The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit

An astonishing true crime story about an eccentric grifter who blew up the lucrative black market for vintage bottles of the legendary drink of artistic renegades, absinthe . . .

Thought to be hallucinogenic and banned globally for a century, absinthe is once again legal and popular. Yet it is still associated with bohemian lifestyles, just as when it was the favorite drink of avant-gardists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh and Baudelaire. And today, when vintage, pre-ban bottles are discovered, they can sell for exorbitant prices to private collectors. But such discoveries are increasingly rare.

Which is why the absinthe demimonde of rich collectors was electrified when a mysterious bon vivant claimed to be in possession of a collection of precious, pre-ban bottles.

Is his secret tranche of 100-year-old bottles real? And just who is the shadowy person selling them? And what about rumors of another secret cache, hidden away in an Italian palazzo?

Journalist Evan Rail sets out to discover the truth about the enigmatic dealer and the secret stashes. Along the way, he drinks with absintheurs frantically chasing down the pre-bans, visits modern distillers who have seen their status rise from criminal bootleggers to sought-after celebrities, and relates the legendary history of absinthe, from its birth in Switzerland through its coming of age in France, and on to its modern revival.

An award-winning journalist, Evan Rail is the author of more than 100 articles about European travel and food & drink in The New York Times. A monthly columnist at VinePair, the most popular drinks publication among millennial drinkers, he covers global drinks culture at Free Pour with Evan Rail, one of three finalists for ＂Best Beverage-Focused Column＂ in the 2021 International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards. His articles on food & drink have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Saveur, BeerAdvocate, Smithsonian Travel, and National Geographic Travel, among other venues.

His writing has been included in several anthologies, including Best Food Writing, Travelers’ Tales, and The New York Times Book of Wine. He has contributed to several guidebook series, including Fodor’s and *Wallpaper, and wrote chapter introductions and brewery profiles for Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, and Italy in Lonely Planet’s Global Beer Tour (2017). He is the author of four Kindle Singles, including Why Beer Matters, which sold 3,000 copies on its launch weekend, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller.

Evan has appeared on several television programs, most notably showing Anthony Bourdain around the world of Czech food and drink on his television show No Reservations and drinking Czech beer during his interview with Phil Black on CNN. He has explained what it is like to bathe in beer on the Discovery Channel’s How Stuff Works and been quoted on where to drink in Prague in USA Today. Additional interviews with Evan have appeared on radio stations around the world, including on the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Prague, Hungarian National Radio, and other programs. He narrated the audiobook editions of his first three Kindle Singles for Audible.com, and regularly records podcasts for Good Beer Hunting, where he works as international editor.

Evan’s poems and essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Agni, Metre, Zyzzyva, and other journals. His poetry chapbook, Tsunami, was published in Ireland shortly before the tsunami of 2004. It was called ＂a poised debut... [a] marriage of gusto and attentiveness＂ by the TLS.