Rebellious old habits die hard in the northwestern Swiss valley of Val-de-Travers, where the alcoholic drink absinthe, nicknamed the ”green fairy”, is about to become legal again.
”It will no longer be a myth, the myth came with prohibition,” historian and absinthe museum founder Pierre-Andre Delachaux lamented weeks after the Swiss Parliament succumbed to years of lobbying to end the near century-old ban.
The lush, forested valley of 12 000 people in the Jura hills near the French border claims to have been the birthplace of absinthe, which was said to make one blind or mad when prohibition took hold in 1908.
”Now everyone wants to make absinthe because they smell profit, it’s not about history, it’s about cash,” said Delachaux, who has vowed to stop collecting artistic absinthe labels when the change comes into force on January 1, 2005.
Legalisation has left Val-de-Travers gently split between the purists who feel the defiant local spirit spiced up absinthe’s aura and those who predict broader opportunity for the area.
”I want to become a legal producer,” said Marcel, a former clandestine distiller.
”I know that for some it’s a bit dramatic but we can’t go back. It’s an opportunity for the region to create something and to protect a local product,” he added.
Illicit stills were hidden behind secret panels in farmhouses, while cellars and bathrooms became the centre of a thriving bootleg trade of up to 50 000 litres a year, mainly within the 25 kilometre long Val-de-Travers.
”There’s the fun side, it’s a good product, with a good taste, a slight hint of the taboo. I did it first for myself, then for friends, and then others came along,” said Marcel, who admits to making about 300 litres a year.
In the old days, when a still’s piping regularly leaked, tyres were hastily burned to hide the telltale fragrance of dried plants, including wormwood or artemesium, and aniseed, which are mixed with neat alcohol.
More absinthe flowed out of Val-de-Travers through a handful of larger scale bootleggers, who dealt with about one thousand litres a year, while affluent urban gourmets from distant Zurich popped over on secret liquor runs, according to local inhabitants.
Otherwise the only hope for outsiders was to be invited to someone’s home. A bottle of clear liquid would emerge and be mixed with cold water, pastis-style, in a glass, producing the cloudy — and strong — white drink with a blueish hue.
”Every distiller, whom I call a resistant, has his own set of faithful clients,” Delachaux explained.
The valley’s crime statistics are low, but authorities briefly feared that the bootlegging spirit in Val de Travers had got out of hand this year.
In May, police discovered a network of about a dozen heated barns and disused asphalt mines filled with thousands of cannabis plants.
Absinthe fans dismissed the trafficking as largely the fault of one large scale distiller dabbling in products that are ”not local”.
”He’s out of line with those who wanted to perpetuate a tradition. By coincidence, he’s one of those who earned a lot of money,” Delachaux said.
In recent years Swiss authorities appeared to have adopted a tolerant attitude to small-scale absinthe trade.
Farmers used to be in the odd position of explaining why they regularly needed 100 litres of neat alcohol to clean their overalls, but many distillers remain proud of using officially certified and taxed alcohol rather than contraband.
”Apart from having a still, as long as you didn’t try to swindle the spirits board… there wasn’t a big problem,” Marcel said.
Marcel’s still was officially sealed to stop it being used until next year, after he approached officials at the Federal Spirits Board about becoming legal.
”Two of them came around, and in the end we sat around the table tasting different types of absinthe that I was trying out,” he said.
A regional association grouping villages and towns has tried to take advantage of the local reputation to generate jobs, billing Val-de-Travers as the ”Country of the Fairies”. An ”absinthe route” is promised for tourists.
Regional secretary Julien Spacio also wants to set up a cottage industry in the ”cradle of absinthe” to counter the growing number of countries that are exporting the drink, one of the motives for legalisation.
”There is a demand in Europe for the drink, Pontarlier just across the border is, by the way, calling itself the capital of absinthe,” Spacio said, signalling another tussle in store for the doughty Swiss valley. ‒ Sapa-AFP