Absinthe’s history mirrors the way it’s meant to be prepared: a mix of the misunderstood and the legitimately unusual. For most of its existence, the spirit has been slandered, ostracized and, in ...

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Explore all of our favorites at chicagoreader.com/food/reader-bites. The ...

FAIRYTALES: “The No. 1 misconception is that it will make you completely trip out," says The Conundrum bartender Jax Hammond of absinthe, a legendary and often misunderstood spirit that's acquired the ...

One of my favorite parts of tending bar is clearing up misconceptions about alcohol. The biggest one has to be the old saw about beer before liquor or vice versa. (Answer: It doesn’t matter, except ...

It all started in Provence with a glass of rose wine. Well, actually, a glass of pastis before the rose. While Paul Sanguinetti, lead mixologist for the Patina Group, was in France studying wine, he ...

After nearly a century on ice, absinthe is back on the street. Served as a mysterious milky elixir, fashioned into creative cocktails or set aflame and drunk by the shot, the heady, anise-flavored ...

A sugar cube is cradled by a slotted spoon balanced on top of a glass of absinthe. (Courtesy of Southern Food and Beverage Museum) There's something romantic about absinthe — that naturally green ...

The phrase “think green” is supposed to stir ecologically friendly mental images of clean air, unpolluted streams and lush foliage. But for this country’s lovers of absinthe, the term has an entirely ...

Graydon Carter’s semiprivate club carries over absinthe’s tradition as the spirit of choice for the artistically inclined: from Rimbaud and Toulouse-Lautrec to… Well, we’re not sure who dines there; ...