A STORIED DRINK, BRITONS TAKE TO THE ALLURE OF ABSINTHE

LONDON -- Green and slippery, bitter on the tongue and warm in the
throat, absinthe is the liqueur of inspiration -- and maybe insanity.
The artist Vincent Van Gogh allegedly cut off his ear under its
influence, and playwright Oscar Wilde rhapsodized that if you drink
enough of it, "you see things that you want to see, wonderful, curious
things."

French insane asylums in the early 1900s were crowded with absinthe
addicts who succumbed either to its 70 percent alcohol content or the
alleged hallucinogenic qualities of its unique ingredient, oil of wormwood.

France and most other Western countries, including the United States,
banned absinthe before World War I, and few since then had given it
too much thought.

Until this month, that is, when absinthe suddenly went on sale at many
of London's top bars.

The liqueur's controversial reappearance, which has sent an illicit
sort of thrill through the upscale British drinking public, is due to
the ingenuity of four young rock-and-roll entrepreneurs who discovered
that Britain had somehow never gotten around to banning absinthe.

They looked up one of the world's oldest continuous absinthe makers, a
Czech firm headed by 81-year-old producer Radomil Hill, and on Dec. 9
began selling Hill's Absinth (sic) in the United Kingdom.

At about $7.25 a shot, or $68 a bottle when ordered over the Internet
(in the U.K. only, and it's not yet for sale in liquor stores),
absinthe is not for the fainthearted or thin-walleted.

But it shows every indication of being a huge hit here. Bars can't keep
it in stock, and there's a new kind of drinking party in town: Young
professionals gather after work to down several shots of the pale
blue-green liqueur, which is usually served after being ignited with a
spoon of flaming, absinthe-soaked sugar, then doused with water.

"It feels very different -- the more you have it, the more you want
it," said manager Giovanni Burdi of Covent Garden's hip Detroit bar,
who tested absinthe for himself by consuming an entire bottle in the
course of two days. "You can be addicted to it mentally," he concluded.

Absinthe's new appeal appears rooted in its romantic past. This was
once the poison of choice for bohemian Paris and New Orleans, and its
illustrious fans included not only Van Gogh and Wilde but Paul
Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Arthur
Rimbaud and Ernest Hemingway.

Degas immortalized the liqueur in his famous painting L'Absinthe,
which shows a pair of dazed-looking drinkers in a French bar. A
similar expression is on the face of Edouard Manet's The Absinthe Drinker.

Its less illustrious devotees included thousands of working-class
Frenchmen. According to an 1894 writer cited on the exhaustive
"Absinthe FAQ" Web site (http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~mbagg/roughtabsinthefaq.html),
France's workers frequently bought a shot of absinthe during lunchtime
for just a few centimes, then sipped it slowly, feeling "their poor,
tired backbones strengthen and their brains grow clearer . . . a touch
of happiness."

The liqueur was first commercially produced in France in the late
1700s by Henri-Louis Pernod. He used aniseed, fennel, hyssop and
nutmeg, among other flavors, which were mixed with chopped wormwood
- -- a plant used in ancient times to cure worms. (Today, the unbanned
liqueur pernod, which contains no wormwood, is widely drunk as a faux
absinthe.)

Many nations banned it By the early 1900s, with half of its asylum

population reportedly made up of absinthe addicts, France was among
many nations to ban it. To this day, though, the reason for the French
ban is debated. Was it because absinthe threatened France's ability to
conscript young men for battle in World War I? Was it because its
popularity threatened French wine producers?

Were absinthe addicts suffering delirium and hallucinations because
they had simply drunk too much alcohol, or was it because of a
chemical in wormwood -- thujone -- related chemically to cannabis?

As absinthe hits Britain in time for New Year's parties, the questions
remain unanswered.

But the liqueur's few critics here, mainly anti-alcoholism
organizations, have steered away from debating absinthe's alleged
addictive, druglike qualities and instead complain that the last thing
modern Britain needs is another popular alcoholic drink -- especially
one that is 140 proof.

"We aren't saying absinthe coming back will lead to people being
comatose in the streets," said Caroline Bradley of the British
organization Alcohol Concern. "But it's more a case of saying this is
a drink with this myth associated with it and that's its selling
point. That in a nutshell is the problem . . . the fact we can sort of
get excited at the prospect of a drink with this reputation and say,
'Oh, I want to sample that.' "

It's also unfortunate, Bradley added, that absinthe is served like a
drug, with paraphernalia including a spoon and a flame. Absinthe
"crosses that line" between alcohol and drugs, Bradley said, "because
of its reputation and also the way it's drunk in a ritualistic way."

'The spirit of freedom' But absinthe's new British importers, a
partnership of four young men called Green Bohemia, are not reluctant
to promote either the ritual or absinthe's selling point as "the
spirit of freedom," as it says in their press pack.

"I think people are enjoying it because it's a different experience of
pleasure," said Green Bohemia partner Tom Hodgkinson, cofounder of the
British rock music magazine Idler. "There's a whole generation not
taking drugs, not clubbing, and they still want to experience
something different. This fits quite well because it's not ravy, it's
chatty and fun."

Also, as Hodgkinson succinctly put it in an essay in the Guardian
newspaper, absinthe is about challenging Britain's wholesome do-gooder
atmosphere under Tony Blair's Labor government.

"For me," he wrote, "one of the principal attractions of absinthe is
that by drinking it, one is cocking a snook at New Labor's nanny
culture. This is a government that seems to enjoy banning things, but
we believe that adults are more than capable of looking after
themselves."

On a damp night at the trendy Alphabet bar on the fringe of London's
Soho section, shot after shot of absinthe was being consumed -- out
of curiosity if nothing else.

"A surreal element of absinthe is all the journalists who are
approaching me," observed drinker Jonathan Wilkinson, a 29-year-old
molecular biologist who had been approached by two reporters doing
absinthe stories in just one week.

Downing several shots of absinthe with three friends, Wilkinson
admitted to feeling "vaguely cynical about its hallucinogenic
properties, because you can chop off your ear if you drink a vast
amount of alcohol, too. I'm on[shot]number three, but I have not
achieved Oscar Wilde's level of wit."