Tourists are drawn to
the sugar-and-fire rituals
of outlawed absinthe

By Lori Hall Steele
PRAGUE -- As my husband drops a fiery sugar cube into the absinthe, the green liquor ignites in dancing blue flames. We watch the tiny blaze, not sure what to do next, until the Czech waitress runs over and starts scolding.
      “Blow it out,” she says. “Blow it out! You’re burning out all the liquor.”
      So, setting fire to the Green Fairy is a no-no. That’s something Prague’s waiters have to tell a lot of tourists attempting absinthe’s elaborate sugar-and-fire rituals — those who know all about Oscar Wilde’s odes to the banned beverage and Vincent Van Gogh’s absinthe-blamed dementia and Pablo Picasso’s painted homages to the mythic liqueur.
      As tourists increasingly clamor for the taboo libation and exports surge in the Czech Republic, one of a handful of nations where the drink is legally manufactured, first-time drinkers also need to warned that this bitter wormwood-based liqueur simply doesn’t taste good. Even with the sugar. And yet, foul taste isn’t much of a deterrent.
      What’s the allure?
      “Because it’s a forbidden fruit, there’s a whole subculture that wants it,” said Jim Crandall, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spokesman. “If you had to drink the stuff you’d probably just spit it out.”
      But tourists -- particularly young Americans -- aren’t spitting it out, and the Czech Republic’s oldest distiller, Hill’s, has seen absinthe exports increase five-fold in the past five years. It’s now being shipped to England, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, Canada and Russia. Web sites peddle the quaff, which was first distilled in the early 1800s by Henri-Louis Pernod.
      Interest in the vivid green liqueur seemed to spark in 1999, said Pavel Varga, owner of L’Or Special Drinks, one of the Czech Republic’s six commercial producers. L’Or’s absinthe sales rose 100 percent last year, totaling 4,755 gallons
      “People are attracted by it, are interested in it. They hear about it as something secret,” he said. “People want to try it."
      This public thirst has prompted one travel agency, Prague Magika (222 2014 locally) to offer absinthe tours. Some are merely curious, while others -- such as youthful Brits and Americans who’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and other novels in which the drink figures prominently -- are looking for the next legal high.
      Absinthe, which Crandall dubbed “the cocaine of the 19th century,” has been called a hallucinogenic, narcotic and aphrodisiac. Artists flocked to it, saying it promoted creativity. “It was a hugely popular drink that swept over all classes -- the bohemian class and the upper class,” Crandall said.
      But the drink’s harmful effects prompted its exile in many countries. Absinthe is made with an extract of the herb wormwood, which contains thujone, a toxic alkaloid that can build up in the human body. Absinthe was blamed for hallucinations, tremors, convulsions and paralysis. Some suspect absinthe played a role when Van Gogh cut off his ear.
      The United States and much of Europe banned the emerald-green drink some 90 years ago, around the time of Prohibition and bans on marijuana, cocaine and opium. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1972 forbid using thujone as a food or drink additive, and soon after listed wormwood as an unsafe herb.
      Today, absinthe is manufactured in a handful of European nations. Regardless of what anyone says, it is illegal to bring into the United States any amount of absinthe for sale or personal consumption, even those tiny airline-size bottles to add to a liquor collection.
      A number of Internet sites sell absinthe from European producers at prices ranging from $45 to $105, though cheaper absinthe costs about $6 per bottle in Prague. Web exporters claim it’s perfectly legitimate to have the Green Fairy shipped to your home in the United States, but be forewarned: It’s not legal. So says U.S. Customs, the FDA and ATF.
      Whether imports are doggedly policed is another story. Officials from the three agencies were unable to find statistics on absinthe-related arrests.
      Today’s European-distilled absinthe, however, is a kinder, gentler version of old recipes, containing a maximum of 10 milligrams of thujone, compared to the 100 grams it held at the turn of the century. But at 70 percent alcohol, it can still pack a punch.
      Czech distillers say worries over health effects are no longer valid.
      “We just could not produce something what would damage the health of people," said Hill’s owner Ilona Musialova, noting that, besides, “nobody has cut their ear off in the Czech Republic so far."

Commissioned by Detroit Free Press.