Absinthe, the Green Muse

Absinthe has intrigued me since I heard about it while studying Rimbaud and Baudelaire in college. It's all so mysterious and decadent.

Here are the ingredients:
dried chopped wormwood (one ounce),
angelica root (one tablespoon),
hyssop (one teaspoon),
coriander seeds (half teaspoon),
caraway seeds (quarter teaspoon),
cardamon pods (one pinch),
fennel or anise seeds (one pinch),
vodka (one liter).

Of course, you just can't mix it all together and drink it. It has to be macerated, strained and distilled.



Honestly, I wouldn't care to make it.


But I would like to try it one day before I breathe my last.

It has an anise flavor and is 45 to 75 percent alcohol. You drink it with water that is poured over a sugar cube placed on a special slotted spoon. This distills the absinthe and brings out other flavors. (If it wasn't distilled your head would explode...haha, not really). The spoon rests on top of the glass of absinthe. Some glasses were made specifically for the absinthe so it could be measured. I'm fascinated by the ritual involved. It's like a twisted Japanese tea ceremony.

What are the effects? Much like alcohol but differs "...in the (alleged) 'secondary effects’, which include hallucinations, irregular eyesight sensitivity to light and colors, euphoria and a feeling of lucid inebriation."

Artists and bohemians are its most famous users.

"Oscar Wilde depicts the feeling of walking through a field of tulips when leaving a bar. He also divided the absinthe drinking into three stages: the first one is exactly like drinking any regular alcohol, at the second one people start seeing horrible scary things, and if they presume to carry on drinking the third stage begins and they see whatever they would like to see, all kinds of beautiful desirable things."

"The possibility of the ‘secondary effects’ occurrence is commonly explained by the poor quality of the ingredients used to make the drink as well as inappropriate conditions of production. It is known that in old times cheap absinthe manufacturers sometimes used poisonous chemicals such as copper sulfate and antimony chloride to fabricate the spirit, which could explain the drinkers’ mysterious dreams."


But some people say they have no other effects that are different than drinking hard liquor.


Anyone out there tried it?