UPDATED 06/25/2014:

I was buying some wine this week (and always check the absinthes) and noticed the Lucid bottles they had in stock looked odd. It was selling for a fairly cheap price so grabbed a bottle. It is indeed a new bottle design!

How can you tell?
+ Much taller - Lucid is now the one absinthe that does not fit in my cabinet (it used to).
+ Squarer shoulders - no longer as rounded at the top... had a sharper, squarer edge.
+ No more "dimple" at the bottom of the bottle.
+ Labeling seems the same otherwise.

I had to sample it as well. It is nearly the same as I remember BUT doesn't have that "funk/beet" taste which in the past turned me off so much. I am very pleased with that! [probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the bottle shape, of course]

I have shifted most of my original scores up a bit in consideration of this. There must have been something off about the previous bottling as this is a clean, crisp spirit which doesn't exhibit any of the peculiarities noted in my original review. It is quite tasty!

A well-made absinthe that is available just about everywhere. Not a bad situation we have here.


ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Appearance: The color is a light green/yellowish as most other absinthes I've seen. Nothing remarkable but nothing offensive either :)

Louche: I like how this one louches. It sort of builds from bottom to top and retains a thin layer of unlouched absinthe until about nearly prepared. The louche itself is nice and thick - which tends to be my preference.

Aroma: Definitely smells like absinthe - but for the underlying beet scents. I find them to be distracting of the other aromas and that's really too bad. This is definitely the weak point in this absinthe! I enjoy some other absinthes that just blossom with aroma and wash over you... not this one though.

Flavor: Nice, usual, and as expected. Little bit of numbing and warmth - which is nice.

Mouthfeel: Has an okay creaminess to it as I would expect from the louche - though I'm too inexperienced to know whether these two qualities go hand-in-hand.

Finish: Nothing particularly striking.

Overall: I'm going to let this age a bit and see whether that underlying scent goes away. I have a bottle of Kubler which is a few months old and where at first it had an odd sort of "funk" to the scent... after hanging around in my absinthe cupboard it no longer does. Let's do a little experiment with Lucid :)

Definitely not the poor product some make it out to be - but I have (in my limited experience) had much better for the same price.