Absinthe - The Green Fairy

MYTHS ABOUT ABSINTHE

There is A LOT of myths out there regarding absinthe and today we shall start with addressing some of them.

Absinthe is so incredibly bitter! I tasted it once and I could hardly finish the god damn glas!

As we talked about last time, absinthe usually isn’t that bitter. Apart from being distilled, it also contains other herbs that may even sweeten it (I´m looking at you anise). IF you have had a really, really bitter absinthe, my guess is that it may have been a macerated absinthe, aka crapsinthe. I have a few that is bottled with twigs of wormwood in them, and that is the same at a potentially very long maceration and they are bitter as heck. But those aren’t real absinthes, leave them as a decoration on the shelf, or don’t buy them in the first place. IF you however have a really hard time with bitter tastes I propose you try an absinthe blanche (white absinthe). They have not gone through the second maceration that is the coloring stage which will keep them even more mellow. They traditionally contain more anise which make them sweet, and if that is not enough add a sugar-cube or two to your glass.

Absinthe is a drug, if you drink it it will make you hallucinate! After all, it contains the same shit you find in cannabis!

Well, that’s complete rubbish! The whole misconception that absinthe make you hallucinate stems from a study from the 70´s that discovered that thujone (the much debated compound in wormwood) and THC (the active substance in cannabis) looked alike on a molecular level, and so they drew the conclusion that it also works the same way. It does not, as modern studies has shown. Thujone is in fact poisonous but there are such small amounts of it in absinthe that you will never ever be effected. In other words, the only conpound you’ll have to worry about is the alcohol. You can read more about thujone here.

Of course it will drive you mad! You know that van Gogh drank it, right? And he cut his freaking ear of! Further, Aleister Crowley, Marilyn Manson and Hans Giger all drank absinthe, and they are satanists! Thats poof enough that absinthe is evil and the devil lives in in the bottle! And why would it otherwise have been banned in most of the world? Is the hole world wrong?

Shit, this was a chaty guy. Let’s start with the simple fact that absinthe doesn’t make you mad. It is true that Vincent van Gogh drank absinthe, but it had nothing to do with his ear. Poor, poor Vincent, he was a man of many burdens, and the most interesting to us is his mental wellbeing. He had a mental illness and was depressed, and it even drove him to take his own life in the end. There are also theories that he lost (a part of) his ear in a fight and that he didn’t cut it himself, but that has not been proven. But I digress. During the second half of the 19th century most people drank absinthe, especially the artists. They also drank a lot of wine, brandy, smoked opium and perhaps other stuff as well. Maybe that could have something to do with it too? If you look to absinthe as the common nominator amongst the questionable ones, you will likely find it amongst the great and non-ear-cutting artists as well. EVERYONE drank absinthe during this time, like we take a beer with friends after work today. It would probably be harder to find people who didn’t drink absinthe! Regarding the satanists I think that it might maybe contribute to their image, absinthe has, after all, a very mysterious reputation. And yes, some satanists do in fact drink absinthe, but there is also many satanists who doesn’t. I´m certain that there are lots of christians who like hotdogs, but that doesn’t make hotdogs something typically christian, and it certainly doesn’t give them their religious conviction! If so we would just have to feed all the atheists with hotdogs and it would do a greater job at converting people than the church ever did. Hotdogs all around! Finally, absinthe was banned in Switzerland and France due to political agendas, and the compound thujone, which wasn’t very well understod, was blamed. The rest of the world just followed in their footsteps. Now-days we know more about thujone and absinthe is legal in almost every country again. 

I’ve heard that it will make you hallucinate.

Simply not true. It has been claimed that absinthe can make you hallucinate, it was part of the phenomenon called absinthism (read more about that here). This was invented by dr. Valentin Magnan as part of the efforts to get absinthe banned during the beginning of the 20th century. Modern studies has proved that there is nothing in absinthe that can make you hallucinate.

It’s illegal FFS!

Nope, as I said before, it is now legal again in almost all parts of the world! There are however certain restrictions in some countrys regarding the levels of thujone (raging from 6 to 35 mg/l) and highest allowed alcohol content.

You can’t compare modern absinthes to what they drank in the 19th century! Now-days they make it in a completely different way and and it only contains a little thujone compared to what they used to! 

Yes, I CAN compare absinthe today to absinthe during the 19th century, at least when it comes to thujone. Thanks to a very important man: Ted Breaux, who helped re-legalize absinthe I the US again, we know that pre-ban absinthes didn’t contain more thujone than modern absinthes. And regarding the production process, the Swiss and French proud themselves on distilling absinthe the same way it has always been distilled, according to the same recipes, in the same facilities and some times even with the same equipment.

I can’t drink it, I don’t like spirits that strong! It only serves to get really drunk on X(

Absinthe is not ment to be served as is, it was always ment to be served diluted with water. How much is up to each persons preferens, but usually it’s between 3 and 6 parts water. I personally drink mine with 5 parts water and then it isn’t stronger than whine. And also, absinthe is a social drink, ment to be sipped slowly as an aperitif (something to aid the appetite) or digestif (something to aid digestion).

I think that a big reason as to why all these myths is still around is that it simply more exiting that way. What an adventure I had that summer in Prague when I wrestled with the Green Demon and almost lost my sanity. It’s exiting to think that we might hallucinate if we drink this green liquid with a skull on the label, or that we are breaking the law, even if we don’t REALLY believe it. This together with the placebo effect is sure to be the ground for many an amazing story about ”that time I had absinthe”. And if the myth dies, then the world will be a little bit duller. Of course it also comes down to misinformation, people don’t know enough about absinthe, but I think that some people is content not knowing.

THE HISTORY OF ABSINTHE

Pull up a chair my friend, it’s time to tell the tale of the Green Fairy!

Wormwood have been used as a medicin for a very long time. A VERY long time. It is referenced in the Bible for treating parasites, and the ancient greeks has used it as disinfectant, to sooth pain and favor digestion. It has also been common to macerate medicinal plants (wormwood included) in hot water, alcohol or wine and use as a medicin. This was very bitter medicin indeed though, since wormwood is one of the most bitter plants there is. However, sometime in the middle of the 18th century, a woman from Couvet, Val-de-Travers, Switzerland discovered that if you distill the macerate it keeps the medicinal properties but you get rid of much of the bitterness. This woman was Henriette Henriod, sometimes called ”Mother Henriod”, she added for instance anise and fennel among other herbs et voila: the first absinthe was born! According to some other sources Henriette Henriod had sisters that helped her, and in yet other sources absinthe was invented by a doctor named Pierre Ordinaire who later sold the recipe to Henriette. Nobody seems to know for sure.

Later on, a man named Major Dubied noticed the popularity of Mother Henriods absinthe, bought the recipe from her in 1797 and in the following year, together with his son and son-in-law, Henri-Louis Pernod, they opened a distillery in Couvet. The business went well and soon the small distillery became to small for the demand for absinthe, so Henri-Louis Pernod moved across the French border to Pontarlier. There he opened the Pernod Fils Distillery (around 1805) and continued to sell it, but now as a tasty drink instead of as a medicin.

During the 1840´s France sent troops to Algeria to fight in the war there, and along with them they sent absinthe. A little bit of absinthe was suposed to guard against parasites in the water and make it drinkable, but the soldiers found it tasty and a little absinthe in the water soon became a little water in the absinthe. When it was time to return to France the soldiers had grown fond of this herbal elixir and continued to drink it back home, and so the popularity of absinthe grew. In the middle of the 1860´s the golden age of absinthe had started, it was served everywhere and in the mid 1870´s the time between 5 pm and 7 pm was known as ”The Green Hour” (I feel like it should have ben ”The Green Hours”). During this time people ended their workday and went to a café and had a glass of absinthe… or many 2 or 7. It was popular with everyone but  it was especially popular with the highly educated, the painters, musicians and writers, all the creative types! They experienced a sort of clearheaded intoxication from absinthe which inspired them and allowed them to keep working even when drunk (read mor about the absinthe effect here). That is how absinthe acquired its nickname ”The Green Muse”. A medicin for the creative and intellectual… you would think that this would give absinthe a reputation as something healthy, but as we will discover the complete opposite happened.

Later during the 1860´s a type of phylloxera almost completely destroyed France´s grapevines and crippled the French wine-industry. Wine became very scarce and expensive, so what was the poor people of France to do? Well, they turned to absinthe of course! The production multiplied many times over and in this way absinthe became the new national drink of France. The vineyards had to import new grapevines from America, and when they finally had recovered and was ready to sell wine again they found that the French people had grown quite fond of the Green Fairy and was not easily persuaded to go back to wine. So what does a massive national industry that has fallen from grace do? They start to talk smack about their competition of course. By now the wine lobby started collaborating with the temperance movement and the nationalist movement in a united witch-hunt to ban absinthe. It may seem a bit hypocritical, the wine industry and temperance movement working together, but in France they consider whine as food, not alcohol. They pointed out that absinthe contained thujone (I´m not sure if they could measure that or if they just assumed since wormwood contains thujone), so OF COURSE you will die a horrible and painful death if you drink it, it’s just that nobody noticed for the last 50 years! Unfortunatly there WAS some ”absinthes” by then that actually could make you sick. I order to keep up with demand and to keep the price down, some distillers made fake absinthe from methanol (poisonous), copper sulphate (for the green color), essences for the taste and (I think) some zink-salt to give the louche. That was NOT absinthe, that was a cocktail of inedible chemicals that slowly poisoned the poorest who could not afford anything else. A real dick move of the distillers, so of course this was used as evidence as to the danger of absinthe.

There was many stories of ”The Green Demon” which was used as evidence to the danger of absinthe. One included a man who sat at a bar for 3 days straight, only drinking absinthe, and in the end he saw flower springing from the floorboards. I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that if I only drank any kind of alcohol for 3 days straight I too would start hallucinating from the sleep deprivation alone. The most famous of all stories, and which played a big part in finally getting absinthe banned, is the one of the ”Absinthe Murders”. It’s about a farmer who, in 1905, killed his pregnant wife, his 2 daughters and then tried to kill himself after drinking 2 glasses of absinthe. You can read more about the ban in Switzerland here and the ban in France here.

In the end absinthes was banned in most of Europe, in Switzerland in 1910 and France in 1915. This didn’t sit well with the people of Val-de-Travers though, they continued destining absinthe in secret for almost 100 years until it became legal again. Sneaky bastards those Swiss. There also came absinthe substitutes, like pastis, but they never really measured up to the Green Fairy. In Sweden (where I live) there was never a ban for absinthe, but not to long ago you couldn’t buy alcohol stronger than about 50% abv, which includes most absinthes. Now there is about 10-15 different absinthes for sale on Systembolaget, the Swedish alcohol monopoly, and the strongest at the moment is 73% abv.

Today absinthe is legal in most countrys again, with a few exceptions. I is not used as a medicin anymore but rather a social drink. I’m not sure if it is even used as an aperitif or digestif anymore (do people still do that?). There are more and more absinthe bars popping up and it’s gaining I popularity. Unfortunately a lot of the old mythes and rumors still lingers and gives absinthe a bad name.