The Czechs in a Nutshell

Yet any foreigner who’d like to find friends in this country is strongly advised to conceal his or her potential dislike of Becherovka, as most Czechs would take it as an insult of their national pride. Miloš Zeman, the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister until 2002, even cherished the national treasure so profoundly that the country’s diplomacy still has to mitigate foreign governments whom Zeman offended while considerably animated by litres of herbal liqueur.

The widespread use of Becherovka as a fetish of Czech patriotism has, however, one slight drawback: it was invented by the pharmacist Josef Becher, and he was, like the vast majority of his fellow inhabitants in the West-Bohemian spa city of Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary), actually a German (obviously, this is also a detail that you are advised to keep to yourself). Still, Becherovka is a colourful part of Czech cultural history, and it certainly belongs to the well-oriented foreigner’s basic knowledge of this country.

Photo © Jaroslav Fišer

It all started in 1805, when the English doctor Frobig came to Carlsbad, where he found accommodations in the house where Josef Becher had his pharmacy. Thanks to their common interests in mixing different fluids, the doctor and pharmacist soon got acquainted. In 1807, the two gentlemen presented the result of their long-lasting experiments: Carlsbad English Bitters.

It’s known that Josef Becher sincerely considered the “gastric drops” to be a medicine. However, hordes of patients in the spa city rapidly discovered that Becher’s Bitter not only improved digestion, but — thanks to the not insignificant alcohol content — also improved bad moods.

The production and marketing of Becher’s Gesundheits-Liqueur (Health Liqueur) hit its stride when Josef’s son Johann took over the management in 1841. It was also Johann (in Czech Jan) who registered the trademark — modestly enough, not in his father the inventor’s name, but in his own.

For the next century, agile marketing combined with big chunks of luck helped Becher’s liqueur to penetrate markets all over Europe, and it even became popular in Egypt. The company reached its zenith when Emperor Franz Josef, by coincidence, tasted the liqueur. The drops evidently pleased the imperial stomach, for after that day, Becher delivered 50 litres to the court in Vienna every month (His Imperial Highness probably didn’t consume it all by himself).

The Becher family’s success story came to a rather brutal end in 1945. As were nearly all the three million ethnic German citizens in Czechoslovakia, the Becher family was deported from the country (see: Munich Agreement). According to the Potsdam Conference’s decisions on war reparations, all their property — including the distillery — fell to the Czechoslovak state as compensation for damages caused by the Germans during their more than six-year occupation of Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren.

During the 40 years of communist misrule, Karlovarská Becherovka, as both the company and the liqueur were renamed, scraped by without any significant investments or efforts to promote exports. Luckily for Czech Becherovka fetishists, the bad times ended with the Velvet Revolution. In 1997, the distillery in Karlovy Vary — including the secret receipt of Becherovka — was sold to the Pernod-Ricard concern, which, after some wrangling with a Becher daughter company in Germany and a pirate distillery in Slovakia, has started the fight to regain the international position that was lost during the last half century.

That’s the whole story. If you still think the beverage tastes more like the medicine it once was promoted as than an irresistible aperitif, try this trick: nonchalantly order a beton (concrete), which is the Czech slang expression for Becherovka mixed with tonic.

This method has two advantages. Firstly, it clearly demonstrates that you are a true connoisseur of Czech drinking culture. And secondly, thanks to the tonic, beton doesn’t remind you of the gastric drops at all. Cheers!

Carp

The Czechs don’t have access to the ocean, so they can hardly be blamed for not offering a wild variety of delicious seafood (see: Czech Cuisine). Nevertheless, a foreigner may be somewhat surprised by the fact that the Czechs’ relations to fish can — with a slight exaggeration — be reduced to one single species: Cyprinus carpio — the carp.

Inhabitants of maritime nations often turn up their noses at this fat and thick-boned creature that revels in the mud and standing waters of fish-ponds. For a land-locked nation, though, the carp has its undisputed qualities.