New
York Times, November 4, 2004
COUVET JOURNAL
Rebirth of the Potion That Made Val-de-Travers Famous
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
COUVET, Switzerland, Nov. 1 - For three years Claude-Alain Bugnon
has competed with his wife for space in the unfinished concrete basement
of their home here, she to do laundry, he to make absinthe.
Armed with plastic containers of dried herbs, tubs of pharmaceutical
ethanol, a homemade still and a secret recipe from a friend's grandmother,
Mr. Bugnon has used his skills as an oil refinery technician to produce
the powerful herbal elixir long blamed for driving people mad.
In January a new law takes effect in Switzerland aimed at rehabilitating
the reputation of absinthe, whose distillation, distribution and sale
were banned after an absinthe-besotted factory worker killed his wife
and children nearly a century ago.
The new law will allow Mr. Bugnon and dozens of other underground
absinthe makers to "come out," as one Swiss newspaper put
it, seek amnesty and produce absinthe legally.
"Absinthe is good for your health and I drink it almost every
day," said Mr. Bugnon, filling glasses with his still illegal
beverage. "My kids are growing up with its smell. Of course,
I still have to be a bit careful. Until the end of the year I could
be denounced by an enemy and turned in."
For Swiss distillers like Mr. Bugnon, the goal is to produce top quality,
high-octane, government-approved absinthe produced from Artemisia
absinthium, or wormwood, a plant native to the Val-de-Travers, the
region in western Switzerland where the drink was invented.
If all goes well the distillers hope to obtain an official governmental
"appellation" declaring that the region produces the only
real absinthe in the world. Legalization will help the Swiss cash
in on the rising global market for absinthe, which can be bought easily,
and often illegally, over the Internet. There are Internet sites offering
absinthe recipes and sources for wormwood seed.
In addition to prodigious amounts of alcohol, absinthe contains thujone,
a toxic chemical found in wormwood that was used to treat stomach
ailments as far back as ancient times but can cause tremors, hallucinations,
paralysis and brain damage in large enough doses.
Absinthe with a low level of thujone is already sold legally in countries
including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Japan, Sweden, Italy
and Britain, but not the United States. The Netherlands lifted its
ban last July.
Nicknamed "the Green Fairy," "the green curse of France"
and "the milk of the Jura," absinthe was associated with
the writers, painters, prostitutes and anarchists of the belle epoque.
Oscar Wilde claimed to have seen tulips growing from the tile floor
of a bar where he had been drinking absinthe. Toulouse-Lautrec mixed
it with cognac instead of water and called it the "Earthquake."
Its seductive powers have been featured in a flurry of films in recent
years, from "Moulin Rouge," in which a song is dedicated
to the drink, to "From Hell," in which Johnny Depp plays
a troubled, absinthe drinking police inspector.
Mr. Bugnon is still tinkering with the right mix of herbs (among them
fennel, coriander, mint and anise) for a substance that will have
53 percent alcohol content and turn creamy and slightly bluish when
diluted with water. It will contain 30 to 35 milligrams per liter
of thujone, less than the concoctions of a century ago.
Mr. Bugnon has received a small metal license plate from the Swiss
government that has been soldered to his still. An Italian illustrator
has designed an elegant green label. A German importer wants to take
his product abroad.
Even though Mr. Bugnon has proven is that it does not take much to
make a great absinthe, he faces formidable competition.
Two miles away in the village of Môtiers is the headquarters
of the Blackmint Distillery, owned by Yves Kübler, a former electrical
technician whose great-grandfather was a regional absinthe producer.
Four years ago the absinthe ban was eased to allow Mr. Kübler
to legally distill and sell, locally and abroad, an "extract
of absinthe," a 90-proof liqueur with 10 milligrams of thujone
per liter. With the local agriculture department, he helped persuade
farmers to cultivate wormwood again so he could produce an authentic
regional absinthe.
He has already begun to package $35 boxed Christmas gift packages
with half-liter bottles of absinthe, two monogrammed glasses and a
perforated spoon in the shape of an wormwood leaf for those who like
to filter their drink through a sugar cube.
He now plans to make a new, more powerful absinthe that he says will
have "a more elegant, refined taste than the one I'm making now."
"It's like the difference between toilet water and a fine perfume,"
he said.
There is even stiffer competition a few miles away in the French village
of Pontarlier, where production began after France relaxed its ban
in 1988, allowing producers to make a drink with less than 10 milligrams
of thujone per liter.
Absinthe, after all, was first produced commercially in 1797 by Henri-Louis
Pernod, a Frenchman whose father-in-law bought the recipe from its
inventor, Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor living in Couvet.
Complicating the market outlook, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic
have never banned absinthe production, although their absinthes are
much rougher than Swiss and French brands.
Not everyone in the Val-de-Travers is sanguine about legalization
in Switzerland. For Pierre André Delachaux, a high school teacher
and author of several books on absinthe, the move will destroy the
mystique that came with the ban.
"I want to preserve the myth that comes with keeping absinthe
forbidden and clandestine," said Mr. Delachaux, who is also the
curator of a small museum in Môtiers with a special absinthe
section.
"The myth is the thrill of breaking the law and not getting caught,"
he said. "The myth is offering as much money as you can and maybe
still not finding what you're looking for. Next year you'll find absinthe
in all the supermarkets. We're going to have the absinthe of the bazaar."
Copyright
2004 The New York Times Company
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