Pubdate: Sun, 21 Feb 1999
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 1999, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Contact:  414-224-8280
Website: http://www.jsonline.com/
Forum: http://www.jsonline.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimate.cgi
Author: Gemma Tarlach of the Journal Sentinel staff

ABSINTHE OF MALICE

The drink favored by bohemians in the 19th century is making a
comeback in a generation unfamiliar with its evils

The Green Fairy is taking flight once again.

Absinthe, nicknamed "La Fee Verte" or the Green Fairy, is arguably the most
notorious alcoholic beverage ever created -- and the only one to be singled
out in a near worldwide prohibition that endures to this day. Muse to the
likes of Oscar Wilde and Vincent Van Gogh, the mysterious green liquid has
been a symbol of artistic exploration -- as well as debauchery. Its next
role could very well be the Comeback Kid.

Move over, martini. Stand aside cigar. Absinthe is about to demand your
attention.

"Absinthe is huge now in London," said Larry Samuel of the Minneapolis-based
Iconoculture, which researches pop culture trends. Samuel recently returned
from a trip to the United Kingdom, where absinthe is turning up in trendy
bars and raves. "(It) isn't sweeping New York yet, but it will be, any day."

Well . . . not legally. Absinthe contains enough of a potentially toxic
plant called wormwood for the Food and Drug Administration to consider it an
"adulterated" beverage. The importation, distribution or sale of absinthe
has been illegal in the United States since 1912.

In addition to packing a wallop alcoholically -- made with grain alcohol,
absinthe checks in at 140 proof, about twice as potent as vodka -- the Green
Fairy gets its wings from several herbs, most prominently wormwood.

Wormwood, also known as artemisia, contains a substance known as thujone, a
hallucinogen related to THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the active chemical in
marijuana. In significant quantities, thujone can induce seizures and cause
damage to the brain and liver.

Absinthe also contains the herbs anise and hyssop, both of which, taken in
large quantities, can cause stupefaction and convulsions.

It's the combination of several active chemical compounds and alcohol that
makes the drink a particularly risky witches' brew. Many of the chemical
compounds present in the herbs are neurotoxic, or damaging to the brain, and
"the potential for neurotoxicity increases greatly when you combine these
chemicals with alcohol," said Janis Eells, an associate professor and
toxicologist with the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Some absinthe advocates, however, argue that the amounts of thujone and
other chemicals in the drink are too minimal to cause adverse effects if
absinthe is taken in moderation. And despite the potential dangers lurking
in absinthe's ingredients, a rumor recently was circulated on the Internet
that the FDA was considering an end to the spirit's 77-year-old ban. FDA
spokeswoman Ruth Welch said the agency would not comment on the issue, but
there's already a buzz about the drink on the streets of Milwaukee.

"If all the French Impressionists were gobbling down absinthe, why not a
regular Milwaukee guy like me?" said Eric Kowalski, who works at Atomic
Records on the east side. "We need someone to go to Europe, smuggle some
back and then we'll have ourselves a big absinthe party."

Absinthe is permitted for sale in only a handful of European countries:
Spain, Andorra, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Tom Hodgkinson,
co-director of the English firm Green Bohemia, which imports absinthe from
the Czech Republic and sells it to posh bars around the U.K. for about $70 a
bottle, said he regularly turns down Americans eager to purchase absinthe
via telephone or e-mail.

"The people who've been interested in it are literary hedonists, or people
aspiring to that," said Hodgkinson. "People like myself, who like to imagine
they're talking with Oscar Wilde in a Parisian cafe." Despite the ban on
absinthe, some Green Fairy followers in the U.S. aren't going without.
Making and drinking your own absinthe is not illegal, although it can be
dangerous. Yet home-brewed absinthe is an increasingly popular concoction,
with recipes posted on the Internet and the ingredients readily available --
including in downtown Milwaukee.

An ounce bag of dried wormwood leaves -- absinthe's primary ingredient
besides grain alcohol -- sells for about a dollar at Hand of Glory on
Milwaukee St., for example. Although wormwood is used in some alternative
medicine remedies, Hand of Glory's Mary Walterman said more of her customers
are buying it to make absinthe.

"Absinthe has been increasing in popularity," Walterman said. "We'll get two
or three people coming in for wormwood in a week. And we get a lot of repeat
customers, because making absinthe yourself is really trial and error."

It's the potential for error in brewing your own absinthe that has many
experts -- including those in the pro-absinthe camp -- nervous about the
drink's comeback, particularly if home distillers try to "up" absinthe's
potency.

"If you drank a whole bottle of commercially made absinthe -- although I
know I couldn't drink a whole bottle on my own -- alcohol would be your
major problem, just like if you drank that much vodka," said Barnaby Conrad
III, author of "Absinthe: History in a Bottle" (Chronicle, 1988). "But if
you're making absinthe yourself, and dump a lot of wormwood in it, that's a
different story."

Absinthe recipes on the Internet are often imprecise and poorly sourced.
Both the grain alcohol and wormwood used to make absinthe can be lethal in
large quantities. And in the rush to re-create the euphoria that Oscar Wilde
likened to a sunset, some individuals aren't reading the recipes closely.

In 1996, for example, a 31-year-old man read about absinthe on the Internet
and got his hands on wormwood oil, which contains a far greater
concentration of thujone than found in wormwood leaves. He suffered acute
renal failure and nearly died.

Avid absinthe drinkers of a century ago gave the drink credit for all manner
of artistic visions and literary inspirations. Several poems have been
written just about the ritual of drinking absinthe, which rivals shooting
heroin in its complexity: Pour a shot of the bitter, emerald-colored spirit
into a glass, balance a slotted spoon on the glass rim. Place a sugar cube
on the spoon, and then drizzle cold water over it, letting the sugar slowly
dissolve into the absinthe and turn it a milky "opaline."

"After the first glass," remarked Wilde, "you see things as you wish they
were. After the second, you see things as they are not."

Modern-day "absintheurs" are less romantic about the drink, in part because
they're less inclined to the overindulgence common in the days of Wilde.

Conrad, for example, has enjoyed absinthe on numerous occasions during trips
to Europe, but has not experienced the wild hallucinations that some
scholars believe inspired van Gogh to paint and Poe to write.

"I don't drink absinthe in excess, and if you have a couple glasses, you're
not going to be flying around the room," Conrad said. He describes the taste
as "pleasantly licorice-like."

"We tell people when they're drinking it that they should keep in mind that
it's twice as strong as vodka," said Hodgkinson. "You have one or two,
that's it. It's a treat. It's not like drinking beer in a pub."

Less than 100 years ago, however, having your absinthe was a daily routine
for thousands of Europeas and Americans.

Homemade absinthe recipes had been floating around Europe for centuries when
the Pernod family of distillers (who still make a wormwood-free variation of
absinthe sold under their name) began producing it in mass quantities in
1805. The drink became popular quickly in France and elsewhere in Europe, as
well as in America, particularly in New Orleans' French Quarter, where "The
Old Absinthe House" still stands.

Touted as an elixir and a cure-all, absinthe was even provided by the French
government to troops as a fever preventive in the 1840s. By the end of the
19th century, Paris had more absinthe sellers than bakers and butchers
combined, according to historians.

Absinthe's popularity, in fact, and not its effects, may have been its
undoing. The French government, prodded by the nation's powerful wine
industry, began to take a dim view of the Green Fairy.

"In France, wine comes from grapes and they consider it practically food,"
said Conrad. "But there was a mystery about just what was in absinthe -- it
didn't seem pure."

When alcoholism rates in France began to climb and wine producers grew
nervous about absinthe muscling in on their markets, the Green Fairy became
a scapegoat for society's ills.

Organizations such as the World Prohibition Federation sprang up throughout
Europe and America. Newspaper editorials and grass-roots groups lambasted
absinthe as "one of the great enemies of man."

In 1905, absinthe was blamed in the gruesome murder of a pregnant Swiss
woman and her toddler by the woman's enraged husband. Although relatives and
acquaintances of the man testified that, in the hours before the crime, he
had consumed creme de menthe, two shots of cognac, a "big slug" of strong,
homemade brandy, and almost three liters of wine, prosecutors focused on the
two shots of absinthe he had drunk much earlier in the day.

The "absinthe murder," as it became known, provided the momentum for a
public petition to ban absinthe in Switzerland, and in 1907, the Swiss
government did.

Other nations, including the United States, were quick to follow suit. It
seemed absinthe would live on only in the words of Wilde, Baudelaire and
Hemingway, and the paintings of Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and many
others.

References to the drink turned up occasionally, such as in the 1992 film
"Bram Stoker's Dracula" and on an episode of the fantasy television series
"Highlander," but absinthe was otherwise a historical footnote.

Then along came the Internet. Do a search for the word "absinthe" on the
Internet and you'll find dozens of sites, most with recipes. Just like
conspiracy theorists and other eccentrics, keepers of the absinthe faith
have embraced the World Wide Web as a tool to meet the like-minded and
convert the curious.

Chicago Web page designer Randal Huiskens, for example, is one of a growing
number of people who consider themselves absinthe enthusiasts -- even though
he's never actually tasted the drink.

"I'm going to Europe this spring and hope to try it where it's legal," said
Huiskens, who doesn't trust the safety of the numerous recipes circulating
on the Internet. For the same reason, despite repeated requests, Huiskens
refuses to post recipes on his own absinthe site, at
www.zoomgraphics.com/absinthe/index.html.

Recipes or not, Huiskens' absinthe site is one of the more popular Web
destinations for the curious, and accounts for more than 50% of the traffic
through his total of 25 sites.

"Absinthe was something you couldn't get a lot of information on until the
advent of the Internet," said Huiskens, who added that he became "intrigued"
with the drink during college art history classes that mentioned the Green
Fairy's inspirational effects on van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and many others.

His theory on why absinthe's popularity is growing again: "Absinthe was
banned before our lifetime . . . so it has a mystique to it that something
like marijuana doesn't have."

Conrad sees an ironic twist to absinthe's return via cyberspace that Wilde
and other absintheurs of yesteryear would have appreciated.

"Absinthe's popularity cooled at the same time that the airplane, telephone,
and automobile were heating up. It was a drink very much of its time, a
slower time," said Conrad, amused by absinthe's 56K modem-assisted comeback.

"There's a top-hatted elegance to absinthe, like a green velvet smoking
jacket."

As to whether absinthe's allure will ever elevate it to vice du jour,
Conrad -- who has also written books on cigars and martinis, before either
captured the pop culture conscience -- remained undecided.

"The cigar trend a few years ago was so in-your-face -- as Noel Coward would
say, 'It was too hot not to cool down,' " said Conrad. "And I suppose in
five years people may say 'Remember that crazy absinthe trend?' But it's
never going to go away completely, because it's part of literature and art."

"With absinthe," he added, "You are literally drinking history."

SIDEBAR: A sampling of absinthe's more famous fans reads like a who's who of
arts and literature of the 19th century -- and then some:

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49): The master of the macabre allegedly liked his
absinthe mixed with brandy. Some historians believe Poe's preference for
this particularly strong cocktail led to his premature death, although
others argue that rabies did him in.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867):One must be drunk always," declared the
poet and writer -- and he pretty much was, usually from absinthe. He
eventually realized the error of his addictions -- which, in addition to
absinthe, included laudanum -- but too late to save himself from an early
death.

Charles Cros (1842-1888): The French musician, poet and scientist reportedly
invented the first phonograph in 1877, but never got around to patenting
it -- seems he spent too much time slurping down up to 20 absinthe cocktails
a day.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903): Shortly after moving to Tahiti, the French
Impressionist remarked to a friend, "I sit at my door . . . sipping my
absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90): Absinthe addiction may have been the least of
the artist's problems -- scholars believe van Gogh suffered from a number of
conditions, including manic-depression, syphilis and poisoning from paint
thinner fumes -- but the Green Fairy's influence has been blamed for his
wilder moments, including the infamous ear-cropping incident.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900):The writer and owner of a famously wicked wit drank
absinthe without restraint. He wrote and spoke about it with equal passion,
once declaring, "A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the
world.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891): Tasting his first sip of absinthe at the age of
16, the young poet spent the next 20 years in a downward spiral that
involved, among other things, madness, gun-running and a publicly violent
relationship with fellow poet and avid absintheur Paul Verlaine before dying
alone.

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907): No sugar and water in this French playwright's
absinthe -- he allegedly enjoyed the bitter drink straight and openly
credited it with helping him to write the scandalous "Ubu Roi," a
play about a murderous, foul-mouthed boor that became the "South
Park" of its day.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973):The artist was known to drink an absinthe or two
but never overindulged -- and, not coincidentally, lived longer than many of
his contemporaries.

Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961): Although born too late to be in on the
absinthe-mania sweeping cafes from fin de siecle Paris to New Orleans, the
American author learned to enjoy the drink in Spain, one of the few
countries that never banned it. The Green Fairy makes several appearances in
Hemingway's novels, including "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

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