What is really stated in this passage is that absinthe tastes like licorice, and that everything else that a person waits a long time to try also tastes like licorice. What this passage actually means, however, is that things are better (or seem better) when you wait for them. For example, a driver's license is not an extraordinary thing in itself, but it seems so much better when a person has had to wait his or her whole life to obtain it. The freedom of being on the road may even also be described as "sweet"- like licorice.
The things that people wait for in life (unless they are food-related, technically) do not actually taste like licorice, but it relates the literal action of the story to the figurative meaning behind it by relating to the reader's understanding that things seem sweeter when they have been looked forward to for a long time.
