I recently had a chance to sit down with Cheryl for an afternoon and chat away about Delaware Phoenix, getting a brand onto the market, and all other things absinthe. Ms. Lins proved to be absolutely charming and down-to-Earth, in addition to showing her sound understanding of the fine drink we call absinthe.

Both of her brands, Walton Waters and Meadow of Love absinthe, are available now at DUNY and Astor Wines & Spirits. Since their debut, they have sold out at both retailers within days. In addition, both brands have been embraced with universally positive feedback from The Wormwood Society. Congratulations to Cheryl and Delaware Phoenix for a hugely successful debut!

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Cheryl: I saw a New Yorker article from early 2006 about making absinthe in France and it intrigued me, this idea of absinthe. The name was familiar, but I really didn’t know what it was other than what it said in the article, a high-proof alcohol. I ended-up ordering a bottle of Jade Edouard from LDF, and it grew from there. What started my distilling? I don’t know how I got the idea to begin distilling! It’s just one of those crazy things where eventually you get so obsessed with spirit and its history, you start to wonder, “well, how did they make this?”

Cheryl: A lot of what I wanted to do was, because I’m a micro distillery located out of the way, I really wanted to focus on supporting this area. It’s had a long-term history of agriculture, but that has probably been in decline since the 60s, and I wanted to do something to build up this area again. So to give the absinthe a name that would reflect the area seemed appropriate. Also for myself, I look at absinthe as a 21^st century spirit. Certainly it had its greatest heyday in the 19^th century and early 20^th century, but now we’re beyond that. I was never one who wanted to dress-up in the 19^th century style or anything like that, so I wanted to move away from the standard sort of French names given to many of the brands on the market currently.

Walton Waters actually started out as a little joke. There was a terrible flood here in 2006, and there was 3 feet of water in the building I‘m in now. And I had pictures of the flood waters. I said, “I’m not sure what I want to do yet, so I’ll just use this picture as a placeholder for now”, which was a picture of a partially submerged car *laughs*! Of course I couldn’t use that, and I didn’t want it to look like the absinthe that flooded Walton, so I ended-up using a picture of the Delaware River that runs through Walton, which is the label for that brand Walton Waters.

As for the other, originally I was trying to think of ways, again, to support the area. What types of things do we have here? We have meadows and the natural herbs that grow in those meadows. I thought “well, I can’t call everything, Walton this and Walton that. That would be a little bit dumb.” But I still wanted to use the word “meadows“, and it just came to me, “Meadow of Love”. There is this field where the first flowers are always dandelions; it was covered with dandelions! But the picture was taken when they had all turned to puffballs, which is what you’re seeing in the picture.

So that’s were how the names came about.

Cheryl: Yes, I think when you get down to this level of personalizing an absinthe, everyone is going to have their own ideas for names. But they shouldn’t be tied to what other people want them to be, then its just a name. But then, the important thing is what’s in the bottle!

Cheryl: They both have six core herbs: anise, wormwood, fennel, roman wormwood, hyssop, lemon balm, and each has one additional herb. In the case of the Walton Waters there’s a variant of thyme called lemon thyme, but there’s really only a small quantity, it’s like an accent.

For Meadow of Love, it is violet, which uses flowers in addition to the leaves of the plant, so it gives a different flavour. I would say the Walton Waters is probably more traditional. Strong pontica in the colouring, and hyssop, lemon balm, and thyme accent that. Meadow of Love is a dryer absinthe, and has a lot more hyssop. I found, in my opinion at least, that the violet when used as an herb can add to that dryness.