The tipple that's mad, bad and dangerous to know - bar none

It sent Toulouse-Lautrec mad, inspired visions in Van Gogh, and rumour has it that it pushed Ernest Hemingway towards suicide.

The green fairy, as absinthe was known, has a lot to answer for - and now it is spreading its wings over London.

The new absinthe bar underneath The Brompton Bar and Grill in Knightsbridge is London's first establishment dedicated to the noxious spirit, which is typically a pale emerald green, with a taste of herbs and aniseed and 70 per cent proof.

Absinthe, the drink of choice among 19th-century bohemians such as Oscar Wilde, was banned in France in 1914 for causing wildness, lasciviousness and hallucinations - and funnily enough, these are precisely the reasons it is now enjoying a revival.

While it is still forbidden in much of Europe, absinthe never caught on in Britain in the first place, so was never banned. It arrived here in the Nineties, imported by the team behind the magazine The Idler, but it is really only now that we are getting to taste the good stuff, such as La Fée.

Absinthe is not only injecting a spirit of euphoria into the bars of London, but also house parties, cosy supper gatherings (one newspaper ran a recipe for absinthe cake) and even in the cinema. Next year sees the release of The Absinthe Drinkers, a film starring John Hurt and Alicja Bachleda, harking back to 19th-century Paris. It's the cautionary tale of a gifted female painter dragged into debauchery; the green concoction heightens her creativity, eases her misery and turns her a bit nuts.

It's no wonder The Rebel Dining Society, an underground collective of London foodies, recently served the bohemian, devil-may-care spirit in an absinthe-themed menu. This included cocktails created by mixologists from Islington's 69 Colebrooke Row and an absinthe chocolate truffle dessert.

At the new absinthe bar in Brompton Road, where the leather seats and the walls are green and Parisian sketches explode out of the subterranean gloom, you can experience a modern take on fin-de-siècle Paris. The cocktails are served with a contemporary twist: the Absinthe Caipirinha is a blend of Absinthe La Clandestine, brown sugar and lime juice. However, the true way to drink absinthe is in shot form. It is the ritual that makes it fun. A slotted silver spoon with a cube of white sugar sits over your glass of absinthe.

You place it under a water fountain and let the water drip through, slowly dissolving the sugar into the absinthe, creating a "louche". It's a kind of Art Deco heroin ritual - so much more elegantly drawn out than a tequila slammer. The waiters - one of whom performed brain-curdling magic tricks that made you believe in the green fairy - were on hand to help you with the exact ratios of absinthe/sugar/water.

The experience didn't send me mad, but it certainly turned me absinthe-minded. It's best to avoid more than one glass on a week night and stay clear of 19th-century French habits - in 1860s Paris, 5pm was known as L'Heure Verte, the green hour. Two glasses is enough for me - any more and it can give you an aversion to the floor, making you feel that you can take flight. At a recent weekend lunch I hosted, a friend brought a bottle from Prague; the lunch went on for 13 hours and the guests danced on the chairs.