Drink
ABSINTHE COCKTAILS Gustav Temple advises cocktail-loving readers how to press into service that dusty old bottle of absinthe in the drinks cabinet
M
ost of our readers undoubtedly went through their absinthe phase many years ago, and a dusty bottle of the stuff languishes on the bottom shelf of the cocktail cabinet. Unless you are already a huge fan of Ricard, Pastis or Pernod, the milky, liquorice-tinged aperitif with the added ingredient of wormwood soon pales beside far more worthy pre-prandial concoctions such as a large G&T or a Moscow Mule (vodka, lime juice, ginger beer). Not to mention a Dry Martini with five parts gin and a bottle of vermouth through which a single sunbeam from the direction of France has passed,
“The myths that swirled around absinthe when it first came back on the market in the late 1990s were mostly successful marketing intrigues. Absinthe was said to cause hallucinations, make you insane and turn you into some sort of drunken mystic”
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