Return of the Green Fairy: absinthe is back after chemist clones drink banned in 1915

In the middle of a weekday afternoon in a respectable apartment in northern Paris, we are about to consume a "wicked" drink which was banned in France 91 years ago.

An elaborate water fountain drips into a pair of antique drinks glasses, shaped like egg-timers. The pale green liquid in the bottom of the nearest glass clouds like a crystal ball.

After a few seconds, the cloud assumes strange shapes - like a genie in a bottle or a miniature green tornado - which twist and dance in the narrow neck of the glass.

The mysterious liquid in the egg-timer glasses is absinthe: "La Fée Verte" (the "green fairy"), the drink which fuelled (and some say ruined) a brilliant generation of French writers and painters in the late 19th century.

This is not the poor imitation of absinthe created in the Czech Republic and Germany in the 1990s and marketed to gullible young clubbers hungry for cheap thrills. This is the real thing.

One of the bottles in front of us on the table is a 99-year-old bottle of CF Verger "Suisse" absinthe, discovered a couple of years ago in a Corsican cellar. Another is a bottle of "Verte Suisse", a painstaking modern re-creation of the CF Verger original, distilled in France by an American chemist and marketed worldwide by an American former jeweller.

I try both. Both are extraordinary. They are rich, electric and fresh, like drinking a malt whisky made from wild flowers.

My companion is Peter Schaf, 44, a former jeweller from Florida and Wisconsin, who married a Frenchwoman and came to live in France 12 years ago. After various ventures, he started a company, called Liqueurs de France, which markets specialist drinks and especially absinthe. His partner is Ted Breaux, 39, a chemist from New Orleans, who has analysed the contents of surviving bottles of pre-ban absinthe and cloned or "retro-engineered " three modern absinthe brands.

His company, Jade Liqueurs, sells 5,000 bottles a year for around €75 (£52) a bottle. Hold on a moment. Is absinthe not illegal, banned in France in 1915 as a danger to public morals and national survival? Is it not hallucinogenic? Is it not still as dangerous today as when it (allegedly) drove Vincent van Gogh to slice off his ear?

Absinthe has never been banned in Britain. In the US, it is illegal to make it or sell it but you are permitted to own it or drink it. In France, thanks to an EU directive transposed into French law in 1988, the situation is as cloudy and as enthralling (and as French) as a glass of absinthe itself. You can make and sell absinthe so long as you don't call it absinthe but " extracts of absinthe".

Under the 1988 law, "new absinthe" must not contain the harmful substances which the old absinthe contained, except that - according to modern research - the old absinthe never did contain harmful substances in the first place.

"If you speak to 99 per cent of French people, even well-informed French people, they believe that absinthe is still banned in France," said Mr Schaf. "They still believe that it is an evil drink, which drives you blind or crazy, or both. "They are wrong on the first count and they are definitely wrong on the second count." Even if absinthe was never as harmful as calumny and legend insists, why revive it? Does the world not have enough hard drinks, without reinventing one?

"Mostly I am interested in the truth," said Mr Breaux, who is now based in Alabama. "It infuriated me that people could take some industrial alcohol and add green dye, as some of the 1990s absinthe makers did, and market it to crazy kids as a devil's drink which would make them 'see things'. "We want to restore the reputation of absinthe - the real absinthe - as a fascinating, delicious drink which, if you take in moderation, tastes like nothing else on the market."

What is absinthe? Absinthe is the French word for "wormwood" (Artemisia absinthium), a plant in the daisy family which has medicinal properties but can be harmful and is reputed to be one of the bitterest-tasting herbs in creation. Absinthe, the drink, was created - or perhaps developed and first marketed successfully - in Switzerland and the Doubs region of eastern France in the early 19th century.

Traditionally, it contained wormwood and green anise and differing combinations of other herbs, especially "little" or Roman wormwood (Artemisia pontica), fennel and hyssop. In the 1850s, the French wine industry was devastated by an aphid-like pest called phylloxera. Most vines had to be replanted, making wine scarce and expensive in France. Absinthe filled the gap, becoming the standard drink of all classes.

By the turn of the century - the "Belle Epoque", when Paris was the artistic and literary centre of the world - the smell and taste of absinthe pervaded France but especially the bohemian world of artists and writers in Parisian cafés and dance halls such as Le Rat Mort and Le Chat Noir.

David Nathan-Maister is a British-based trader in antique and new absinthes and absinthe memorabilia, who runs the best absinthe site on the internet - the Virtual Absinthe Museum (www.oxygenee.com). He says that absinthe was the victim of a manipulation. "There never was anything dangerous about absinthe, so long as it was made properly and drunk sensibly," he said.

By the end of the 19th century, the French wine industry had recovered from the phylloxera infestation and wanted its market back.

An unholy alliance formed between the wine lobby, the temperance lobby and conservative politicians who associated absinthe with avant-garde bohemianism. There are now several makers of reasonably authentic absinthe, in France, Spain and Switzerland. However, David Nathan-Maister believes that Ted Breaux's "Jade" absinthes are the only ones to get close to the taste of the pre-1915 original.