A New Orleans chemist and microbiologist, Ted Breaux, has spent seven years studying absinthe and has replicated the recipe for one of the most important Belle Epoch brands, Eduoard Pernod. Breaux is a perfectionist about absinthe making, and owns two bottles of century old premium Pernods, which greatly facilitated his efforts. The water is trickled from a carafe or 'absinthe fountain' over the sugar cube which slowly dissolves. As the sugary water dilutes the alcohol, the herbal oils in the high proof alcohol solution come out of solution, being almost insoluble in water. The clouding effect is termed the louche, and is of great aesthetic appeal to absintheurs.
Modern variations involving setting the absinthe alight are mere cheap melodrama.
Absinthe rose to popularity in the mid 19th century only after the decades long phylloxera blight of the vineyards caused the price of wine to soar and its availability to plummet. Among its devotees were Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Pablo Picasso, Artur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Alistair Crowley, and Charles Baudelaire. Van Gogh's ear-cutting incident is popularly attributed to absinthe intoxication. The advent of the prohibition and Christian-temperance movements coincided with the success of the vintners in reconstituting their industry with New World cuttings immune to the insect blight. The vintners next urgently sought a way to recover their millions of customers and woo them from the Fairy's embrace.