I’ve always hated liquorice candy - especially black. If I found some in my Halloween bucket, I only felt as if I’d been cheated of chocolate. Still wouldn’t sully my least favorite toot with association with the stuff.
However, I proclaim my love for a similarly flavored beverage Pernod to the mountaintops. Oh, I know, it’s only bowdlerized absinthe. But as a good American, I wouldn’t know where to find real absinthe, and if I did I’d still be afraid that it would lead to jack-booted DEA agents raiding my home and confiscating my car & assets and leaving me only with the $200 from the FOX network for allowing my face to be shown in sharp detail during the raid on COPS. So I’ve cultivated a entirely satisfactory relationship with Pernod.
None of this silly stuff with the slotted spoon and sugar cubes with me - that’s too affectations for a son of the Midwest. I just douse it with tonic water to revel even more in its bitter spirit, perhaps akindred with mine own.
But now my love has been put to the test (and seven years since I first tasted Pernod - coincidence?) when I received for Christmas a bottle of Absente. What is the difference, I ask? I can discern the citric leaning of Coke from the spice of Pepsi, and don’t care at all because its all just bellywash (although I have it on good authority that the final outrage that triggered the Cuban revolution was when a patron at Meyer Lanskys’ Havana casino ordered a rum and PEPSI).
But which of these two are the truest of the green fairies?
To other liquorice-associated drinks I’m not inclined: I have no kith with ouzo and won’t traffic with arrak. Campari was only distilled so Nole Coward would have something to rhyme with safari. No, Pernod and Absente are the Herculean pillars of my confusion. Has anyone here tried original absinthe, and compared it to both Pernod and Absente? Or even if you’ve only tasted the latter two, which do you prefer?