Step into the exclusive world of 'the green fairy' in this astonishing true crime story about an eccentric con man who blew up the black market with counterfeit absinthe.
Absinthe, a elixir made of alcohol and herbs, is a booming business. From France to Japan, new absinthe distilleries are opening every year, with global trade expected to reach $44.3 billion by 2026. Yet it is still an underground culture, associated with mystery, romance, and bohemian lifestyles, in keeping with its popularity among the writers, artists, and other ne'er-do-wells of nineteenth-century France. First produced in 1792, the spirit, known as "the green fairy," was banned worldwide by 1914 before the bans were gradually overturned beginning in 2007.
Enter The Absintheur, a deadly-charismatic European art student whose real name we can't yet divulge. Inveigling his way into the private Facebook groups and wealthy Italian palazzos where the secret modern absinthe demimonde converges, he charmed some of the best minds (and palates) in the beverage world into thinking that he was selling them precious vintage pre-ban bottles, for years. How did he get away with it? The person who blew his cover, New York Times reporter Evan Rail, is the person who wrote this book.
The Absinthe Forger pieces together The Absintheur's subterfuge, motivation, and hidden life story with the help of the absinthe connoisseurs who eventually proved his fraud while Evan reported on it. It shows how absinthe can transform a person-and even connect drinkers with a deeper, often hidden sense of self. It relates the romantic and illicit history of absinthe, from its birth in Switzerland through its coming of age in France, and on to the spirit's modern revival starting in the 1990s.
Evan digs deep into the modern absinthe underground, whose members are still frantic to find the last remaining bottles of pre-ban absinthe, and he visits modern producers of the spirit, who have, in a generation, changed in status from daring-criminal bootleggers to sought-after celebrities. Ripe for a Netflix documentary, “The Absinthe Forger” is a compellingly bizarre crime drama that will make you never look at wormwood in the same way again.
