WALTON, N.Y.

AMONG the sleek new group of domestic distillers, Cheryl Lins is an original. Wearing a baseball cap, flannel-lined jeans and wire spectacles, she flits from store to cocktail bar, towing her cardboard box of goods, selling to old customers and looking for new. When making her sales pitch, she sometimes forgets to say that she’s the one who distills it, designs the label, waxes the cork and brings the bottles to market. And by the way: her varieties of absinthe are local.

Since 2007, when the Treasury Department relaxed its position on the sale of absinthe, 13 American distilleries have begun producing the spirit legally, according to the Wormwood Society, a consumer education and advocacy group. Ms. Lins, 56, is the first in New York State, making two versions at Delaware Phoenix, her micro-distillery here. (Another absinthe, distilled in Gardiner, N.Y., and called Edward III, will go on sale next week.)

Customers like Astor Wines & Spirits and the bar Louis 649 seem to find her lack of self-promotion sometimes amusing and mostly refreshing. Justin Chearno, manager of the wine store Uva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said: “When she walked into the store, I saw she had that thing natural winemakers have  an authentic, obsessive thing. When she said she was selling absinthe, not wine, I was, like, ‘You’re kidding!’ Then I tasted. Her flavors and tastes were just as alive.”

Image OF HYSSOP AND VIOLET Cheryl Lins, above and left, is the first distiller of absinthe in New York. Credit... Jennifer May for The New York Times

Five years ago, Ms. Lins was living in a yurt in New Mexico. To escape the heat, she came to this small town in Delaware County, chosen for no apparent reason other than instinct. A computer programmer and watercolorist, she tended the fish counter at the health food store in nearby Delhi. Then one March morning in 2006, The New Yorker arrived in the mail. Inside was an article on absinthe.