Absinthe Gets More Specific

It was absinthe expert Ted Breaux who gave the U.S. its first legal absinthe in nearly 100 years when he helped develop, with Viridian Spirits, the formula for Lucid Absinthe Supérieure, the by-now-familiar black bottle with the cats eyes on the front.  

You'd think that after getting a bottle of the green stuff on the market, Breaux would be satisfied. But no. He's only just begun. He's creating an absinthe line. Breaux, and Viridian Spirit’s Jared Gurfein are teaming up again to bring three new absinthes to the United States this summer: Jade C. F. Berger, Jade Esprit Edouard, and Jade 1901. 

All three have been available in Europe since 2005, and are replications of original 19th century brands apparently owned by Breaux, perhaps the foremost contemporary expert on absinthe in the world. "I set out to resurrect these exemplary original pre-ban absinthes after watching the industry clutter the European market with products that were big on claims and woefully short on historical accuracy and quality," said Breaux in a press release.

Jade C. F. Berger is billed as "an accurate recreation of the original C. F. Berger absinthe verte, originally produced by the distillery of C. F. Berger in Couvet, Switzerland. Characteristic of the original Swiss style, it was considered one of the premier absinthes of the 19th century, and is characterized by a bold fragrant scent, a full-bodied, rounded mouthfeel, and distinct herbal notes that linger on the palate."

Jade Esprit Edouard is called "a faithful reproduction of one of the most famous and highly regarded Belle Époque absinthes. A century later the demise of the original, Breaux examined perfectly preserved examples of the renowned spirit to develop a contemporary recipe that captures the original’s delicate tint, refined texture, and exquisitely smooth flavor."

Jade 1901 is "a tribute to the best known and most widely sampled pre-ban absinthe, as it was produced circa 1901, the year in which the original distillery in Pontarlier was virtually destroyed by fire. Jade 1901 is a classic absinthe, balanced and crisp, with an appetizing herbal aroma and a smooth, lingering aftertaste."

The suggested retail prices for the three spirits are $110. No word yet on the look of the labels. No more animal eyes, OK, guy?

The Aughts in Cocktails

Confronted regularly with so many new cocktail creations, as I have been over the past few years, I've often fell to musing, "Which of these libations are for the ages?" It's easy enough to decide if something is a good-tasting cocktail or not; that can be ascertained on the spot. But that doesn't necessarily equal staying power. Are we currently sipping, unknowingly, what will be considered by future generations to be our Martini, our Manhattan, our great contribution to the bar?

I had the opportunity to dwell on this matter in a very public way recently, writing a list of lasting libations for the Dec. 30 edition of the New York Times. Some of the entries—Audrey Saunders' Gin-Gin Mule, Don Lee's Benton's Old Fashioned, Phil Ward's Oaxaca Old Fashioned—were easy choices. I had long regarded them as modern classics which will have their place in coming histories of 21st-century drinking, not only because they are great drink in and of themselves, but because the embodied and/or kicked off significant mixology trends. Others I had originally thought to included—Salvatore Calabrese's Breakfast Martini and Julio Barmejo's Tommy's Margarita—I was forced to nix when I discovered from their authors that they were, in fact, created in the '90s, not the '00s. To back up my conclusions, I consulted with a couple dozen cocktails authorities on the East and West Coasts, as well as London.

Here's the article:

A Decade of Invention, and Reinvention

By ROBERT SIMONSON

WHEN you hoist a leg over a barstool these days, you’re as likely to find Tom Edison as a Tom Collins. Light bulbs have been popping up behind the bar, with more cocktails developed in the last 10 years than probably any decade since Prohibition. Some of them have emerged as modern classics, standing out not only as culinary creations, but also as signposts of the decade’s most significant mixology trends.

GIN-GIN MULE This Audrey Saunders invention is often the first thing that cocktail pros mention when asked about new classics. “Bartenders all over the world tend to know the Gin-Gin Mule,” said Gary Regan, author of several cocktail books, including the recent “Bartender’s Gin Compendium.” Ms. Saunders — a leading light in darkened bars — created it before founding her SoHo bar, Pegu Club. Essentially a gin-based version of the ginger-minty Moscow Mule — one of the few vodka cocktails still granted respect by the avant-garde — the drink was a symbol both of the cocktail crowd’s enthusiastic reclamation of gin and its curled-lip repudiation of vodka. (Gin is also the base of Ms. Sauders’s Earl Grey MarTEAni, an early and influential example of the tea-infusion trend.) By decade’s end, the Gin-Gin Mule could be found on cocktail menus across the country — as could gin.

BENTON’S OLD-FASHIONED Don Lee, formerly of PDT in the East Village, credits Eben Freeman, the mad-scientist mixologist of the recently demised Tailor, with opening his eyes to “fat washing” liquor. But it was this instantly cultish concoction, which infuses bourbon with Allan Benton’s Tennessee bacon, that revved up interest in that technique, which melds flesh and firewater. Created by Mr. Lee in 2007 at PDT, it perhaps best epitomizes the advent of savory cocktails, which draw herbs, spices and vegetables, including chilies, into the world within the glass.

OAXACA OLD-FASHIONED Tequila didn’t play much of a role in the early years of the cocktail renaissance. And mezcal, tequila’s rough-hewn relation, had none at all. Both are used instead of bourbon or rye in this south-of-the-border twist on the Old-Fashioned, with terroir-specific agave syrup instead of sugar. Invented in 2007 by the tequila specialist Philip Ward at Death & Co. in the East Village, this drink quickly appeared on menus across the country and became a harbinger of the Mexican spirits’ ascendancy. It’s now just one of many tequila- and mezcal-based drinks at Mr. Ward’s bar Mayahuel.

RED HOOK COCKTAIL Rye whiskey roared back in the last decade after decades in eclipse. With it came new homages to pre-Prohibition rye-based cocktails like the Manhattan and the Brooklyn. This mix of rye, sweet vermouth and maraschino liqueur, created by the former Milk & Honey bartender Enzo Errico, inspired at least a dozen more sub-riffs by other ardent cocktail classicists, with almost all the drinks named after Brooklyn neighborhoods, including the Greenpoint (which uses Chartreuse), the Cobble Hill (Amaro Montenegro and cucumber slices) and the Bensonhurst (maraschino liqueur and Cynar). New spins on the Old-Fashioned (see above) were nearly as common.

ST-GERMAIN COCKTAIL If you didn’t notice that, starting in 2007, St-Germain was in about half of the new drinks you were cradling, you just weren’t paying attention. The elderflower-based elixir with the sui generis floral flavor almost single-handedly invigorated the moribund liqueur category. Suddenly semi-forgotten potions like Drambuie, Cherry Heering and Chartreuse (the current mixer of the moment) were being dusted off and tarted up. And every new liqueur wanted to be as big as St-Germain when it grew up. A list of new St-Germain cocktails could fill a few columns, but the mix of the liqueur, Champagne and sparkling water known as the St-Germain cocktail was perhaps the most common, mixed by high-end watering holes like Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco and the Zig Zag Café in Seattle. Unusually, the recipe came not from a bartender’s brain, but the company’s marketing department. “It doesn’t happen that often that a drink that comes from a manufacturer gets so well received,” said Ann R. Tuennerman, founder of the Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans.

ABSINTHE DRIP When a liquor that has been unavailable for nine decades hits the shelves again, it creates a stir. For many cocktail mavens, absinthe, the Victorians’ embalmer of choice, was the missing piece to so many liquid puzzles. Bottles began reappearing on our shores in 2007, after it was realized that a nearly century-old ban had actually been overturned decades ago. By the end of the Bush administration, absinthe was even being made in America, like St. George from California and Trillium from Oregon. Soon, it was not unusual to find an absinthe water drip at the end of the bar, slowly clouding a glass of the green liquid with dissolved sugar, the classic way to drink absinthe. It would only be old hat if you happened to be Degas.

BARTENDER’S CHOICE Ten years ago, the suggestion that a barkeep name your poison would have been greeted with a withering fisheye. But “Bartender’s Choice” is an option seen on cocktail menus from the Varnish in Los Angeles to the Violet Hour in Chicago to any of Sasha Petraske’s joints in New York. Bartenders nationwide have raised their level of skill and scholarship. Customers have followed them with an increased sense of adventure and a willingness to swallow whatever they dish up.

I Know What You're Asking

You're asking yourself, "What's the absinthe of the month?"

Well, friend, the Absinthe Museum of America, located in New Orleans, has the answer for you. It is Lucid Absinthe Supérieure.

The museum plans to announced a new "absinthe of the month" every month. The way this liquor category has exploded in the last 12 months, I actually think they can keep this up for at least three or four years and never run out of absinthe brands. (Whether people will care in three or four years is another matter.)

Lucid, of course, was the first genuine absinthe out of the gate when the green stuff became legal in the United States in 95 years.

"Mad Men" and Drinking, Part IV

"Mad Men," having established early on in the first season that its character drink copiously, and free of care, litters latter episodes with less alcohol. Still, the references to booze and cocktails get increasingly more detailed and specific.

The character of ambitious secretary Peggy Olsen shows her sophistication in Episode 11 by ordering a Brandy Alexander—though her reaction that it's not as sweet as it should be perhaps shows she does not drink them as often as she boasts. The cocktail is appropriate. A young Brooklyn girl like Peggy would probably go for a classic "girl's drink" like the Brandy Alexander, and they did remain popular in the 1950s and 1960s. (The Beatles drank a lot of them.) Peggy's date, meanwhile, orders a nice glass of Reingold beer.

Later in the episode, Peggy is seen at home having a glass of red wine. It's Chianti, as we can tell by the pot-bellied bottle bound in straw casing. These bottles of cheap Italian vino were ubiquitous at the time. (They would become a laughable cliche, code for bad red wine, in the years to come and, then, in the 21st century, be reborn as retro hip.) It's likely that the average New Yorker would not have access to a great variety of fine wine in 1960. Chianti was an available option, and a cheap one. Peggy only makes $35 a week.

Episode 12 is entitled "Nixon vs. Kennedy," and its centerpiece is an office party in which the staff watches the election returns and generally behaves badly. These office antics are, of course, fueled by liquor. The moment the bosses are on the elevator, the workers push out a cart topped with many bottles, included a generically labeled "Vodka" bottle that the "Mad Men" art department keeps dragging out. The booze, however, quickly runs out, and the executives ask office manager Joan Holloway what stores lie in the supply closet. Actually, they ask, "What do we have too much of?" She replies, "Rum, Creme de Menthe."

Eeesh. Well, they take what they can get and it all goes into a water cooler dispensing vile green elixir.

It's no surprise that there's a lot of rum left in the supply closet. The tiki drink craze was still in full force in 1960 (though waning), so rum would be around, but the Sterling Cooper men are basically either Martini or Whiskey drinkers, with the lightweights going for beer and sometimes vodka. They don't go for Navy Grogs or Zombies.

At one point, copywriter Paul says he has a bottle of absinthe stashed in his office. It's acknowledged that it's illegal by one character. Still, it's highly unlikely that Paul would have gotten his hands of some absinthe, 45 years after it was banned in the U.S. In fact, it's doubtful that anyone in the office would have even remembered what it was, any more than they would have been going around ordering Old Tom Gin and Brandy Crustas. This could be chalked up to the fact that Paul is a would-be writer and more than a little pretentious. Or—my guess—the writers of "Mad Men" had been reading too much about the absinthe rebirth and were desperate to sneak in a reference to the old alcohol.

One last note: In Episode 10, Roger Sterling mentions an offer to take mistress Joan to The Colony. I love how dedicated "Mad Men" is to evoking the glory restaurants of New York's past (place both still living and dead). So far, characters have made visits to the Four Seasons, Rattazzi's, P.J. Clarke's and Toots Shor. So far, no one's mentioned The Stork Club, which is probably for the best; the famed nitespot was past its prime by 1960.

An Unlikely Success

This recipe stopped me in my tracks as I was paging through my Beverage Alcohol Resource manual, and not just because the name of the drink is The Dreamy Dorini Smoky Martini—though that name is enough to give one pause.

I was surprised to find it, one, because it's a vodka cocktail and B.A.R. chieftains are not known for their endorsement of vodka, and, two, it's the creation of Pegu Club's Audrey Saunders, another non-vodka lover. With those twin endorsements, I felt I had to give it a spin. Here's the formula:

1/2 oz. Laphroaig 10-year Scotch or other peaty Scotch
2 oz. Vodka
2-3 drops Pernod.

Shake well over ice. Serve up in Martini glass with lemon twist.

Mighty particular on her scotch, isn't Audrey? Well, I didn't happen to have Laphroaig on hand. Truth to tell, I usually don't have more than two single malt scotches on hand at any given time. A bar, I ain't. So I used one of my favorites, Cragganmore, which is a Speyside, not an Islay like Laphroaig. So sue me. And, since the B.A.R. guide was published before there were so many absinthes on the market, I used Pernod's absinthe.

Anyway, I think Audrey has something here. You can impose any flavor on vodka, of course, and the mistake most mixologists make with the spirit is to smother it in flavors, usually fruit flavors, until you're not aware that they's liquor in the drink at all. That is not the case here. The scotch and Pernod accent the vodka, both in color and flavor. The drink is still clear, so you don't forget you have a white spirit in your hand. And the scotch and Pernod are in small enough amounts that the only suggest themselves, like a fog creeping in along the edges of an otherwise clear night.

The Absinthe Backlash Begins

It was bound to happen. You knew it. There were too many articles about the once-forbidden elixer. About 47 new brands were dropped on the market at once. Cocktail geeks wouldn't shut up about it. And then there's that clown down at Apotheke making homemade, flaming absinthe every hour on the hour. (Like there aren't enough brands to choose from already.) A liquor has to taste incredibly good to withstand that kind of publicity without inspiring contrarians like myself and, now, Eric Konigsberg at the New York Times.

Konigsberg just authored a long piece on the Green Goddess which is basically a long, hilarious slam on the booze and the trend. A sample:

Now it is legal, and so we are in the midst of what appears to be an absinthe mini-craze. But to follow the arc of this craze, like others that have come before (remember cigar bars?) is to see just how quickly something that was once illicit — and acquired notoriety because of that very illicitness — can lose its sheen of mystery and become, well, rather uncool. Once the naughty aura of the forbidden fruit is removed, all that remains is a grasp at unearned sophistication.

Konigsberg is too mean by half, and he purposely avoids talking about Absinthe's virtues. The good versions of the stuff have a complex and interesting flavor profile you won't find elsewhere, and it makes for an irreplaceable accent to many fine cocktails, including my beloved Sazerac and the wonderful Remember the Maine. But I know what he means. Absinthe is just not that good. It's begin poised to play with the big boys of booze, but it can't begin to compare with the classic, seducing, impossible-not-to-love tastes of other liquors, like scotch, bourbon, gin, or even various liqueurs and amari. Konigsberg puts it as bluntly as possible:

The first, Lucid, came in a dark bottle with cat’s eyes on it and had what Mr. Bergougnoux called a “classic absinthe taste.” It tasted like licorice.

Remember: licorice jelly beans are always the last to go.

The second absinthe, Tourment Vert, was listed on the menu as containing the maximum legal amount of thujone. It tasted like mouthwash.

I have listened to spirit experts tell me for a year that Absinthe is going to explode in the next year or so. I'm here to tell you the Absinthe trend will not explode; it will implode. Brands will appear and disappear. And the stuff will go from being the Next Big Thing to being just one more bottle in the back bar. Which is probably where it belongs. It's an interesting addition to a bar. It's not a star player. 19th century France didn't have the variety of drinks we have today. It if had, Absinthe wouldn't have been as big a deal.

As the bartender at a recently opened New York saloon that prominently features Absinthe told me, when I asked him if first-timers ordered the drink: "They do. Until they realized they don't like Absinthe. Then they order something else."