The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail

Bottoms Up!

This is an absorbing tour into the world of absinthe, the notorious alcohol that was globally banned by 1915 and then widely legalized again in the early 2000s. The author examines how one man fooled collectors into paying exorbitant prices for bottles of forged “pre-ban” absinthe.  

Alongside the uncovering of the forger, we learn about the history of absinthe, the bad reputation it gained, underground absintheurs, as well as bootlegging in Switzerland. There is a mystique about the drink, including the way it visually changes as water is dripped into it over special spoons balancing sugar cubes atop the glasses. Drinking it is almost a ritual. A culture is enmeshed in the absinthe scene that rivals the enthusiasms of oenophiles.  I found all of it very informative and entertaining. 

 

I’m not much of a drinker, but I wouldn’t mind trying this just once. I want to see the whole process—an interactive drinking experience. One should be enough for me. Then I might just start singing, and I’m not a good singer!  

 

Last year my husband and I took a cooking class. We rode our bikes there for Polynesian night. It was so much fun!  As we watched the chef make all kinds of delicious goodies that we got to taste, my husband and I also shared a bottle of red wine. Just a normal bottle, not a magnum, double magnum, or an imperial, which is the equivalent of eight standard bottles.  But that one tiny bottle was enough for me to sing “Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me” all the way on the bike ride home. Just those lines over and over. That’s all I knew and that was good enough for me.  So one little glass of absinthe might just be all I need to venture into pirateland again.

 

Absinthe has a bad reputation for being a hallucinogenic—which is not true. Read the book. The rumors were rampant though and one Swiss man in 1905 was convicted of killing his wife and two kids mainly because he drank two glasses of absinthe. That was the last straw that drove him to insanity, the judge determined. Forget the fact that he had drunk eleven glasses of red wine, one cognac and soda, a crème de menthe, and two coffees with brandy before he ventured into the unforgiving absinthe arena. You’ll read more about that in the book.

 

What really drew me to read about absinthe is that I knew many famous artists and writers had habitual hankerings for the green liquid, also known as the green fairy.  Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Hemingway, Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec all enjoyed it. The book points out many of the paintings featuring absinthe and drinkers. Here are a few of them:

Above: Absinthe Drinker by Degas (that should look familiar to you if you’ve watched the movie, The Glass Onion)

Above: Monsieur Boileau at the Café by Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893. At the Cleveland Museum of Art

Above: The Absinthe Drinker by Viktor Oliva. The painting is in a restaurant in Prague. 

This book will be published October15, 2024

Happy Reading! Santé!

Annette