by David Dominé, The Bluegrass Peasant

OK, I haven’t gotten over my Europe kicks yet. I’ve still got the jet lag to prove it, so humor me.

One of the first things on my list when I crossed the Big Pond was to enjoy a big bad glass of absinthe, or the “Green Fairy” as the Impressionist set in the Paris of the late 1800s knew it. For American foodies of the last decades, this has been the Holy Grail of conquests, something to be enjoyed with a contraband Cuban stogie or slab of unpasteurized French cheese or any of the various other delicacies that have been unceremoniously denied entrance into this country.

Americans who have heard of it, know it as a milky-green libation shrouded in mystery, a supposedly toxic potion that has driven legions of its patrons to madness and worse. Actually, it is simply an anise-flavored spirit derived from various herbs, flowers and leaves, including those of the herb Artemisia absinthium, also known as wormwood. Although absinthe typically has a natural green color, it can be produced in a clear style or other colors as well.

So, after several sips of my first glass of absinthe, I leaned back in my chair and waited for the Green Fairy to come and do her bidding. I waited for the madness. I waited for the despair. I waited for the ghosts of famous Bohemians such as Baudelaire, Picasso and Van Gogh in the hopes that they would dance around my table and provide some needed inspiration. But, I finished my glass alone – and in relative sanity. A second glass yielded only a slight headache that nagged me most of the following day.

Anyone who has tried the enigmatic beverage will tell you that its effects are no different that any other good stiff drink. Your breath will be a little fresher, but don’t expect the mythical aftereffects such as those described by famous imbiber Oscar Wilde: “The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things.” Drink enough of anything and that will happen.

Read More on Absinthe after the jump:

Nonetheless, I returned to the good old U S of A with another notch in my gastronomic belt, fully convinced that I had staged another culinary coup in the eyes of my countrymen. Absinthe, after all, has been banned here for nigh on a hundred years now.

But that all changed very recently. I returned to find that I was behind the times (again). Now you can get it (legally) in this country. It seems that absinthe – that legendary elixir once favored by the avante garde – has been making a comeback after nearly a century’s ostracization as a scapegoat for society’s ills. Now several varieties of absinthe can now be found in many bars and liquor stores in the ‘Ville, including Old Town Liquors on Bardstown Road. And, don’t be afraid to rush out and get yourself a bottle, either, because most of the infamous side effects turned out to be a load of hooey.

Although it was portrayed as dangerously addictive – in no small part due to the presence of small quantities of the chemical thujone, rumored to elicit insanity and hallucinations in the drinker – no evidence ever demonstrated absinthe to be any more dangerous than ordinary liquor. But some myths die hard.

The story of the rise and fall of absinthe is an interesting one: Absinthe’s reputation suffered a terrible blow in 1905, when Swiss authorities reported that Jean Lanfray had murdered his family and then attempted to kill himself in an absinthe-induced stupor. (The fact that Lanfray was a well-known alcoholic who had drunk much more than his usual two glasses of absinthe that morning was overlooked, and absinthe got the blame for the brutal murders.) The Lanfray murders hammered the final nail in the coffin of the Green Fairy, and a ban on absinthe soon followed in Switzerland. By 1915, absinthe would be banned in the United States and most European countries as well. In the 1970s a scientific paper in this country mistakenly reported that thujone was related to THC, the active chemical in marijuana, and this served to bolster the claims about the dangerous and hallucinogenic properties of absinthe.

But changes and loopholes in European Union laws and regulations in the 1990s helped begin a modern resurgence in the popularity of absinthe, which had been kept alive, albeit in a somewhat modified form, in non-banning countries such as Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic. In 2000 France started producing La Fée Absinthe, and scores of European-produced absinthes soon followed. In 2007, two brands of absinthe – Lucid, from France, and Kübler, from Switzerland – began to be sold in the United States. In December of 2007, St. George Absinthe Verte, produced by a company in Alameda, Calif., became the first brand of absinthe to be legally produced in the United States since enactment of the ban.

If you’re going to enjoy a bottle of the good stuff in the ‘Ville, it will set you back about $60. (By the way, don’t enjoy the bottle all at once, or else you will be seeing some of those things that got absinthe its bum wrap in the first place.) I like Kübler myself, mostly because they distill it in the Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland, the birthplace of the Green Fairy. A ritual way of preparation and service has grown up around this fabled libation, so tune in tomorrow when I explain the best way to enjoy your next glass of absinthe.