids.

  There it is, the shibboleth of the absinthe drinker: it is by the greater or lesser degree of chic with which he carries off this delicate operation that the connoisseurs can distinguish the real absinthe professional… unfortunately for the inexperienced novice. The waiter himself assists in the task of forming an opinion on the customer; he shrugs his shoulders with an air of pity and takes on the most scornful tone he can manage to murmur, “What a joker! He doesn’t even know how to make an absinthe.”

  The language of absinthe drinking opens up the modus operandi of absinthe further, and reveals more ways of preparing it. Not only did you strangle a parrot, and take a one way trip on the Charenton omnibus, and not only did you frapper and étonner and battre the absinthe. More than that, you could have a pure, an absinthe without sugar (or much less commonly without water; ‘neat’), which is not to be confused with a purée, or an absinthe with only a little water and so strong it was like soup, and particularly like purée des pois, pea soup, which was low and military slang for a thick absinthe.

  The standard or definitive absinthe was the absinthe au sucre, but there were minor variations. Une absinthe anisée was an absinthe with extra anis, while une bourgeoise or une panachée was an absinthe with extra anisette cordial. An absinthe gommée was sweetened with the addition of gomme syrup, and both the gomme and anisette additions were reckoned to make une suissesse,‘feminising’ the absinthe (a Swiss woman being sweeter than a suisse, or Swiss man). Absinthe could be sweetened with orgeat, at roughly a teaspoon of orgeat per shot of absinthe, and a Vichy was absinthe and orgeat in equal quantities, plus the usual amount of water. Absinthe plus orgeat was known in military slang as a “Bureau Arabe” (the “Arab Department”, responsible for colonial affairs) the idea being the sweet and the hard, like the iron fist in the velvet glove, or perhaps even the “nice cop/nasty cop”.

  The name of the tomate was less sinister, since it was simply a red drink made with absinthe and a few drops of grenadine, plus the usual water. An absinthe minuit, or midnight absinthe, is absinthe with white wine, while the absinthe vidangeur, or scavenger’s absinthe, is absinthe with red wine. The minuit is quite a drinkable combination, but the vidangeur is more the stuff of desperation. Toulouse-Lautrec was tragically fond of the tremblement de terre, or ‘earthquake’, which is absinthe and brandy, and another combination which could be safely given a wide berth is the Crocodile. This was one third rum, one third absinthe, and one third trois-six†, the recipe coming from a Polish anarchist in the ill-fated Paris Commune.

  Nineteenth-century French absinthe culture was not a cocktail culture, and real absinthe is not widely suitable as a cocktail drink, due to the strength of the aniseed flavour. Nonetheless absinthe cocktails were popular in 1920s England. The absinthe martini, as prepared by Anthony Patch in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The B
eautiful and the Damned, was half gin and half vermouth with a ‘dash’ or ‘spot’ of absinthe (“for a proper stimulant”), and W. J.Tarling’s Café Royal Cocktail Book of 1937 contains numerous cocktails with a dash of absinthe. Those in which it figures more substantially include the Creole (one third absinthe, two thirds sweet vermouth), the Duchess (one third Martini dry vermouth, one third martini sweet vermouth, one third absinthe), the Glad Eye (one third peppermint, two thirds absinthe), the Macaroni (one third martini sweet vermouth, two thirds absinthe) the Pick Me Up (one third cognac, one third martini dry vermouth, one third absinthe), and the Monkey Gland (two thirds dry gin, one third orange juice, two dashes absinthe, two dashes grenadine). The “Absinthe” itself is a more classical drink, and in Tarling’s book it consists of half absinthe and half water, with a dash of syrup and a dash of Angostura bitters, shaken into a cocktail glass.

  There is a more spectacular absinthe cocktail to be found in the cyber-journal Proust Said That, when the writer recalls his days of drinking absinthe in South East Asia on military service, circa 1985. Since absinthe is illegal in the USA, it is also prohibited for US service personnel elsewhere in the world.

  My first absinthe experience was in a strobe-lit, over- amplified GI bar on Okinawa. What I drank was not the ‘Green Fairy’ of the Belle Epoque but the ‘Purple Haze’ of Koza City: a dangerous mix of gin, absinthe, violet and sweet and sour that we’d drink after recon missions to wash the radio chatter out of our heads. Japan is one of the few places on earth where you can still buy absinthe over the counter, but as a US national with a top secret clearance, I was theoretically risking my job every time I ordered a drink. […]

  Different bars in the vill all served their own variations on the basic Purple Haze formula, with escalating adjectives to let you know how much absinthe was allegedly in the mix: Regular, Super, Special, Extra, etc. My friend Takeo at the Rock House Purple Haze (actual bar name) created a worst-case-scenario he called the Big Fire, a warhead-like drink crowned by a mushroom cloud of absinthe that took up two-thirds of the glass. Surprisingly tasty, extraordinarily strong, and oddly beautiful under the black lights, upstairs on Gate Two Street…

  Absinthe with Sprite or 7–Up has also had its followers, both in New Orleans and London, but it lacks the pleasures and comforts of a ritual.

  There are two classic preparations left, one with ice and one with water. Absinthe with ice was more popular in America than France, and particularly in New Orleans, where the classic absinthe frappé consisted of a jigger of absinthe poured into a glass of cracked ice. An absinthe spoon, or a special small glass with a hole in it, was then placed over the glass with a lump of sugar in the usual fashion, and water was slowly dripped on to it, frequently from a ‘fountain’ – a special tap device, sometimes mounted on an obelisk – on the bar top. Finally it was stirred with a spoon and strained. The last classic method, little practised now, is the ‘two glasses’ method described by Saintsbury and Kernahan. A small glass of absinthe is placed inside a larger empty glass, and water is slowly poured into the small glass making the liquids mix and overflow. When the absinthe has been displaced to the extent that the small glass contains only clear water, the liquid in the larger glass is ready to drink.

  The final word on the preparation of absinthe should go to ‘Valentin’, the pen name of Henri Bourette, who wrote a sonnet on the subject that was illustrated by more than one cartoonist. Valentin slowly describes the whole performance in all its exaggeratedly judicious care, ending, “Finally, to crown these unparalleled attentions / Very delicately, take the glass, and then / Throw, without hesitation, the whole lot out of the window.”

  † Included in Appendix One.

  † “Trois-six”: this was a 36 proof grape spirit, i.e. a rough brandy, as in Baudelaire’s poem ‘Une Béotie Belge’.

  Chapter Eleven

  What Does Absinthe Do?

  Before and after: a guinea pig under the fatal influence of absinthe, in a cautionary demonstration for French soldiers. Copyright Roger-Viollet.

  Ritual aside, what was all the fuss about? What does absinthe do, and how? At the heart of the absinthe legend, beyond decadence and Bohemianism and doom, is the idea that it is supposed to provide a different quality of intoxication. It is sometimes referred to, with varying degrees of imprecision, as a drug, a narcotic, or even a hallucinogen. In moderate doses it was associated with inspiration, “new views and unique feelings”, and a peculiarly ‘clear’ form of intoxication, a “euphoria without drunkenness”.

  Modern American users, often of homemade wormwood absinthe, seem to confirm this: they report that, “Besides the obvious alcohol buzz, there is a peculiar euphoric cloud – not a fuzzy, mind-numbing cloud as with other ‘narcotics’. You don’t stare at the walls; you stare beyond the walls”; there is a “euphoric feeling… not like alcohol or marijuana. You have a clarity that you don’t have with those two.” More enthusiastically still, “It brings one to a more clear concise focal point of the conscious mind, while leaving open a sort of pet door to the subconscious if you will, for thoughts and ideas to come in and at the first sip after going through the ritual preparations… all the world is poetry.”

  Those three absinthe enthusiasts – all women, curiously enough – may have a more elegant style than the Clinical Toxicology Review (the organ of the Massachussets Poison Control System), but the common denominators are clearly recognisable:

  Users noted the ‘double whammy’ of absinthe intoxication: ethanol inebriation as well as a distinctly different effect (euphoria, sense of well-being, mild visual hallucinations) attributable specifically to the wormwood. Absinthe drinking imparted a cheerful mood and sharpened sense of perception, accounting for both its attraction and the psychological dependence to [sic] its effects remarkable among chronic users.

  The intoxication is real, but people continue to argue how far it is simply due to alcohol. A journalist in Prague met a drinker who claimed that dripping tiny balls of flaming sugar into his absinthe increased absinthe’s “hallucinatory power” by raising its temperature – which is a particularly rich claim since the brand in question contains virtually no wormwood at all. Anecdotal reports on the powers of Hill’s (“produces dreams which are incredibly vivid and invariably obscene”, for example) are interesting in this light, because in effect it contains almost nothing but alcohol, which may be an underestimated substance.

  Absinthe intoxication may involve something like a placebo effect, or more precisely an ambivalent area comparable to the way that cannabis intoxication is recognised by psycho- pharmacologists to be a “learned experience”, in line with cultural expectations. Tom Hodgkinson’s charming account of absinthe intoxication falls into this area, and gives some idea of the wit that made Hill’s so popular in Britain. Your cheeks glow, says Hodgkinson, and a “laid back, giggly drunkenness takes hold”. But more than that:

  The other effect – no less important perhaps – is that by simply drinking it you can fancy yourself as a dissolute Bohemian poet in late 19th-century France, trading quips with Baudelaire before knocking off a few stanzas. You would then thrash your mistress, laughing maniacally before throwing yourself on the brass bed shouting “I want to die!”

  Heady stuff; no wonder staying in is the new going out. Hodgkinson continues:

  And if you think you start talking bollocks after a few beers, wait until you hear the unutterable nonsense you come out with after two or three absinthe cocktails. As one drinker pointed out, absinthe produces high quality bullshit of the artistic variety, while lesser drinks will only cause a lower class of rubbish to be spouted.

  Ingestion of absinthe may result in a peculiar quality of intoxication, but it also led to a peculiar and recognizable syndrome, absinthisme, which began to be noticed in the 1850s. Sufferers were confused, intellectually slow, and prone to paranoia and horrifying hallucinations. Research gained momentum after Auguste Motet’s 1859 thesis ‘On alcoholism and the poisonous eff
ects produced in man by the liqueur absinthe’, followed by the researches of Marce and Magnan. To recap from Chapter Seven: Magnan, after studying the epileptic states found in absinthe drinkers, found that while alcohol alone would make animals drunk and finally kill them, only wormwood would make them excited and then give them epileptic-type convulsions.

  Emile Lancereaux offers a grim picture of absinthism in 1880, describing how the sufferer would experience shimmering lights and terrifying hallucinations. Lancereaux’s absintheur might see bloodthirsty animals; stand on the edge of great abysses, terrified of falling; have crawling-insect-style skin irritations; hear wailing, screaming and threats; and have a generalised feeling of being insulted and persecuted (absinthe paranoia was also the subject of Yves Guyot’s 1907 monograph, L’absinthe et le délire persécuteur).

  While no one had quite discovered how absinthe produced its effects, the received opinion on absinthism by now was that it was a distinct sub-category of alcoholism, and that although the alcoholic content of absinthe was higher than almost any other drink, something else was responsible for its terrible effects. Lancereaux, as summarized in the British Lancet, “was convinced that the essential oils of absinthe and of the other ingredients of the liqueur were far more toxic than the alcohol in which they were dissolved.” More than that, “the attraction that this liqueur exercises on women even more than on men, [is] on account of the essential oils which it contains”. Lancereaux made an analogy with the wretchedness of perfume drinkers, whose taste for eau-de-cologne, lavender water, and Parma violets extract is due not just to alcohol but to “the highly toxic essential oils contained in the perfumes”; “Many of these perfume drinkers are women and some of them become addicted to morphine, heroin and cocaine.”