Michael Jackson once said that it doesn't matter if your black or white, however,
this got me thinking...
In practical terms the only two types of absinthe that you'll run up against these days are of the green variety and the white variety. Yes, there is a red variety as well, however, they are far rarer than the previous two so in terms of this post they'll be ignored (or, if you insist, read every mention of "green" as "green and red"...). So, practically speaking, we're stuck with 2 colors or, I should say, one level of saturation.
Without discussing the miracle that is distillation and the absinthe making process, I'll stick with simple color analogies.
Let's say we are trying to reach color A. Color A needs to be a specific green but the only colors we have to use are ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow. We mix some blue and yellow and get a greenishy-yellow thing, too far! The yellow was too strong for the blue so to bring it down a bit we add more blue. Great, we're now at a slight blueish-green color so we tweak it a bit with a bit more yellow. Ok, great. We're there. But we'ved added so much blue that the green has now darkened down in tone so we're going to have to lighten it a bit. Naturally, we go to our whites. Not too much white since we're not wanting to go grey but just enough white! Uh-oh! the white we added was on the cool side and now we're back to cool light green. Add yellow you say? No, please don't. You'll only waste your time. We've ruined it and must start over.
To achieve a clear, however, is a different ball game. Since the game is all about reduction we simply have to reduce and filter out anything that could harm a product that we want to be translucent. Think Adobe Photoshop slider bar--we start with a true color and simply desaturate until it's colorless and lower the opacity until it's clear. If we selected what we needed to select and had our monitors calibrated to a fine degree (for inspection purposes) we should be left with a pure result. If, however, our machine is faulty or we're running on a tight deadline we may miss something and create a flawed result. This method, however, produces far more predictable results than the previous.
A bit simple perhaps but useful. Perhaps it is better to think in terms of saturation only. White being completely desaturated and green being fully saturated. Achieving green takes more skill through the addition of another coloring step, achieving white does not since there are no further steps.
So how does one review and read the scores of a blanche versus a verte? Clear is clear. I mean, yeah, if it ain't clear it ain't clear. But on the other hand, green poses lots of problems and finding the perfect green is something that is tricky--to say the least. Is it artificial green? too green? not green enough? too much yellow? too light? too dark? etc. etc. etc. These problems don't happen so much with the clear variety.
Which brings me to scoring.
Once we achieve "clear" there's nowhere left for us to go but down. To quote from WS's review guide: "In a blanche, or white absinthe, the color should be crystal clear and white and free of any tint or hue." Theoretically, a perfectly clear blanche can/should rank at 5 all the time. This, however, is not exactly a good deal since it's nearly impossible for a verte, by their category alone, to get a perfect score.
Simply put, there are far too many variables for verte's and far too few for blanches and as such, the blanche's score must be leveraged against the fact that a verte is a far harder production.
If anything this caveat needs to be ingrained into the head of the reader so that they may interpret the results correctly: Blanches are clear and they score high in the color category. Some folks rank them as fives, others (taking heed of the verte/blanche issue) rank them down a bit but regardless--unless there's some serious issues with the blanche (which you'd read about in the summaries) it may almost be best to ignore the color ranking altogether.
Unfortunately, verte's are a different story as they're a snatch and grab world of subjective nightmares. Read the previous statement: "Is it artificial green? too green? not green enough? too much yellow? too light? too dark? etc. etc. etc." and, as such, that is for another day.
In short, go with God, proceed with an educated mind, and be mindful that all reviews are subjective but since I opened with Michael Jackson, I may as well close with a terribly modified paraphrase as well:
If you're thinkin' of being my absinthe, it don't matter if you're green or white.
