Absinthe! Absinthe!
Got a press release yesterday with this subject line:
"ABSINTHE IS FINALLY LEGAL IN BALTIMORE!!!"
My initial response:
"It's been legal for months! I had some last week at the Kitty Kat Bar!"
I read it a little more, and realized the release is technically pumping Kubler, "the first authentic Swiss Absinthe to the United States market in nearly 100 years."
Fancy fancy.
Truth be told, the American stuff will do just fine for me. It has wormwood and thujone.
But if you still want to have a taste of the Swiss stuff, Ixia is having a tasting of Kubler 7 p.m.-10 p.m. this coming Monday.
**Just got word: This event is a private, invite-only event. I'm checking to see if Ixia will stock this brand of absinthe permanently in the future.**
(Photo by Sacramento Bee)
Erik Maza is a features reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He writes for several sections of the Sun paper and contributes weekly columns on music and nightlife. He also writes and edits the Midnight Sun blog. He often covers entertainment, business, and the business of entertainment. Occasionally, he writes about Four Loko, The Block, the liquor board, and those who practice "
Comments
Oh snap, my best friend and OUR MOTHERS are going there for the green fairy. Bff's mom forwarded the aforementioned press release to us, she's a classy lady.
Posted by: Evan | March 4, 2008 12:16 PM
Sam, what's the big deal? Is the "new" absinthe all that good? If I'm not going to be laid up in some sort of victorian opium den with mindbending hallucinations, am I just better off eating the worm?
Posted by: F. Pants McFadden | March 4, 2008 2:19 PM
Thujone! You are better off getting real absinthe with "100mg thujone" (rare.. but you can find it.
These other brands are 100% hype and have an army of promoters working for them...they have virtually no thujone as the FDA ban thujone in alcohol.
Playing Pretend:
"But the biggest controversy surrounding the liquor--once dubbed "one of the worst enemies of man"--is about not its resurgence but rather its authenticity. Enthusiasts claim the thujone-free brands, which contain less than 10 parts per million (p.p.m.) of the chemical, are made with the same relatively small amounts of thujone as the old brews. But scientists wrote in the British Medical Journal that absinthe bottled before 1900 packed up to 260 p.p.m. of thujone--which may not sound like much, but consider that only 15 parts per billion of lead in drinking water is enough to scare regulators. "They are playing pretend," study co-author Wilfred Arnold says of the liquor's new cheerleaders. "It is nothing like the old stuff."
Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007 Time Magazine
November 12, 2007
Posted by: Jules | March 5, 2008 4:08 AM
Folks....get your facts straight. Go to the Wormwood Society website. They are unbiased and have real information. Kubler and Lucid are genuine absinthes with comparable thujone levels to the pre ban stuff!!
Posted by: Red | March 6, 2008 1:05 PM
Where do i get the good stuff???
Posted by: eric | March 12, 2008 9:56 AM
I love a absinthe called " Thujone Sun " from Jamaica. This one have 90mg Thujone.
Real nice drink :)
Posted by: Todd | March 28, 2008 5:14 PM
Ah, an once outlawed drink with quite a fabled history.
Maybe a little background from Wikipedia would be useful to the unacquainted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe
Posted by: GDA | March 29, 2008 9:21 AM