Cary Bonnecaze is known for many things. Music fans know the Baton Rouge native as the co-founder and original drummer of the alternative rock band, Better than Ezra. Fellow alums of University High School know him as a talented placekicker who walked on to the LSU football team while in college. And over the last several years, the home interiors world has come to recognize him as a key collector, authority and producer of all things absinthe with his business, Maison Absinthe.
“It started from a personal passion for anything from France,” Bonnecaze says. “My family is French on both sides.”
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Absinthe’s storied history began in late 19th century France, when it became a staple of Parisian café culture and the choice aperitif of artists and writers. Drinking it required the sort of free time that life afforded back then, since it was “dripped” first.
Too bitter to sip straight, it was made palatable by perching sugar cubes on a specially designed flat spoon placed on top of an absinthe glass. A patron would drip cold water onto the sugar cubes from a multi-spouted absinthe fountain, allowing water to pass through the cubes and fall through detailed perforations on the spoon’s surface until the spirit was sweetened and diluted to taste. The natural green hue turned cloudy in the process, helping it garner the nickname, “Green Fairy.”
Read on for the full story from the April issue of 225.