What's your poison?

Back in 1998, everybody was banging on about absinthe. You remember the stuff: green, potent and laced - so it was said - with hallucinogenic agents. For about six months, every bar-bore in London could tell you that Oscar Wilde was a big fan of absinthe, how Toulouse-Lautrec had a penchant for drinking it from a hollow walking stick and that Van Gogh cut off his ear while under its influence.

Green Bohemia, the company responsible for introducing Londoners to this modern-day witches' brew, were doing very nicely thank you. Not only was everybody talking about the drink, but their brand (Hill's) was the only one on the market.

And then the trouble started. As with all good ideas, it didn't take long for the copycats to get hold of it and before you could say Toulouse-Lautrec, London was awash with absinthe. Green Bohemia's director George Rowley and his colleagues were concerned. 'Absinthe is one of the world's strongest liquors and you have to be careful with it,' he warns. 'We were worried that some of our competitors may not be as scrupulous as we were about who they sold it to.'

In addition to the possibility of unwitting absinthe drinkers over-indulging, the directors were, one assumes, just a little concerned about their profit margins. The remedy, they decided, was to launch another brand of absinthe so pure and authentic that it would make the others look like alcopops.

La F?e is, according to Rowley, the ultimate absinthe. As soon as Johnny Depp heard about it, he sent a white stretch limo to pick up a couple of crates. Curator of the Paris Absinthe Museum, Madame Delahaye, has put her seal of approval on the recipe (a closely guarded secret, of course) and it's apparently the only absinthe mixologist Dick Bradsell will shake a sugar-coated absinthe spoon at.

'We're really pleased with the end result and it's created a lot of waves within the drinks industry,' says Rowley. 'There just isn't room in the market for all the absinthe that's currently on offer, so La F?e is definitely going to cause some casualties.' Let battle commence.