St George in the News

Lance Winters at the St George distillery (Image: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)

St George Absinthe is the first absinthe to be both produced and sold in the US since US Tobacco and Alcohol regulatory agency, the TTB, passed legislation allowing for its sale late last year. Along side Ted Breaux’s Lucid and Kubler (read our review here) the label has garnered much attention from within the US as currently these three houses dominate the market. However, the international absinthe community has also been watching St George, partly out of sheer curiousity (it being the first ‘premium’ absinthe to emerge from the US), partly due to it’s ‘unorthodox’ formulation, which includes wormwood, star anise, mint, lemon balm, hyssop and fennel… as well as meadowsweet, basil, tarragon and stinging nettles on a 60% brandy alcohol base. Note: this absinthe is not currently available from Australia.

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Though nettles and tarragon may be a little exotic to some drinkers, it must be remembered the countless pre-ban absinthe houses in operation during the 19th and 20th centuries used all manner of botanicals and vegetable ingredients, so St George is not as anomalous as it may seem. A surprisingly in-depth feature interview with head distiller (and former nuclear engineer) Lance Winters has just appeared via a US new site, and you can read the full interview here. In it he explains his somewhat unusual method of drinking absinthe, but more significantly he contextualises the recent boom in interest from American shores.

More coverage of St George Absinthe can be found here, here and at La Fee Verte