Alcohol makes you mellow and unconstrained. And then it makes you boisterous and shouty. Caffeine banishes fatigue from the limbs and the brow, then makes you arrogant and shouty. Such are the devils we know.
There’s a huge variety of delivery methods to these legal, reality distorters; some fast, some slow, some calorific, some less so. And it’s the flavours and occasions which influence how we choose to take them; chocolate or yerba matte, sake or champagne.
Urban legend suggests that lining up licquors in the right order may prevent a hangover. It suggests that cider-drinkers exhibit a “loopy” drunkenness different from “maudlin”-vodka drinkers. But, basically, alcohol is alcohol and caffeine is caffeine.
There are, however, some famous exceptions. And one of those is absinthe.
My brother and I had read about this “hallucinogenic drunkenness” in a mag called FHM. Very different then, FHM was The Nanjinger of the ‘90s (Ed- Get outta here). The magazine listed some of the places where the drink (still illegal) was sold. One of those places was Barcelona, where we happened to be, on a weekend break with our parents.
“Yes, you can leave the hotel this evening. Just don’t stray onto the wrong side of La Rambla”, said my Dad. But that’s exactly where the absinthe map was pointing.
The bar itself was intimidating. My younger brother, bigger than me, also trembled as we entered. It took time for our eyes to acclimatise to the darkness. The ceiling was covered with torn black sheets which we mistook for corpses. Maybe Dad had a point. The music was Edith Piaf. The green drink was so expensive we could only afford one shot each. Once acquired, we preferred to drink it outside, rather than stay in that sweaty pit. For half an hour, in vain, we looked at the patterns in the pavement, hoping for the lines to come alive. In vain.
And then there’s raw pu er [生普].
Drink a good one, it is said, and the body doesn’t just awaken; it tingles. The fingertips, specifically, are believed to receive a miraculous cool sensation from this tea.
Well, nothing like that qi-gasm has ever happened to me. And I’ve never been completely blown away by the taste, either. On the second count, however, I’m reaching a breakthrough right now.
I’m talking about a tiny cake made in 2020, received from a friend just 2 days ago. This lacks almost all of the sour berry tastes I associate with a “sheng pu” [生普] and has a beguiling caramel aftertaste. No. It’s not just an after-taste; it’s there on the tip of the tongue mid sip. It feels like something I’ve been searching for.
I’m drinking this tea with scaldingly hot water, as advised, topping it up from half cups. There is no need for caution here, no unpleasant foibles to iron out; no quarter of the tongue needing to cower against the roof of the mouth. Every taste bud is interested.
The only high I’m feeling is the quantitative easing of the capillaries; the usual caffeine trick, not the purported tingle. But that’s enough. This branch of tea has just opened up to me.
No one ever drank absinthe for the taste of it. This is far better.
