Color: A pale greenish yellow.

Louche: Unlike other reviews, I got a pretty decent louche with lots of greens, blues and whites.

Aroma: Very herbal. I pick up cinnamon and flowers, but with a tinge of something like vinegar. No real wormwood or anise.

Flavor: Biting acridity and bitterness. There are hints of sweetness at the forefront, but followed by highly astringent and bitter flavors. It's tough to even finish the sample size I poured.

Finish: Same acrid flavors are present in the finish. Luckily it doesn't last that long.

Overall: If you're stuck with a bottle, you might want to try it with a lot of sugar. It might help. I'd never buy it though.

Color: that olive color is somewhat attractive, nothing that looks really artificial here, just a bit unusual.



Louche: the louche is too slow to form and does not complete. The result is translucent, a half louche.



Aroma: alcohol comes first, then a citronella candle-like scent, and finally a (kinda) wormwood perfume. All in all, after you get over that strong alcohol nose, you're left with a medicinal aroma, something definitely not absinthe-like.



Taste: I wished the scoring system would include "1/2" because that's all this product deserves. The taste is unpleasantly bitter and chemical, with a melissa flavor but again in a medicinal way. The vervain they macerate must have changed the taste of individual herbs badly. It also bites, but not from a savory and fruity green anise, it just bites...



Finish: It leaves nothing on your palate, except a little lemonish note and bitterness.



Overall: If you've already bought a bottle of that 'thing', better sink it now and drink a cough syrup instead, at least you would know why the taste is medicinal!

The Elie-Arnaud Denoix distillery produces a rather nice Pastis (Pastis des Terres Rouges) and should have better remained in that direction instead of trying to produce a thujone-free 'absinthe'. Sort of like the Domaines de Provence distillery who produces a very good pastis (Henry Bardouin) and a bad 'absinthe' (Absente).



Additional note: E.-A.D. is now sold in the US under the name "MYTHE".



mthuilli