The color is a very attractive feuille-mort. Very clear, bright and natural.



The louche is very fast and the action is not very exciting. A wall of clouds rises up from the bottom, and is complete by about 2 to 1. The louched color, though, is very nice with greener hues than the original color seemed to promise. Looks very rich and creamy to me.



The aroma really knocked me out. There is an amazing bass note of honey, new-mown grass, and clover up front. Later you smell the anise, basil, tarragon, lemon balm. It makes me hungry. I want to eat a giant plate of lasagna and drink the whole bottle. God, I dream about this aroma and wake up wanting more, no kidding.



The flavor is not exactly what the aroma promises. The anise comes on fast with a minty heat and is immediately overtaken by the wormwood. So much for first impressions. If you wait a moment longer the other flavors of basil and tarragon start asserting themselves. The bitterness lingers but is not out of balance. If you believe in the holy trinity of anise, fennel and wormwood, you may find this completely over the top. But I am digging the complexity.



The finish is more abrupt than the aroma. The wormwood bitterness lingers along with a somewhat hot antiseptic taate from the basil, and the alcohol seems a little more predominant at this point than is really desirable.



Overall, this is a *very* interesting departure from the path blazed by the new absinthe distillers. It is astonishingly good with food. Pour an ounce in your spaghetti sauce and you will weep tears of joy. I bought a second bottle right away just to make sure I don't run out. It is definitely quirky, and you may not like it. Or like me, you may find that the aroma penetrates your dreams and drags you back again and again. As others have said, maybe this is a uniquely California take on absinthe, as the Taboo is uniquely Canadian.