The Guide to Absinthe Written by Laura Bellucci First Edition New Orleans, 2019 Printing by JS Makkos Design by Julia Sevin Special Thanks Ray Bordelon, Historian Ted Breaux Jessica Leigh Graves JS Makkos Alan Moss and all the other green-eyed misfits with a passion for our project Contents History of The Old Absinthe House . 5 Absinthe . 19 Absinthe and The Belle Époque . 29 Holy Herbs . 31 1 2 Le Poison Charles Baudelaire Le vin sait revêtir le plus sordide bouge Wine decks the most sordid shack D'un luxe miraculeux, In gaudy luxury, Et fait surgir plus d'un portique fabuleux Conjures more than one fabulous portal Dans l'or de sa vapeur rouge, In the gold of its red vapour, Comme un soleil couchant dans un ciel Like a sun setting in a nebulous sky . nébuleux. That which has no limits, with opium is L'opium agrandit ce qui n'a pas de yet more vast, bornes, It reels out the infinite longer still, Allonge l'illimité, Sinks depths of time and sensual delight . Approfondit le temps, creuse la volupté, Opium pours in doleful pleasures Et de plaisirs noirs et mornes That fill the soul beyond its capacity . Remplit l'âme au delà de sa capacité. So much for all that, it is not worth the Tout cela ne vaut pas le poison qui poison découle Contained in your eyes, your green eyes, De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts, They are lakes where my soul shivers and Lacs où mon âme tremble et se voit à sees itself overturned . l'envers... My dreams crowd in Mes songes viennent en foule To quench these bitter gulfs . Pour se désaltérer à ces gouffres amers. So much for all that, it cannot surpass Tout cela ne vaut pas le terrible prodige the terrible wonder De ta salive qui mord, Of your saliva that bites, Qui plonge dans l'oubli mon âme sans It plunges my remorseless soul into remords, oblivion . Et charriant le vertige, And rolls in like waves of vertigo, La roule défaillante aux rives de la mort! Faltering, on the shores of death! 3 THE HISTORY OF THE Old Absinthe House 1805 – 1911 The Juncadellas, Jacinto Aleix, ew Orleans holds a strong connection to absinthe . The Old Absinthe N House is one of New Orleans’ most prominent historical landmarks . It has been visited, written about,and and memorialized the Ferrers by many famous writers . The Old Absinthe House was built in 1806 . It was owned by Pedro Font and Francisco Juncadella, Catalans from Barcelona, and operated as a sundries store and warehouse for the goods that furnished their other French Quarter stores . Juncadella died in 1820 and, shortly after, Pedro Font returned to Spain and entrusted the prop- erty to be run by Juncadella’s nephews: Jacinto, Leopold, and P .O . Aleix . It was then a grocery or commission house for the trade of items such as Spanish liquor, tobac- 5 co, and clothing . Jacinto renovated the building in 1835 and acquired the building’s first liquor license in 1843: it operated as a saloon called “Aleix’s Coffee House ”. Jacinto’s sons, Leopold and Eduardo, were leasing a bar at the French Opera House from 1865-68 in New Orleans . Here it is probable that they met the famous bartender, Cayetano Ferrer . Ferrer started in Algiers as a grocer, then worked at a sawmill, then was conscripted into military service for a year . Ferrer had honed his craft in the Catalan region of Spain, where absinthe was all the rage, and when he immigrated to America, he brought his taste for the beverage with him . He also helped introduce the practice of serving Dripped Absinthe Francoise, or a slow water drip over a sugar cub to louche the glass of absinthe . Jacinto Aleix passed away in 1861, but it appears that his wife Maria took over running the business in his stead . She made a very significant contribution to the Old Absinthe House . On July 31, 1871, there exists a bill of sale signed by Maria for the contents of a café . We see that the widow Aleix buys, from Mr . Louis Izard, a saloon keeper, the contents of a café located at Bourbon & Conti for $2,250 . The receipt includes furniture, movables, four cases of absinthe along with other liquor stock, glass lighting fixtures, mirrors, clock, fountains, and a billiards table (which she sells to a man in Jefferson a year later for $900) . We believe that this is the record for the acquisition of our historic marble drip fountains . Even the earliest photographs of the fountains show pitting in their bases, which leads us to another important inference: before our fountains were used to drip water over sugar cubes into absinthe, they were probably were used to serve mineral water in a café . Though fountains of this style have never been document- ed for use for absinthe service, they were often used at soda fountains, as early as the 1850s . Originally, our fountains had spigots on all four sides, which means they were probably placed in a central location where customers of the establish- ment could access them freely . The pitting in their bases is likely from the miner- als and chemicals in the mineral water itself . By 1869, the Jacinto Family had hired Cayetano Ferrer . By 1872, he had taken over the lease of 238 Bourbon Street . He employed his family members to help him, including his brother Leon and his sons Felix, Paul, and Jacinto . Two years later, Cayetano changed the building’s name to the Old Absinthe Room and final- ly, in 1890, it was known as the Old Absinthe House . The establishment housed historic marble absinthe fountains adorning a long cypress bar . 6 Absinthe House had become famous if not legendary . It was the home of the Absinthe Frappé, concocted by Cayetano Ferrer, and popularized in song by Glen MacDonough . He included it in the popular musical, It Happened in Nordland: When life seems gray and dark the dawn and you are blue, There is they say on such a morn one thing to do. Rise up and ring, a bell-boy will call to you straight-way, And bid him bring a cold and tall absinthe frappé! It will free you first from the burning thirst That is born of a night of the bowl Like a sun ’twill rise through the inky skies That so heavily hang o’er your soul. At the first cool sip on your fevered lip You determine to live through the day, Life’s again worth while as with dawning smile You imbibe your absinthe frappé! The deed is done so waste no woe o’er yesterteen. Nor swear to shun a year or so the festive scene. Remorse will pass despair will fade with speed away Before a glass of rightly made absinthe frappé! In 1886, Cayetano Ferrer passed away, and his wife Marguerite and sons took over the business . Leon passed away in 1898, and Marguerite passed away in 1892, leaving her sons to continue Ferrer’s legacy . The Ferrer family ownership seems to have been blighted by bankruptcy in 1902 . A disconcerting article appeared in newspapers in 1902 . “The old Absinthe House…has gone into bankruptcy by petition of Felix Ferrer” (Alexandria Gazette, 31 Oct . 1902) . But records show that Ferrers continued to run the establishment to 1914 . 7 8 1914 – 1926 n 1914, six years before his death, Felix sold the contents of the bar to a I colorful man named Pierre Cazebonne . In 1917, Cazebonne went into business with Arnaud Cazenave The. Cazebonne Era Cazenave was a flamboyant French-born wine merchant who, finding New Orleans to his fancy in 1902, decided to make it home . Cazenave can be credited to bringing nightclubs to Bourbon Street . By 1917, he had established a French café in the Old Absinthe House . In 1918, he expanded into a larger space diagonal- ly across Bourbon on Bienville Street . This is today’s Arnaud’s Restaurant . Absinthe was banned in America in 1912, but the bar remained in business by turning into a restaurant . The Old Absinthe House survived the banning of absinthe by switching to Herbsaint from 1934 to 2007, and our guest books from the 1940s proudly began featuring the slogan “We serve HERBSAINT when AB- SINTHE is called for ”. A report from Dr . Wiley, head of the Pure Food Board declaring absinthe to be “one of the worst enemies of man” (The Omaha Daily Bee, 15 Dec . 1911) spelled doom for the demonized elixir . Since the late 1800s, authorities in France had bat- tled with the national enthusiasm for absinthe drinking . Sensational stories from France of the deaths of famous authors and artists and mild-men-turned-murder- ers from absinthe drinking regularly surfaced in American newspapers . “It acts like the draught from the opium smoker’s pipe or the sensation from the needle of the morphine user” (The San Francisco Call, 6 Aug . 1908) . Inevitably, in 1912, following Dr . Wiley’s report, newspapers carried the story that the importation of absinthe and its transportation between states would be banned . Dates were given variously as October 1, 1912 or January 1, 1913 . The sale of existing stocks would not be affected . Yet in 1916, Aleister Crowley is found 9 seated in the Old Absinthe House “sipping the second glass of that ‘fascinating but subtle poison’” (Crowley, “Absinthe: The Green Goddess,” The International, Feb . 1918) . At the bar, he wrote this beautiful description: There is a corner of the United States which [time] has overlooked.