Hi. :waves: Thank you for visiting my Delaware Phoenix Distillery web site. I'm really excited about the opportunity to make authentic absinthe using pretty traditional methods and ingredients. People often ask how I discovered absinthe and why did I choose to learn making it. The answers could be somewhat involved, so I'll explain the best I can without boring you (I hope).
As an artist I've always been very interested in the Cubist painters. Picasso, Braque and Gris made real breakthroughs in painting and revolutionized art. I had a vague awareness that they had available to them this drink called absinthe. But I didn't know much about it.
I remember seeing what seemed like an ad in Art in America announcing the return of absinthe. But there was nothing indicating who the manufacturer was, or where you could get it. Just the hint that it was coming. That was sometime in 2000 I think. I remember looking in succeeding months for a follow-on ad thinking the first was just a teaser. But there never was. And I forgot all about absinthe.
In 2006, there was an article in the New York Times about this fellow Ted Breaux who was making absinthe in France using old alembics. I resolved I was going to get some of this absinthe. With a bit of web sleuthing I discovered you could order this absinthe, the Jade absinthe, from Europe over the internet. Soon I was $100 poorer, but a bottle of absinthe reached by door within a few days.
More soon...
This is a good question. My original desire to have absinthe was constrained by the fact that it was expensive. Even when the dollar with 1:1 with the Euro, pretty much you had to pay at least $50. So initially I bought a few bottles and quickly realized that absinthe was beyond my very limited budget. So I nursed what I had and learned whatever I could about the history of absinthe, but I especially about how it was made. Through the power of the internet, I got connected with others who'd been studying absinthe for a number of years. I did what I could to learn within my very limited means.
When the word came that the TTB had approved Lucid, an absinthe made by Ted Breaux, and that Kübler, the Swiss absinthe was to be approved as well, absinthe was legal in the US. It was something I wasn't sure I would ever see, and yet here it was. But because I live in the sticks, you can't find absinthe here. What rotten luck!
I'd been studying the theory of distilling beverages for well over a year, but really hadn't done that. But I had the chance to visit TuthillTown Distillery, in Gardiner, NY. They're New York's first whiskey distillery since Prohibition. For a long time they were the only one, but I think a couple others have started up recently. When I visited in October 07, it was like this most awesome moment. It was like when you know you've met someone special. It's what I wanted to do.
From that day I said I'm going to start an absinthe distillery in Walton, NY. And it's weird, only one person laughed.