Four minutes to read.
Years ago in China, cruising the Li River, in the spirit of moment, I downed a shot or four of snake wine poured from a glass bottle stuffed with a coiled, marinating snake, snakehead included. The flavor brought to mind a cheap Greek retsina if it were served at room temperature, which it almost never is.
For adult beverages, licorice-tasting drinks—ouzo, Sambuca, pastis, Pernod, arak, anisette, raki—are my fixation. I am a licoric-oholic.
Black licorice is my spirit candy. Like a craven addict, I want to take the stuff intravenously. I stand with Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead: “Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”
In Rome I swooned over licorice gelato served in a parfait glass at Giolitti. Strolling the streets of SoHo in New York, I found licorice on offer as a novelty gelato flavor. I went back so many times that the parlor should have named an ice cream scoop after me. Sweet Scoops in Sonoma, California, offers licorice ice cream in the summer months.
In Vacaville, California, driving into the heartland of the state, at the Nut Tree restaurant, I eagerly bought armfuls of a hard licorice candy bar called tar bars—a rectangular, black richness that pulled at my dental work. Twenty-five years later, I still mourn its closing. A black day for black licorice.
Some people prefer red licorice. These are my lesser-admired friends.
Absinthe—made from naturally occurring licorice flavors: anise and fennel—is famous for its high alcohol content (60% - 70%). In the 18th century it was used as a malaria cure.
For both high- and low-society, it was the fashionable Czech drink of the 19th century. It’s unbearably cute nickname—the “green fairy”—evokes its once-upon-time hallucinogenic properties. It’s unbearably cute nickname—the “green fairy”—evokes its once-upon-time hallucinogenic properties.
To taste test absinthe for myself, I chose the Hotel Paris Prague bar and lounge. I was heeding a snippet of sage website advice: “Be safe and try absinthe when you’re within stumbling distance of your hotel...or better yet, inside your hotel.”
Descending the hotel’s grand stairway with its art deco, intricately lacey wrought-iron banister, I arrived at the hotel’s lobby half expecting a gowned lady, perhaps wearing gloves and a feathery hat, her skirts rustling, to nod in my direction and say, Good day, Your Lordship.
Absinthe is poured mainly for tourists, like spaghetti and meatballs in Italy or chicken tikka masala in India. According to my guidebook, ordering absinthe in Prague stamps ‘itinerant foreigner’ all over me.
As an experienced traveler (calculated algebraically: hours spent waiting in airport lounges divided by lost luggage multiplied by maps mistakenly read upside down), I’ve come to embrace without false pride my status as a clichéd, commonplace tourist. Nothing to be ashamed of. Much better than either feeble attempts to blend in or fumbling tries at hanging out with the locals.
Absinthe may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but the detonation on my palate came close to stopping my heart. A thick, pungent, bittersweet, liquefied volcano exploded in my mouth. My gums and glands went numb. A single sip and my eyes watered. I wept to call 911.
In China, snake wine. In Prague, the venom.