While Magnan’s experiments relied on high doses of pure wormwood oil and thujone, there isn’t actually that much thujone in absinthe alcohol.
An average-sized adult male would have to consume about 30mg of thujone in order to feel those effects, which include tunnel vision, tremors, and delayed reaction time - all of which are similar to other toxic chemicals, e.g. We now know that the toxic effects of thujone were greatly exaggerated.
#Absynth the drink trial#
The Lanfray trial put absinthe in the spotlight.Ĭombined with the evidence produced by Magnan, the crime was added to the narrative of the Temperance Movement (also known as the Prohibition Movement) which advocated a ban on absinthe. By the early 1900s, the spirit was banned in most of Europe and the United States. Then, in 1905, a Swiss man named Jean Lanfray murdered his wife and two daughters in a drunken rage one night. Lanfray had been drinking absinthe (as well cognac, brandy, crème de menthe, wine, and beer) since breakfast that day - and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that. It became common knowledge that wormwood had madness-inducing and psychoactive powers. These and other experiments seemed to confirm the widely-held belief of the day: Absinthe caused people to go crazy. (This experiment, by the way, is the root of the myth that absinthe causes hallucinations. He even gave a dog a vial of wormwood oil and watched it go crazy and bark at a brick wall for half an hour. He conducted all sorts of scientific experiments on animals using thujone and wormwood oil, and he observed that mice that ingested high concentrations of thujone experienced convulsions and died. Magnan set out to prove that absinthe was the root of French society’s ills. Valentin Magnan even went so far as to blame absinthe for what he saw as a collapse of French culture. Being both the latest fad in booze and extremely high in alcohol content, absinthe was sometimes to blame for bouts of raging drunkenness, occasional delirium, and even death - kind of like Four Loko in the late aughts.Īs its popularity spread, incidents of absinthe-related alcohol abuse did as well. Society gradually came to associate absinthe with alcoholism and degeneracy in general, and a French psychiatrist named Dr. That’s because basically everyone who was cool between 18 was an absinthe fan. If you check out a list of famous people who drank absinthe, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of them, including Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, and Ernest Hemingway. Prior to the ban in the early 1900s, absinthe was ubiquitous. But why is thujone so dangerous that its presence in your glass of booze needs to be regulated by the FDA? The answer has more to do with history than science. Absinthe contains thujone, a chemical found in several edible plants - including tarragon, sage, and wormwood. In the U.S., absinthe alcohol is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and the reason it was banned for so long has to do with one particular ingredient. The first two give absinthe its characteristic licorice taste, while wormwood imparts a bitter flavor and is the source of absinthe’s famed mystique and jade-green hue. So what is absinthe, and why was it once deemed so dangerous that people weren't even allowed to buy it? Absinthe is a grain alcohol of Swiss origin that is made by macerating herbs and spices, the most important of which are fennel, anise, and wormwood. Today, you can easily get your hands on a bottle of the liqueur, but before you do, it's worth learning a bit more about it.
and much of Europe until relatively recently, and the "green fairy" still carries with it an air of mystery. The alcohol - which was hugely popular in the late 19th century - was banned in the U.S. There are other, cheaper ways to make absinthe, but in Switzerland they can’t be labeled absinthe.There are few beverages as intriguing as absinthe. The mixture is distilled for a second time, and the green chlorophyll from the second set of herbs remains in the distillate, which is now absinthe. Next, the distillate is used to macerate another set of herbs, and this is where the petite wormwood, hyssop and Melissa and other herbs come in. Some distillers do sell the clear spirit, but it’s not widely available. The resulting clear liquid has some of the flavors of absinthe, but not all.
The mixture is macerated (steeped like tea) for a few days, then distilled in giant copper kettles to remove any off flavors or impurities. A variety of herbs and spices are added including grande wormwood, an herb with a beautiful yellow flower, green anise, sweet fennel, peppermint, coriander, angelica and veronica. True absinthe is made using all-natural ingredients, beginning with a clear distillate of alcohol derived from white grapes called eau de vie.
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