Color
Quite pale olive oil green. Natural looking, but not riveting in any way.

Louche
Good oily looking trails at first while cloudiness builds from the bottom. They quickly turn from trails to big rolling explosions. Nice to watch. Cloudiness builds pretty quickly, and the drink is mostly opaque by a little over 1:1. Final color is a light greenish yellow, white highlights, and greenish white meniscus. Nothing wrong with this color, just nothing particularly arresting, either. Kind of flat.

Aroma
Pre-louche, anise and some wormwood and a lot of alcohol. Louched, primarily wormwood with good support from the anise and fennel. Aromas are fairly faint, not very assertive. Nonetheless, all the expected components are present and in good balance. Still nicely herbal, with a little florality and spice. In the second evaluation, I detected a slight "stewed vegetable" funk.

Flavor
Certainly proper absinthe. Wormwood, anise, and fennel are all in quite nice balance. Not a powerhouse of flavor, but nicely correct. A little excessive heat on the palate. As with aroma, all facets of palate are in good balance. The "funk" in the aroma does not carry over to the palate. Both flavors and aromas improve noticeably with air and increased temperature.

Finish
Nice gentle drying and astringency on the finish followed by a little burst of spice and some heat. The finish accurately wraps up what the nose and palate portend. There's a little prickliness in the tongue from the alcohol, a little more water may help, but I'm concerned about really diminishing the aromas and flavors.

Overall
This would be a fine intro to absinthe for anyone. Everything is correct, nothing overdone. Not distinctive, but I'm sure the producer went to good lengths to make sure they would have dead consistency in this product. It almost seems to be designed to not offend anyone, and there's always a sacrifice when one plays not to loose... diminished personality, distinctiveness, and excitement. On the other hand, someone needs to make that centerline product that defines the category. This may be it.

7/06/09 Revisit - All original scores and text is unaltered. New observations are that the "funk" to which I refer in the original review, I'm sure, is the beet alcohol base showing itself from time to time. Also, more water didn't hurt it at all. This offering, in my opinion, is exactly as I titled it... "Centerline". Knowing what I know now, I think it is remarkable that Mr. Breaux can make so much of this and have it in such wide distribution as he does, and maintain this quality level. Many others do not. This was my 4th review on WS. With another eight months and 30 CO's of absinthe study under my belt, my current opinion is that it is one to get to know, after which it is easier to understand "for better or for worse". And believe me, you could do a lot worse. A LOT worse.

Done with a 1 ounce dose, diluted 3:1, 4:1, and no sugar.

Lucid 11/08/08, 11/12/08, 7/06/09.
All evaluations had consistent notes.