Ingredients

1 1/2 ounces absinthe

4 ounces Brut champagne

champagne flute

Instructions:

Pour absinthe into a champagne flute and add iced brut champagne until it clouds up -- at least 4 ounces.

Short of foreign travel, if you lack the kind of decadent friends who engage in pretentious pursuits like bootlegging absinthe, there are a couple of legal alternatives. For what our dear editor likes to call the "Near Death Experience," use Absente, the new -- legal -- absinthe substitute that's been promoted of late; it's 110-proof (the real stuff is always real strong, whatever its other attributes). If you prefer to keep the Man in Black safely at arm's length, try using a mere ounce of Pernod (or other 80-proof pastis). We'll call that the Paper Cut.

The Wondrich Take:

There's a bit near the beginning of Virgil's Georgics (in which the poet explains, at length, the art of farming; weird, but no weirder than, say, David Foster Wallace) where a peasant, busting sod on an old battlefield, turns up the bones of some of the slaughtered -- and they're huge; almost a different species. That's how we feel contemplating Hemingway's original instructions for this wicked potion (he claims to have cooked it up with some Brits after a spot of nautical unpleasantness): "Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly." The liver that man must've had!

Unfortunately, absinthe's still illegal here. But if you're in Europe this summer and your better half has just left you, perhaps citing your persistent sniggering at her (or his) ostentatious mastery of the local parley-voo, you might want to embark on a course of these. You can get real absinthe there -- and, seeing as how the authentic wormwood-powered stuff has a tendency to taste like Raid, the champagne can only help it. Just make sure you leave your documents and most of your money in the hotel safe before you commence treatment.

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