Water trickled out of a glass and copper fountain and dissolved a sugar cube in a glass of Wild Card Absinthe before it caused the spirit to “louche” or turn cloudy.

Combined with its tumultuous history and recent legalization, this 200-year-old ritual has helped the potent anise-flavored liquor encounter a resurgence in popularity that’s made its way to Central Oregon’s bars, liquor stores and, most recently, distilleries.

“I think it’s awesome,” said Brad Irwin, who makes Wild Card Absinthe at Oregon Spirit Distillers on Reed Market Road. “It has an experience that is unlike any other liquor. It’s got a cultural mystique and a flavor that rests on your tongue and lingers there for two to three minutes.”

Banned in the United States until about five years ago, absinthe enjoyed the peak of its popularity during late 19th-century France’s Belle Epoque when it was attacked in what some say was a smear campaign launched by the temperance movement and some wine makers absinthe threatened to put out of business.

The spirit’s resurgence in this country has spawned a niche market of self-labeled “militant” and “proselytizing” absinthe devotees Irwin hopes will help add his latest creation to the long list of alcoholic beverages that have put Bend on the map.

The green fairy

Absinthe is a high-proof distilled liquor made with wormwood, anise, hyssop, fennel and other spices. Irwin said these spices give the liquor an unmistakable licorice flavor similar that of the Italian spirit Sambuca, the Greek Ouzo and the Middle Eastern Arak.

“Not everybody likes absinthe and I’m fine with that,” said Irwin.

The spirit is either served diluted with water – the traditional method calls for adding 3 to 5 ounces of water to every ounce of absinthe using a fountain, a sugar cube and a slotted metal spoon – or as a trace ingredient in cocktails like the Sazerac.

French doctor Pierre Ordinare patented absinthe as a medical elixir in 1792. It’s popularity grew over the coming decade and by 1805 was produced by commercial distilleries in Switzerland and France.

During this time, absinthe was a preferred drink for French aristocrats and Belle Epoque personalities like Oscar Wilde, Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway, who called the spirit the “Green Fairy” because of its green tinge and the feeling offered by drinking something that was 90 to 150 proof.

Newspaper articles from that time period posted on the Wormwood Society Absinthe Association’s website suggest it was also popular among French soldiers — who were given the liquor in North Africa because it was thought to have malaria-preventing benefits — students, hourly laborers, “and even women.”

But absinthe took its biggest leap forward in the 1850s when the grape-eating parasite Phylloxera spread across Europe in the 1860s and decimated the country’s wine industry. People who drank wine turned to absinthe en masse when they couldn’t afford or find their favorite method of intoxication.

Absinthe’s remarkable popularity came undone less than half a century later when stories surfaced about how it contained a chemical compound, thujone, a neurotoxin found in wormwood, that made people hallucinate and go crazy.

There was even an “absinthe murder” story, which told of how Swiss farm laborer Jean LaFray killed his pregnant wife and two daughters after drinking only two glasses of absinthe. Modern absinthe producers do not dispute this account but question whether the murder was the result of a thujone-inspired delusion or a drunken rage.

Popular opinion turned against the spirit and it was banned in most of the civilized world.

The United States enacted its absinthe ban in 1912, eight years before prohibition started. Switzerland banned it in 1910 and France banned it in 1915.

But absinthe saw a resurgence in the 1990s when a series of factors led people to re-examine the spirit and its alleged ability to cause people to go crazy. While modern research confirmed the spirit contained thujone, it was in concentrations so low – a 2008 study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry found pre-ban absinthe had a thujone concentration of only 4.3 parts per million – that it had no affect on the people who drank it.

Groups like the Wormwood Society Absinthe Association, a 4,000-member nonprofit consumer education group, contend the stories about absinthe’s hallucinogenic properties were nothing more than “bad science and misinformation” put forth by the temperance movement and a French wine industry that was eager to get back the customers it lost during the Phylloxera outbreak.

“Neither absinthe nor the herbs from which it is made will make you go crazy,” reads a section on the Wormwood Society’s website. “It won’t make you ‘trip out’, hallucinate, cut your ear off, or do anything else you wouldn’t ordinarily do when intoxicated with liquor.”

The pro-absinthe lobby also contended the liquor’s miniscule thujone concentrations met a modern interpretation of the phrase “thujone-free” – which as early as the 1960s meant less than 10 parts per million – that had been used in the 1912 ban. According to the Wormwood Society, this claim means that most top-quality absinthe brands from the Belle Epoque had always been legal.

In October 2007, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau issued a series of regulations governing how absinthe could legally be produced and sold in the United States and created a new niche market of absinthe drinkers dozens of distilleries were eager to serve.

Local liquor

Claudine Birgy, the bar manager at 10 Below, flips a drink menu open to a page listing the five absinthe brands the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has allowed to be sold in the state since the absinthe ban was lifted: Absinthe Ordinare from France, Lucid Absinthe Superieure from France, Kubler Absinthe Superieure from Switzerland, Pacifique Absinthe from the Seattle area’s Pacific Distillery, and Wild Card Absinthe from Bend’s Oregon Spirit Distillers.

“We’ve been selling absinthe for a year and a half now,” Birgy said while grabbing a fountain, two spoons and two snifter glasses from behind the bar.

But unlike Iriwn, Birgy soaks the sugar cubes in Bacardi 151 and sets them on fire after she places them on the metal spoons that rest on top of the absinthe-containing snifter glass. She said this technique, which absinthe purists in the Wormwood Society strongly object to, caramelizes the sugar cubes and adds this flavor to the absinthe once it is put under the fountain and diluted with water to the proper portions.

It also adds to the spectacle that is created when absinthe is served, she said.

“Curiosity is often sparked when people see this,” Birgy said, adding people usually order a glass of absinthe after someone from another table has ordered it and they’ve seen the ritual take place. “Absinthe is very trendy right now. It’s a lot of fun and it has a lot of history behind it.”

Birgy said she also gets a lot of customers who come by her bar and order absinthe because they like it. Most of these people hail from the Portland area, where bars had been serving absinthe a couple of years before it showed up in Bend.

“There was a pretty good demand for absinthe when they lifted the ban,” Wormwood Society spokesman Brian Robinson said. “But that novelty factor has worn off and what you have left now is people who actually like how it tastes.”

Robinson said between 75 and 80 brands of absinthe are currently being sold in the United States. Some of these spirits are produced by large, international companies like Viridian Spirits, LLC, which distributes Lucid and several other brands of absinthe, while others are produced by small distilleries.

Irwin said small liquor producers such as his business, which released its first 1,000-liter batch of Wild Card Absinthe three weeks ago, are better suited for the spirit because they operate on a small scale where they have better control of the ingredients they use and its two-week distillation process.

This level of control ensures absinthe has the light green tinge that’s such a big part of its mystique.

Before he could start making absinthe, Irwin had to clear the tax and trade bureau’s approval process — which he said was a regulatory climate like nothing he had seen before. In brief, regulations, which were adopted when absinthe was legalized in October 2007, require that any absinthe sold in the United States have a thujone concentration of less than 10 parts per million. They also dictate how the word “absinthe” can be used on a bottle’s label and prohibit companies from suggesting their spirit has any type of hallucinogenic, psychotropic or mind-altering effects.

Irwin said this entire regulatory process took him almost three years to finish.

“I could have taken a prescription drug to market in less time,” he said.

But once he cleared this process, Irwin said he’s had no problems finding a market for his absinthe.

Wild Card Absinthe can be found in many liquor stores and is sold at restaurants like 10 Below, where it is one of Birgy’s favorite brands, the Blacksmith and Jackalope Grill. He’s also received inquiries from liquor distributors in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Texas that are eager to sell his product in their states as well.

Even the Wormwood Society has contacted Irwin’s distillery asking for a bottle of Wild Card Absinthe so they can try it and review it on their blog.

Irwin said he’s excited about this opportunity because a good review would mean even more business for his operation.

But a bad one, especially if it’s from the Wormwood Society, could sink it.

“The absinthe community is probably more enthusiastic about their drink than anybody else,” he said. “It’s more hard core than any spirit community I know.”

Robinson doesn’t deny accusations that absinthe drinkers can be a little intense and admitted some of them take on a proselytizing role when it comes to public education campaigns that debunk the century-old myth their favorite liquor makes people trip out.

“A lot of people who love absinthe do tend to get a little militant about it,” he said.

They apply the same level of fervor to making sure producers of good-quality absinthe succeed and those that make poor-quality absinthe – especially ones that use artificial colors to give their liquor that characteristic green tinge – fail.