i CAN BE YOUR GREEN FAIRY GODMOTHER, IF YOU LIKE

ONE dose and she was hooked. Hannah O’Reilly had watched her friend’s methodical preparation of the opaque liquid and now, as she felt its power surge through her body, she was about to follow in the footsteps of many others. She was about to succumb to its notoriously wicked charms.

The milky green-tinged tincture that swilled inside her glass was not just aromatic and deliciously heady. This was a devil’s brew that an entire generation feared could drive those who tried it to wild convulsions, vivid hallucinations and, worse, to bloody murder.

Some who dabbled with it went on to provoke society with their outrageous words, flamboyant art and louche lifestyles that left genteel Victorians reeling. It was blamed for leaving others as simpering addicts hooked on its fearsome potency facing a downward spiral to oblivion.

Eventually, the fear of its impact on those who dared to sample it meant that in many countries the contents of Hannah’s glass was for decades deemed simply too dangerous to drink.

But all that was a century ago. Today Hannah, by day a Standard Life administrator, by night a talented singer, appears quite in control of all her faculties despite that first encounter with ‘the green fairy” the affectionate and evocative name given to absinthe.

Indeed, she believes that rather than regard the potent green brew as a “hell-drink” with powers to disturb the mind and drive people to manic acts, it could in fact provide an antidote to our country’s booze binge addiction.

“Absinthe is actually the polar opposite of binge drinking,” explains Hannah, 31, who on Saturday night will launch the Edinburgh Absinthe Club with its first tasting session at a Leith bar.

“I came here from New Zealand eight years ago and was appalled to see how people drank. It was all about how many drinks you could fit in, how quickly, then seeing how rat-faced you could get.

“But drinking absinthe is a ritual. It’s about enjoying something in a slow, careful manner – like the slow food movement, but for drink. It’s about having a drink not as something to get you drunk very quickly, but to be done slowly, enjoyed and savoured in a social way.”

The suggestion that absinthe, with its notoriously high alcohol content, could have a positive impact would have had last century’s Temperance Society folks reeling. For them, the brew was a cocktail for disaster, its vital ingredient, wormwood, containing thujone, a chemical compound supposedly linked to convulsions, erratic behaviour, hallucinations and with the power to snare drinkers, sending them spiralling into insanity and dependency.

Meanwhile, for the outraged wine industry, the growing consumption of this cheap, potent and effective alternative to their product was alone worthy of having it banned.

But now, having been outlawed for decades in many Continental countries – although not in Britain – absinthe is in the grip of a major revival, boosted earlier this year when French manufacturers were finally able to give their famously potent brew its proper name, 12 years after the ban on drinking it there was lifted.

Absinthe’s return has been also aided by soaring popularity in Eastern Europe, where producers have blitzed the market with new varieties and where drinkers slam it back as a fast “shot” often after a sugar cube soaked in the liquor has been set alight and allowed to drip sweet syrup into the glass.

But for purists like Hannah, a “dose” of powerful absinthe, which is typically around 70 per cent ABV, is something to be savoured slowly: the measure carefully poured, the green liquid left to sit beneath a flat perforated and often beautifully decorated spoon, sugar cube placed on top while ice cold water slowly drips over, sweetening and diluting the bitter brew, releasing its botanical flavours and turning it milky opaque in a process known as La Louche.

It’s a ritual that bohemian Parisian poets and artists of the early 19th century revelled in. Absinthe was the alcoholic muse for poets Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud while Toulouse-Lautrec carried a stash in his cane and Vincent Van Gogh was hooked on it – all helping drive the notion that the milky liquid fuelled creativity and free thinking.

More recently, Edinburgh artist Davy Macdonald drew inspiration from the drink when he created a recent collection of paintings entitled The Absinthe Diaries. He agrees absinthe is entwined in a period of huge artistic output in the late 19th century, but points out that artists, poets and writers opted for it because it was cheap and probably not because of its creative powers.

“At the end of the day, it’s not like LSD or some mind-altering substance,” he says. “It is very strong and it does have this ritual of preparing it along with a very interesting history and that’s what makes it fascinating for a lot of people.”

Absinthe’s notorious reputation is a key selling point, agrees Jo Karp of Leith’s Bond No.9, where Saturday’s tasting will be held. He says demand has steadily grown in recent times: “We power through bottles of our house absinthe. Because there’s quite an element of theatre to it, you go to the table with the drip, customers prepare their own drink . . . people ask questions about it.

“We find the biggest element of selling absinthe is reassuring people that it’s not going to kill them or make them go crazy,” he adds. “The main thing is that it’s a nice, pleasant drink, but not something that you should be downing or drinking as shots.”

Saturday’s tasting event will feature four different varieties of absinthe, each of them, according to Hannah, distinctive and different. “The first is Combier Blanchette Suisse which is quite subtle but fabulous. Then Absinthe Duplait which is the first green Swiss absinthe made in years, followed by Absente, Bond no.9’s house absinthe and the final one is The Henri Bardouin Pastis which is a lovely complex absinthe,” she explains.

According to Hannah, learning to savour the slow process involved in creating a glass of absinthe, adding the water gradually to release the botanical elements and sipping it slowly, is a lesson that hard and fast drinkers could benefit from.

“I’d love to share that culture, where you enjoy drinking as it should be done, the rituals and the socialising elements. It’s about approaching having a drink not as something to get you drunk quickly, but to be enjoyed and savoured.”

n The Edinburgh Absinthe Club meets at Bond No. 9, on Saturday at 7pm. Tasting session: £15, details from 0131-555 5578.

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