XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Just saw this on SFGate: St. George Spirits in Alameda has approval to release the U.S.'s first domestic absinthe since the 1912 ban.
Now it seems that no one can remember exactly why it was prohibited. Some say it was the chemical thujone found in the herb wormwood, used to make absinthe, that affects the brain. Others say it was a plot by the wine industry to put the popular spirit out of business. And there are those who believe it was a case of baseless hysteria, not unlike "Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda film about marijuana.
Earlier this year, a lone Washington, D.C., lawyer took on the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in an attempt to lift the ban. After some legal wrangling, the agency agreed - with some limits.
Last week, St. George Spirits of Alameda received the news that, after seven applications, the federal agency had approved its label, the final obstacle before going to market. On Monday, the small artisan distillery sold its token first bottle, becoming the only American company since 1912 to sell absinthe in the United States. Then the staff took a moment to celebrate.
"We made champagne and absinthe cocktails, which rapidly degenerated into just sipping absinthe out of the bottle with crazy straws," said Lance Winters, a 42-year-old master distiller at the seven-employee company.
...
St. George will compete with three other absinthe distillers - the Swiss Kubler, French Lucid and the Brazilian Absinto Camargo. All have begun importing the licorice-flavored spirit into the United States in recent months. It was the Kubler distillery that hired attorney Robert Lehrman to end the prohibition, while Lucid was the brainchild of Ted Breaux, a New Orleans chemist who reverse-engineered an old bottle of absinthe to devise his formula. He worked with a French distillery to reproduce it. All have paved the way for U.S. distillers to sell their own perfected versions of the drink, which are likely to hit the shelves soon.
Lehrman said Yves Kubler, who produces a few hundred thousand bottles of absinthe a year, saw a real market for the spirit here and was eager to tap into it. So in 2000, Lehrman started making inquiries of federal regulators only to determine that the fight would be a tough one.
"When something has been banned since 1912, it's hard to get it undone," he said.
But Lehrman persevered. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officials said they were willing to accept absinthe formulas that fall under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations that the drink contain no more than 10 parts per million of the chemical thujone, but the word absinthe on the bottle's label had to be small and used with a qualifier like St. George's Verte or Kubler's Swiss Absinthe Superieure.
Lehrman said thujone in mass quantities "is bad stuff," but small amounts are found in a number of herbs, ingredients and materials, including sage and cedar, and are considered fairly harmless. More notable is absinthe's high alcohol content, typically 120 proof or more, about 50 percent higher than vodka and whiskey.
"Look, absinthe is bad the way Jack Daniels is bad, the way Skyy Vodka is bad," says Lehrman. "The worst component is the alcohol. If you drink too much, something bad will happen."