Dose was 40ml to 200ml of chilled water.

Color: I have purchased several bottles of Lucid. There is some inconsistency in the color. For this review, the color happened to be a pale yellowish-green, slightly cloudy, but I have had others where it is more green and clearer. Rather than a count against, I take this as a by-product of natural techniques applied.

Louche: I drip water from a measuring cup that has a "beaker-like" protrusion for pouring. The louche forms quickly from the bottom, and larger *blop* drops of water burst into clouds, as opposed to bursting into tangles of trails. So the louche is faster forming than some, but with nice refractive attributes and that "what color *is* that?" kind of green/greyish/amber hue.

Aroma: Pre-louche, it is somewhat strongly alcohol but with kind of a "smoky" melange around an anise core. Post-louche: I love this aroma. It is anise but subdued by a heady mixture, which seems to be that smokiness "exploded". That mixture... I live on a farm, in the spring, the meadow air has components of this aroma: that combination of flowery and weedy and grassy and woody. In this case, I am weighing more heavily in favor of the post-louche aroma with the number rating, because pre-louche is fairly harshly alcohol. Smelling the louched glass is almost as nice as drinking from it.

Flavor: Louched, I bring it up for a sip, and the combination of aroma and flavor reminds me of my great-grandmother's house. Is this because she was alive during the Belle Epoch? Because you don't just taste an alcoholic drink, you smell and taste it at once. Her house had a potpourri aroma mingled with a mixture of dusty antiquity and brass. Knickknacks everywhere, a clutter, but her ancient and thickly bespectacled visage also provided a focus, as the anise does in this flavor.


Finish: Yes, there is a murkiness, an indeteriminant jumble, like the items cluttering the shelves, and this fades behind the gentle insistence of the wormwood, but also a sweet clarity in the integration of the anise. The pressed meadow foliage reconstituted in the louche, tethered by the wormwood, dancing around that sweet anise maypole, fading softly into light anise notes as the wormwood dances up just slight into the sinuses! Did I mention I was slightly biased in the title of this review!?!

Overall: Ok, ok. So I have not tasted the greats of antiquity. The sole "solid 4" rating among these reviews that I have experienced is Kubler 53, and I would rate it higher than Lucid. But there is obviously a crafted effort that has gone into this liquor that surpasses an artful bottle and cashing in on the absinthe mystique. The sweetness of the anise, and the numbing of the wormwood is nicely balanced, with a host of herbal flavors that are at times maybe murkily tangled, but not unpleasantly so. The only real "dings" in the experience as I see them would be the aroma as poured out of the bottle, and some inconsistency in the coloration.