Sebor Absinth Arrives for Review

We've just gotten our hands on a bottle of Sebor Absinth, a Czech absinthe we've seen before but never tried (or at least never tried in a non-blacked out in college state). They've sent us a bottle along with all sorts of paraphernalia including an absinthe spoon, pipe, and glass, and they even threw in some sugar cubes. Not too shabby.

Chances are, if you or your friends have tried/heard of absinthe before, this is the stuff - it seems to be the ubiquitous choice, and we're really interested in comparing it to some of the other absinthes we've tried. Another interesting point is these guys advocate the concept of fire as part of the absinthe ritual - sounds pretty badass on paper, but it's something we won't be partaking in since we try to minimize the interaction of flames and overproof alcohols ever since "the incident."

Read up on Sebor at SeborAbsinth.com, and expect a review with some soonness. See below for a Wikipedia information on the role of fire in the absinth ritual.

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Sazerac: The World's Greatest Cocktail

We've discovered our favorite drink. Ever. Hands down. As you can tell, it's been absinthe-palooza over here at the Liquor Snob offices this week, with reviews of both Duplais and Artemesia absinthes going live yesterday.

After the tasting, we decided to branch out a bit and mix some cocktails. It wasn't that we were bored with the good old "louche the absinthe with water and have deep conversations" thing - we just felt we had to round out the experience. The first one we tried was a Sazerac, and we might have tipped our hand with the title of this post about how we felt - see below for the recipe.

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Absinthe Clandestine & Capricieuse Review

Usually, when we think of absinthe we think of green. After all, the drink is often known as the Green Goddess, or La Fee Verte (the green fairy). We've known for a while that you could get the drink in other colors and varieties (we've even heard tell of red absinthes, though we're not sure we'd trust them), but we never really paid that much attention.

Recently it was brought to our attention that there is a whole subset of the liqueur known as "La Bleue Suisse" (or is it Suisse La Bleue?) that was made illegally in Switzerland after absinthe was banned in Europe. We've gotten our hands on two bottles of the stuff from the Artemesia Distillery in Switzerland, which apparently started production on March 1, 2005 when the drink was once again legalized in that country - though they cut their teeth as absinthe bootleggers. How cool is that?

So how do the two bottles we got - Clandestine and Capricieuse - match up to their green brethren?

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Absinthe Duplais Review

Sometimes it takes us a while to get ramped up for our absinthe-reviewing duties. It's not like we don't like the taste - we just like to make a true event out of it instead of a typical run-of-the-mill tasting. On top of that, we might sometimes have problems with flashbacks to our first run-in with it, back when we were young and stupid.

We've finally wrapped our minds around the three Absinthe Duplais bottles we got, and we've taken some time to form some thoughts about it. So how did the Blanche, Balance, and Verte line up with our expectations? And were we able to keep our ears attached to our heads? Find out below.

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The USB Absinthe Spoon

We're not sure if this is an elaborate prank or the coolest advancement in drinking technology since lips, but either way, ladies and gentlemen, we present to you The Absinthe Spoon. Details are sketchy, including why you might need to plug your absinthe spoon into your computer, but apparently they're looking to give them away for free so people can test them out.

See below for the actual text on the site, which is cryptic as hell, and head on over there to peruse the comments that have been left - some of them are actually pretty damned funny. Our favorite was "How else could I wean my PC off the methadone?"

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La Clandestine Absinthe

We've been incredibly absinthe minded lately (we know, bad joke) and we've been paying a lot more attention to the old Fee Verte. We've just heard about a brand called La Clandestine which has got some tongues wagging, and we're more than ready to give it a try. We've got some on its way to us, but we wanted to give a little introduction to the stuff before we dive right into the review.

La Clandestine apparently tops the list of great absinthes according to the folks at the Wormwood Society, and it also won a Golden Spoon (the absinthe equivalent of the Oscar) in 2006. Check out a press snippet from La Clandestine (which, as you'll notice, is not the traditional green color) below.

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Absinthe Duplais Arrives for Review

We can't think of a better Valentine's Day gift than three bottles of absinthe, and that's just what Cupid brought us this year. Actually, it was technically the USPS that brought it, but who's counting? We're definitely feeling very romantic toward the three bottles, one each of Duplais Verte, Duplais Blanche, and Duplais Balance. Hell, we might try to relive our old glory days and do the review around St. Patrick's Day like we did last year. This year we'll try not to let the liquor get the better of us, since we're trying to change the score of Absinthe 1 - Liquor Snobs 0.

Learn more about this three-pack at Absinthe Vertrieb, and keep an eye out for our review in the near future. Oh, and one more thing...happy Valentine's Day!

Absinthe Duplais Verte

We've been hearing some good things about Absinthe Duplais Verte, enough so that we'd really like to get our hands on a bottle. It's a Suisse absinthe and it won a gold medal at the 2006 International Wine and Spirit Competition, and it's the only absinthe to win. On top of the gold medal it won a Best in Class trophy, which is apparently a big deal as well.

We've gotten our hands on the tasting notes from the competition, which are what have our little hearts aflutter:

Unique, golden/green hue. Slow forming louche had sudden active spurt resulting in thick, almost solid, milk shake finish. Eventual colour was translucent , rich, golden green with amber highlights. The aromas after louche were slow to emerge but built with time into a complex herbal salad. Wormwood and fennel began to establish themselves on the nose with hints of spice lifting above the meld of herbs. Full textured, rich, creamy mouth with outstanding, refreshing taste with substantial fennel and wormwood flavours. Massive power, yet well controlled, long, everlasting finish. Magnificent product.

Absinthe Duplais Verte is available at AbsinthVertrieb.de for about $40 per 500ml bottle (if you have trouble seeing it correctly, you can muck with the settings until the site displays in English and shows US prices). This is a bit smaller than your typical 750ml liquor bottle, but from what we're hearing it's worth every penny. You can also get a 200ml bottle for about $20, or super size it with a full liter bottle for about $75.

Absinthe Duplais is also available in two other varieties - Blanche and Balance - and as of press time there is a special on where you can get a 500ml bottle of all three expressions for about $100.

A Descent Into Absinthe

We had our own little run-in with absinthe last year, and it put our tails between our legs. We didn't include a lot of details of what we went through or how we felt, but we did offer you a few high-level details of that fateful night. Thanks to Urban Monarch we just found a description of an absinthe night that contains a few more details about the actual implosion.

11:50 pm
Sleep seems a million miles away. I am living in a bright light on the top of my skull. I’m going to sit at my white-formica, dramatically-lit kitchen table and read some more Hemingway. Seems a very natural thing to do. Can't go visit the guy. They'd throw leg irons on me and put me in a cage.

Modern Drunkard - Drinking With Van Gogh [via Urban Monarch]

Death in the Afternoon

We've heard about a drink called the Hemingway cocktail, and we knew it involved a combination of absinthe and champagne. It seemed like a high end way to kill an afternoon, but there were two things we didn't think about (or know). One thing we didn't think about was how champagne's bubbles might distribute the absinthe buzz. Two was the fact that another name for the drink was the Death in the Afternoon (named after a bookby Papa himself).

We haven't touched absinthe in a while, ever since a fateful night last march, but after reading about this drink in the NYT, it made us rethink the drink.You need a free subscription to read the article, but it's interesting, at least if you want to read about why absinthe goes milky when you add another liquid, and are curious about the effect of the bubbles. We're interested in both.

READERS of Ernest Hemingway know “Death in the Afternoon” as a book about bullfighting. But to drinkers with a taste for obscure booze, it is also a cocktail that Hemingway contributed to a 1935 collection of celebrity recipes. His directions: “Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”

New York Times - Trying to Clear Absinthe’s Reputation [subscription]