Not since 1912 has absinthe—the muse of fin de siècle artists—been legally available for sale in the United States. That changed in recent months, when Lucid entered the U.S. market.
New Orleans native Ted Breaux, a chemist who reverse-engineered a distillation process by analyzing absinthe samples from the Belle Epoque, has been making the emerald, herbal liquor in Saumur, France, for several years (in a distillery designed by Gustav Eiffel). To get Lucid past U.S. regulators, he found he didn’t need laws changed, he just had to keep thujone—the element reputed to give absinthe a hallucinogenic effect—to no more than 10 parts per million. That, says Breaux, simply makes Lucid true to the absinthe tradition of 19th-century Europe. Absinthes then contained less than 5 parts per million, according to his analyses.
After an introduction December 27 at Surdyk’s in Minneapolis, Lucid is now available at many metro area liquor stores and restaurants.
