My bottle has been open since the beginning of January 2009. I did carafe pours for all glasses.

Color – Peridot. It is very pleasing to the eye, even if it is a little pale. 4.5 would be my rating if it were possible, so I chose 4 because I’d love that tiny bump of color.

Louche: A little fast with a thin stream from a carafe, and no “billows” that I could see. However, it is certainly attractive, and the separation is clear down to the last millimeter.

Aroma: I really like the aroma this has, both louched and un-. There is a fruity quality I really enjoy—can anise smell this fruit-like?—and there’s a pleasant kick from the wormwood. There are other scents in the mix, but they seem more in the background.

Flavor: The wormwood is front and center to my palate, with a pinch of spice accompanying it. The anise and fruit notes are at the beginning of the sip, though they are more subtle at this point. A decent amount of creaminess presents itself halfway through or so. The flavor seems unified to me, which I initially read as being “simple”–not a bad simple, just that it went over my head for the first glass or two from the bottle.

Finish: The wormwood and spice are at play the most here, though the finish didn’t last as long as I would have liked.

Overall: The flavor and the pre-louche aroma (a force to be reckoned with) are the inverse of each other, in that the anise and fruit notes present upon opening the bottle give way to the wormwood upon louching and on the palate. Because my only quibbles are a slightly pale color and a short finish, I see this as a solid offering.