Drink - Victoria Moore learns to spit not swallow
How do you judge an absinthe? It is a question the judges at the International Spirits Challenge cannot agree on. "You should be able to taste mint, coriander, lemon balm and verbena," pronounces one. "What I'm looking for in an absinthe", quips another judge, a master bartender and cocktail king, "is to get completely off my tits." And you can't help thinking that he's got a point.
We know he drank it, and some say he lost an ear because of it, but it's hard to believe that even Van Gogh liked it. He probably just wanted to be weirded out like the rest of us, and to live up to some outrageous artist image to send up the price of his paintings. Some drink ab-sinthe now that it's back in the country, but I've always sensed it's done for plain bravado and not for pleasure. Certainly, absinthe is one of the strongest drinks (often around 70 per cent proof) you'll come across. Add its strength and its half-medicinal, half-herbal flavour to its fabled hallucinogenic properties, and you have a substance more likely to be treated like a drug than a drink.
Discounting its power to get you off your face, for that is not what we are assembled to judge, and given that absinthe-enjoyment is probably very much about atmosphere, an airy, innocuous room in a tower block reclaimed from Docklands sludge is not going to do it any favours. Round the rest of the room, other critics are sticking their noses into glasses of cream and fruit liqueurs, and tequila, among other things. It is a sombre business. Drink critics can be as intensely serious as any jazz obsessive, gravely swilling then spitting, rifling through their memory racks to store away new flavours and compare the fresh tastes to those remembered of old. Strange to be tasting absinthe in such clinical conditions, and without the ritualistic burning of sugar. Poor green fairy. It has a lot of magic to work.
I survey the four samples laid out for us to try, and wonder why one of them is yellow, rather than green. This yellow specimen provokes another heated debate among the judges. One maintains that this could not possibly be a proper absinthe. The others feel that it must have qualified in some technical way in order to merit inclusion. The loner continues to argue vehemently against it (an uphill struggle, given that this drink proves to be one of the nicer flavours and nobody wants to promote another at its expense), and is vindicated: the yellow drink turned out to be Pernod.
Taking generous inhalations of the four specimens is as much as I aspire to, but it seems only fair to take one in my mouth, if only for a few moments. It is really very nasty. Last time I tried absinthe, I thought mouthwash. This time, it's "like swallowing a filling", interjects the master bartender as I stand holding the rotten stuff in my wincing mouth. "I should like to try some of your cocktails," remarks another judge. "Why?" asks the bartender. "I don't drink my cocktails. Certainly not the absinthe ones." I can see why. It's guaranteed to ruin any good drink. "That one", continues the bartender, pointing at the glass from which I have just imbibed, "is one of the nastiest things I've ever tasted in my life." My cheeks are still taut with the effort of keeping the absinthe away from as many taste buds as possible. Even so, I can feel it insinuating its way into my bloodstream via the gums.
"Spit, spit, my dear, spit," urges the chairman of the event, and I spit gratefully (though not gracefully). "I don't know what your editors would say if they knew what we were doing to you. But it's OK. The trick is not to swallow." And now I know how to judge an absinthe. If you could bear to swallow, it would probably be one of the best.
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