ARIA Las Vegas

Las Vegas Green Fairy Tales: The Absinthe Bar at Sage, CityCenter

Filed under: Spirits

Of all inevitable places to have an Absinthe Bar, it's Las Vegas. And there it was, at the Sage Restaurant in Aria, part of the CityCenter enclave of exceptional architecture, retail, dining, and now, Absinthe. With that said, Sage is not the only place in Las Vegas to drink Absinthe -- Liquidity at Luxor, and the bars at Wynn have it also, but Sage's Absinthe service has a wide variety of type, education and drinking experience.. You leave there really knowing about the evolution and mystery of this unusual liqueur.

Absinthe's history is tied to heightened creativity, murder, dementia, and criminality. For 95 years, it was illegal to bring it into the United States. Absinthe is a 140-proof green liqueur made from fennel, anise, and the exceptionally bitter leaves of Artemisia Absinthium. That last ingredient, also known as wormwood, gives the drink its name, as well as its complex, sinister, yet creative reputation. Wormwood has in it an ingredient -- Thujone-- considered for years to be hallucinogenic. For a century, Absinthe was demonized and outlawed, based on the belief that it leads to Absinthism - a disease that supposedly caused epilepsy, dementia, hallucinations, and murder.

Tags: Absinthe, Absinthe History, Aria Las Vegas, CityCenter Las Vegas, Grand Absente Absinthe, Kubler Absinthe, Le Tourment Vert Absinthe, louche, Lucid Absinthe, Mansinthe Absinthe, Obsello Absinthe, Pernod 68, Sage Restaurant, Sochi 2014, St. Geogre Vert Absinthe, Thujone, types of Absinthe, Wormwood

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CityCenter: The New Urban Vision of Las Vegas

by Susan Kime (RSS feed) —

Filed under: By Design

On the back cover of a recent New Yorker Magazine, bastion of serious fiction, non-fiction and poetry, was a full page ad that took me by surprise, especially after I had just traveled there for the Luxury Summit conference. It said, " So you're not a Vegas person... " and then in huge block letters, "ARE YOU SURE?" It was an ad for CityCenter, and touted all the great art, great culture, restaurants and cultural atmosphere found there. But that ad stuck with me, as the inference was the theme I was going to explore: could a visionary development on a grand scale change personal tourist attitudes toward a destination? And conversely, could Las Vegas actually be perceived differently because of one grand multi-use venue?

In thinking about this, it is crucial to remember that Las Vegas is a desert city, situated in a barren Mojave desert valley. The city is about 2000 feet above sea level, it rains, on average, less that 5 inches a year. But visionaries have come here before, dreamed big dreams, and built. Historically, Las Vegas's persona is tied to big gaming and play in all its dark and light dimensions. But the building of CityCenter challenges this Las Vegas stereotype, as its vision hopes to resculpt and redesign Las Vegas's neon persona, by creating a design as well as an eco-sensitive aesthetic unseen and untried anywhere else. Here are some basic dimensions.

Tags: ARIA Las Vegas, citycenter, CityCenter Las Vegas, Crystals Las Vegas, Infinity World Development Corp., Jim Murren, Las Vegas, Leed Gold certification, LEED Gold certified, Mandarin Oriental, MGM Mirage, Vdara Hotel