Prague Property

November 30th 2007

popix/Flickr [1]

Bottle-scarred Economist correspondent Edward Lucas breakfasts on plum brandy, lunches on balsams and dines on bison-grass vodka, but draws the line at a side-dish of Hungarian lung stew …

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

The ex-communist world has a deserved reputation as a culinary wasteland (see box, below right), but the drinks are something else. Travellers to Prague find that the “real” Budweiser from Ceske Budejovice (no relation to its rice-based American counterpart) makes even the national dish of dumplings in gravy go down without protest. Winemaking has been transformed since the Soviet era—when bottles had to be inspected for wasps and snails, the former merely a nuisance, the latter stomach-turning (at least for foreigners).

But the real treat is the hard stuff. Every country from the Baltic to the Black sea has a national tipple, usually served in both industrialised and home-made versions. In Romania, tuica (also spelled tzuika, tsuika, tsuica, or tzuica) is the traditional start to any meal. It is made with plums, and bears a startling resemblence to the sljivovica of neighbouring Serbia. Both drinks are part of a delightful family of fruit brandies popular from the far corners of the Balkans up to modern Poland (an area that bears a coincidental resemblance to the Ottoman empire in Europe at its height). For the adventurous, visnjevaca (sour cherry) dunjevaca (quince) and smokvovaca (fig) are well worth a try. You may find these in shops, but you are better off finding a peasant farmer somewhere in what used to be Yugoslavia.

Westerners may think that hard liquor is for after dinner, but these drinks are usually apertifs. To help you digest, the best drink in the region is Unicum. Anyone who likes Italy’s Fernet Branca, or German’s Underberg, will feel that they have graduated into elysium when they try it. The flavours are an intense mix of liquorice, ginger, coriander and cinnamon (that’s guesswork: the recipe is secret). It brings tranquility to even the most overburdened stomach. Latvia’s balsams is a close rival—and a neck ahead for those who like its flexibility. It has a stronger tinge of burnt oranges; Latvians put it in their coffee or in fruit salad. With Champagne (or any old sparkling wine) it creates a terrific cocktail.

Any offer of absinthe [2] in eastern Europe, by contrast, should be shunned as firmly as any suggestion of a return to the planned economy or the one-party state.

Having accustomed your liver to the demands of life in “new Europe”, it is time to move north. Poland and Russia tussle for the right to be the “real” home of vodka (an argument that the Swedes and Finns regard with bemused disdain: how can anybody take these Slavic squabbles seriously?). Having sorted out the national question, the serious drinker has to decide between vodkas made with different feedstuffs (barley, rye, wheat and so forth). The nasty stuff produced in western Europe is made from farm surplus products, disgracefully subsidised by the taxpayer. The cheapest of all is synthetic alcohol, produced in factories by a chemical process. If you think all vodka tastes the same, just try drinking a cheap one.

If your palate finds little difference amid the clear vodkas, you can ring the changes with the flavoured kind (for example with chili peppers, ginger, fruit, vanilla, chocolate or cinnamon). Best of all-in your correspondent’s view-is Zubrowka, a Polish (or Belarussian) rye vodka flavoured with bison grass, a stalk of which can be found in the bottle.

Sadly, the scent of newly mown hay that makes Zubrowka so seductive comes from the presence (in tiny quantities) of coumarin, a toxin that can be legally used in perfumes, but is prohibited for use in foodstuffs in America. The version sold in America now is coumarin-free.

On the whole, though, the names of vodkas vary more than the contents. Lithuania used to have one called “Dar po viena” (roughly “Let’s have another one”). Romania, astonishingly, has a vodka called “Stalinskaya”; Russia’s favourite Stolichnaya (Capital) brand, disgracefully, uses Soviet kitsch in its advertisements, including pictures of the murderous founder of Soviet communism, Vladimir Lenin, who is described as a “visionary”. That is something to discuss over a Zubrowka or six.

(Edward Lucas is deputy international editor, and correspondent for central and eastern Europe, at The Economist. His book, “The New Cold War—How the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West [3]“, will be published in February 2008 by Bloomsbury in Britain, and Palgrave in America.)

WILD GREEN FAIRY LIQUID | November 28th 2007

Café window in Wroclaw, Poland, by Decafinata/Flickr [1]

Edward Lucas of The Economist on a drink that has ruined poets, given rats convulsions, and tastes variously of a mountain meadow in spring or a mouthful of yesterday’s toothpaste …

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Fittingly for a drink associated with hallucinations, absinthe’s story swirls with wild, bewitching myths. Many fans, enthusiastic if ill-informed, believe it is a “liquid joint” that heightens consciousness, unleashes poetic and artistic muses, and in large doses induces at first depravity and finally madness.

That sense of danger heightens the appeal: one Czech brand actually publishes a poster reading “Neurotoxic Absinthe”. Even those not who do not share the doomed genius of absinthe-lovers such as Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh can at least feel they are enjoying the same tipple as the talented but tragic. The fact that absinthe is banned in America makes consumers there even keener to buy (or make) the supposedly most potent variants: those containing a high dose of thujone, a chemical extracted from wormwood.

The facts are a little more prosaic. It’s true that absinthe was a popular drink in the “belle époque“, a glamorous and dissolute period of late-19th-century French history. Alhough popular among the famous (Hemingway, Picasso, Wilde, Degas, Rimbaud and many others) its pull then was among the poor: it was cheap, and strong in alcohol—up to 75% by content.

That aroused the ire of temperance campaigners, particularly in France, where absinthe was finally banned in 1915. In all Europe, it remained legal only in Spain, though it was distilled illegally, but widely, in parts of Switzerland. When it was relegalised in western Europe in the 1990s regulators stipulated that absinthe should contain only 10mg per kg of thujone. That disappointed those enthusiasts wanting to recreate the effects of the original versions. Some were already fans of the brands produced after the collapse of communism by enterprising Czech capitalists, which tend to be marketed on the basis of their high thujone content.

But actually, the claims of such products are as flimsy as the new rule. Analysis of most Czech absinthe shows it contains little or no thujone, whatever the bottle says. Any hallucinations or secondary effects experienced are self-induced or imagined. Secondly, tests on surviving samples of pre-war absinthe show that they contained much less than 10mg/kg. Third, the real effects of thujone are unclear. Ian Hutton, a British absinthe expert with a background in analytical chemistry, says, “There is no evidence that absinthe ever contained the high concentrations of thujone that would have led to detrimental effects or that it has hallucinogenic or mind-altering properties.”

Thujone in very large doses causes convulsions in rats. In small doses it may have mild stimulative properties, although these are likely to be masked by the sedative effect of the alcohol. In any case, it does not, contrary to popular belief, mimic the effects of cannabis. And it is widely available elsewhere—in the herb sage, or, more prosaically, in cold remedies such as Vicks Vapour Rub. Not many would-be geniuses make drinks from that.

Connoisseurs such as Mr Hutton, who runs the upmarket absintheonline.com [2], sniff at the idea of creating the noble drink for such crude purposes. For the real connoisseur, only the finest French and Swiss absinthe, distilled in tiny quantities from hand-picked herbs and flowers, really counts. “Pre-ban absinthe was a delicious, refreshing long drink, with a character like an alpine meadow,” says David Nathan-Maister, a British expert. “It wouldn’t have had such a meteoric success if it hadn’t”.

The strongest whiff of the real absintheurs’ world comes from sites such as oxygenee.com [3], or feeverte.com [4]. The latter (named after the green fairy of absinthe legend) rates dozens of absinthes with pedantic attention to their “louche” (the milkiness of the mixture created when water is added), aroma, aftertaste and so forth. The worst, mostly Czech, versions are mercilessly mocked for their lurid colours and lack of anise and fennel—the oils that make absinthe go cloudy.

Yet they are where the money is. Andreas Mielecke, who runs Absinth24.net [5], another internet shop, notes the paradox: he and other absinthistes want to sell the high-quality product; the big American market wants the most potent variety available, typically the Czech versions which are made by dunking herbs in neat alcohol. “These customers are just interested in the effect, in hallucination” he laments.

That’s one difficulty. Another is America’s prohibition on absinthe. Some internet customers find their orders confiscated, though this varies by state: Florida and Georgia are particularly tough, California and New York the most liberal, says Mr Mielecke.

The truth is that most modern mass-produced absinthe tastes pretty nasty—somewhere between mouthwash and shampoo. That’s hardly surprising, given that it is marketed as a semi-illicit, near-poisonous substance. If it was delicious, the thrill-seeking consumer would feel cheated. Even so, there are other even worse versions. The unscrupulous sell lethal-sounding kits for those wanting to make absinthe at home—typically by soaking a bag of herbs in alcohol, or even adding oil of wormwood, which is truly poisonous in its undistilled form.

The most attractive side of absinthe is probably not the drink itself, but the rituals, culture, and kit associated with it. The pictures are splendid, and the literary references intriguing. The aphorisms are good too: “Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder” said Ernest Dowson, an English poet. Oscar Wilde remarked that it didn’t make drunk people into poets, but was good at making poets drunk. Absinthe spoons (used for dribbling water into the glass) are collectors’ items. Czechs claim that the “historic” way of preparing absinthe is to burn a sugar-lump in the spoon, sambucca-style. That horrifies the purists—a horror, one suspects, that may just underline their already enjoyable feeling of superiority.

(Edward Lucas is deputy international editor, and correspondent for central and eastern Europe, at The Economist. His book “The New Cold War—How the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West [6]” will be published in February 2008 by Bloomsbury in Britain, and Palgrave in America.)