Evan Rail

I’ve been tracking down the stories behind great European drinks for more than twenty years, starting with beer and wine before moving on to whiskey and absinthe. My latest book, "The Absinthe Forger,” absolutely obsessed me, especially when I learned how the forger’s counterfeits were proven by a group of amateur detectives, all of whom are leading collectors of the spirit and its related antiques. True bottles of “pre-ban” absinthe from before 1914 are very rare indeed, but I got to taste many of them while traveling across the U.K., Switzerland, France, Germany and the Czech Republic in order to piece together the forger's story. I hope you enjoy learning about this underground spirit and how its hidden subculture was shaken by a strange crime.