We've been putting down "Czech-sinthe" here at inAbsinthia pretty much since the start. We have to be honest though - we have never actually tried the stuff. All the pretty incredibly bad reports have made us quite skittish. That, and the outrageous prices often charged. But we probably need to throw ourselves at a bottle soon (or maybe just a glass).

That being said, we don't think of ourselves as "anti-Czech", just prudent consumers. Heck, Pilsner Urquell is one of our favorite beers. A nicely bitter beer, it really goes well on a hot, lazy summer day. But bitter Czech-sinthes give good Franco-Swiss absinthes a bad name, and their ad campaigns, complete with date rape suggestions and high thujone bragging, irritate and appall us.

And someone better than us takes on the charge of anit-Czech bias. Oxygénée, whose website is a top-notch absinthe resource, also writes a very informative blog, The Wheat of Virgin Spaces (see link to right). And he recently wrote a long post about Czech absinthes and gave them some great marketing ideas.