Appearance: the typical peridot green, with no sediment. Classy package, the bottle comes wrapped in brown paper with black prints. The bottle itself has a neat design, modern but with references to tradition.

Louche: kind of a thunderstom: green dominates but orange is there with some blue. Oily trails. At 1:4 it starts weakening but remains green.

Aroma: Before adding water one can perceive anise, some lovely alcohol (I’d say wine alcohol), grapes, tobacco leaves, freshly cut grass in summer, hay drying under the sun. With water the aroma intensifies a lot, it becomes more herbaceous. There are so many different plants that it triggers memories of me being a 6 years old kid in the countryside amidst tobacco and corn fields, my hands dirty with grass.

Taste: the holy trinity is clearly dominated by wormwood, without being unbalanced. Taste is consistent with aroma, not too sweet, beautifully bitter. It is very round, thick to the tongue.

Finish: Devoille's wine alcohol seems to hold all the aromas forever.

Overall: this is the third Devoille absinthe I try. I had the very affordable Libertine Amer and Libertine 55 before, and I liked them a lot for their well defined personality and their amazing price/quality ratio. Centenaire is a different beast, with much higher ambitions, and I am glad to acknowledge that Devoille can also make top of the shelf stuff. The many different herbs really triggered something in my memory. Can it get better than this?