Absinthe

[Carolyn Tillie]

First sighting at a San Francisco establishment today at Rose Pistola!

[Max]

I recently picked up my bottles of first release of the "absinthe verte" from respected artisanal California distiller St. George Spirits, mentioned here earlier. (First US product with AT-TTB approval for "absinthe" on its label; stories in December-5 numbers of San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times and in late December, aerial photo of queue to buy limited offering at the distillery.) I'd put in an order at my regular spirits dealer ($69.95 a bottle) when the story broke, and the order was filled in December; picked it up recently. (Should I see any of you in person, I'm more than happy to share.)

 

The St.-George has a distinctive bottle and label, declaring 10 herbs used, and generic tag "brandy with herbs." 60% ABV. (The original Pernod absinthe, which started all the fuss 150 years ago, used a brandy base; details in Conrad's standard absinthe book. The Kübler and Lucid absinthes I've tried, retail in US, claim a neutral-spirits base.) Greenish-tan color undiluted, pale-green louche with water,* slightly herbaceous variant of classic absinthe nose and flavor, wormwood discernible. Anise-fennel flavors predominate as usual. There's a resemblance among absinthes I've tried (some better known than others) fashioned after the pre-ban products (especially Pernod) that the makers had sampled, and this one is solidly in that class. Overall a quality, artisanal impression, befitting St.-George (better known for its premium vodkas; I haven't tried them, malt whiskys are more my taste in materia distilleria, and St-George makes small batches of an excellent, distinctive malt).

 

 

* Basis of the dialect word "pastis" in southern France, for drinks of this broad class that cloud in water when oils from anise etc. leave solution.

 

 

[Max]

If interested, you can see some of my exchange with recent hobby experts and their package of assumptions or assertions, Here on eG. All I do is cite discrepancies betw. their public statements and the established, authoritative literature. (You might think it was in their own interest to know about, or at least follow up on, these issues.)

 

Those exchanges get more reading than posting. One professional, respected academic scientist familiar with the biochemistry read my recent eG exchanges and sent an email concluding "I see what you're up against." But this is not peculiar to absinthe discussions, at all. When I started posting technical information on the Internet in the middle 1980s, I immediately ran into camps (especially hobby enclaves) with firmly held belief packages that they strongly, even eloquently defended, rather than investigated.* Though reality contradicted some of the notions, you had to do some work to learn that. So this situation isn't some side effect of absinthe intoxication, but of human nature. (And with subjects having unambiguous objective answers -- I haven't even touched on opinion or faith.)

 

*In a later example, 1991 (by which time the worldwide Internet reader population was into the millions acc. to Salus's history) someone posted a straightforward technical question which prompted many different, incompatible replies that resolved into multiple camps, arguing with each other. The question asked about a standard alternative (polar) description of multiplying a stream of numbers by -1. A few replies had it right, but were drowned out or attacked. Looking at the thread, I condensed it to one-liners and re-posted it as "A study in [online] technical advice" to show the phenomenon. Google's archive has the 1991 original Here and a follow-up Here.

[H. du Bois]

Absinthe mystery solved

 

[Sneakeater]

When I got my first bottle of absinthe a couple of years ago, I noted that it gave me these weird painful hangovers. I attributed it to whatever secret psychotropic ingredient is lurking in there. Then I noticed the proof, and realized that I wasn't deluting it nearly enough. Viola.

[Daisy]

When I got my first bottle of absinthe a couple of years ago, I noted that it gave me these weird painful hangovers. I attributed it to whatever secret psychotropic ingredient is lurking in there. Then I noticed the proof, and realized that I wasn't deluting it nearly enough. Viola.

Orlando?

[ivan]

So all that time it was banned for no good goddam reason.

 

Typical.

 

 

[Sneakeater]

Can't Fucking Edit.

[H. du Bois]

I'm glad you couldn't. It was sweet to see two Shakespearean characters calling out to one another.

 

On an unrelated (related?) note, I tried samples of one of the absinthes at my liquor store the other day. Shock of all shocks, it wasn't bitter at all. Tried it with sugar, then, when I told the guy I'd had home-brewed and Czech varieties, he had me try it without. I preferred it without. After the horror that was the bitterness of my early experiences, it was such a surprise to find that the true flavor was refined and delicious.

 

[nuxvomica]

I recently picked up my bottles of first release of the "absinthe verte" from respected artisanal California distiller St. George Spirits, mentioned here earlier. (First US product with AT-TTB approval for "absinthe" on its label; stories in December-5 numbers of San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times and in late December, aerial photo of queue to buy limited offering at the distillery.) I'd put in an order at my regular spirits dealer ($69.95 a bottle) when the story broke, and the order was filled in December; picked it up recently. (Should I see any of you in person, I'm more than happy to share.)

 

The St.-George has a distinctive bottle and label, declaring 10 herbs used, and generic tag "brandy with herbs." 60% ABV. (The original Pernod absinthe, which started all the fuss 150 years ago, used a brandy base; details in Conrad's standard absinthe book. The Kübler and Lucid absinthes I've tried, retail in US, claim a neutral-spirits base.) Greenish-tan color undiluted, pale-green louche with water,* slightly herbaceous variant of classic absinthe nose and flavor, wormwood discernible. Anise-fennel flavors predominate as usual. There's a resemblance among absinthes I've tried (some better known than others) fashioned after the pre-ban products (especially Pernod) that the makers had sampled, and this one is solidly in that class. Overall a quality, artisanal impression, befitting St.-George (better known for its premium vodkas; I haven't tried them, malt whiskys are more my taste in materia distilleria, and St-George makes small batches of an excellent, distinctive malt).

 

 

* Basis of the dialect word "pastis" in southern France, for drinks of this broad class that cloud in water when oils from anise etc. leave solution.

i just tried it last night in a sazerac. nice stuff and a good-looking bottle (nothing at all like Lucid, which is a little silly, if you ask me)

[Max]

So all that time it was banned for no good goddam reason.

Yes. What's maybe even more interesting is that most of this was known and public by about the 1930s.

 

The 1910-1915 international absinthe bans (part of the larger Prohibition movement that later temporarily outlawed most alcoholic drinks in several countries, incidentally raising alcohol consumption as a result) sort of "froze" public perceptions of absinthe at a time when its properties and the herbal chemistry were less understood.

 

Nutshell history: Around the 1860s a French physician, Magnan, published papers attributing alarming properties to absinthe, most later proven wrong, even bizarre. Magnan's results were popularized by various parties agitating against alcohol or absinthe (the new everyday fashionable drink in France). The herbal principle thujone was identified then or slightly later and proved an attractive scapegoat. As momentum gathered for a ban, early 1900s, advertisements included the claim "thujone-free by chemical analysis." A grotesque murder case tipped opinion to bring French and Swiss bans. (Murderer's rampage was blamed on his shot or two of absinthe in the course of a daylong binge. Not on the gallon of wine and bottle or two of other spirits -- if I remember the details -- he consumed along with it.) By 1915 absinthe sale was banned in most countries where it had been popular. (In the US, it became banned as an unsafe food component by the FDA.) By the 1930s though, the plant chemistry had progressed; thujone was identified as a widespread herb component, abundant in ancient common seasoning herbs everyone eats. (And that the USFDA listed, simultaneously, as entirely safe.) Thujone's commonness, and the relative toxicity point -- that alcohol is the most lethal component in any absinthe, by a factor of at least a few hundred -- were in mainstream scientific text and reference books by the 1940s. (I have some of them in my absinthe library.) In 1997 on the Internet, Matthew Baggott summarized existing research papers on absinthe and its possible psychoactivity, including lack of effects from thujone or wormwood alone. He reviewed potential thujone content of distilled absinthes (up to a few hundred mg per bottle) from the amounts of wormwood used; but thujone need not carry over in distillation, and actually you'd predict as much if you know the physical properties of the chemicals involved -- it isn't a surprising result. (Again, thujone-free absinthe was even a selling point before the ban.)

 

Unfortunately for the stuff's demystification, 19th-century absinthe notions endure (after the long lapse of public discussion). Journalistic stories the last couple of years (even purporting to put you wise about absinthe) have mostly just repeated basics that interested people were already reading decades ago in Delahaye's or Conrad's or other informed popular books, and even those sources neglected key scientific points that are much older: thujone is widespread, no absinthe has as much thujone as some (exquisite) Italian pasta sauces do, some absinthes have none at all, and even that doesn't affect lethal dose in practice, since alcohol far dominates it. And (while I'm at it) pure thujone's lethal dosage resembles caffeine's and both are much, much larger amounts than you ever encounter in foods and drinks.

 

These new studies are valuable, they are fleshing out details. But the main, dramatic upshots above have been easily available to anyone interested for between 60 and 100 years, and even nowadays they're ignored in writings on the subject.

[ivan]

Thank you, Max. Fantastic info.

 

Being part of the ignorant masses (at least with regard to absinthe), it's probably not surprising I've never heard of thujone until yesterday. All my life I've heard people speak in hushed, awed tones about wormwood as the culprit behind both absinthe's ban and legendary effects. Today I read that wormwood is in many (unbanned) vermouths. How do boneheaded stories like that get a foothold?

 

Probably because it has the word "worm" in it. Sounds sinister, yucky and deffinitely illegal.

 

[Max]

... Today I read that wormwood is in many (unbanned) vermouths.

Yes that's a classic point and also a linguistic one -- source of word "Vermouth." I posted about that a few places such as This vermouth thread. More on the large group of "wormwood" herbs earlier in the thread you're currently reading, Here. The one usually meant in english is Artemisia absinthium, pertinent here. That common name "wormwood" has many ancient and biblical associations with things like snakes in the Garden of Eden, bitterness, and its medicinal utility as a vermifuge (wormer). By coincidence the slavic word for it, Chernobyl, is widely known -- as the name of the town where the bad nuclear meltdown happened in the 80s. (I'm paraphrasing Conrad here.)

 

Speaking of bitterness, if you ever taste a sharply bitter absinthe drink, then it likely was homemade and you're tasting absinthin, the famous bitter component discussed earlier here. Absinthin is a very different chemical and easy to separate from other wormwood components, and it doesn't pass over in a still, to speak of, which is why absinthe liquors taste so much better than wormwood or its extracts. (Absinthin flavor is a quick "field test" for homemade absinthe attempts, using maceration rather than distillation. Even then, according to my reading it's possible to exclude the absinthin but I'm not about to explain how, and undermine the field test ...)

 

Most cooks have smelled thujone directly, many times. I hope I'm not repeating myself, but if you haven't already done so, open and sniff a fairly fresh jar of ground cooking sage. You smell camphor and thujone, sage's main principles. (Sage has about the same thujone percentage as wormwood.) Both are terpenoid molecules and volatile, like many components that give herbs their interesting and distinctive smells.

 

Which of course is a main reason dried kitchen herbs lose their strength over time!

[nuxvomica]

wow, lots of cool info. Max, is this work or hobby?

[Max]

wow, lots of cool info. Max, is this work or hobby?

No connection with spirits manufacture or absinthe products. I did hear and get curious about, and even taste, absinthe before many of the people now posting about it were born. (Also I have a strong interest in flavors, if that wasn't clear.) Absinthe is an engaging topic, don't you agree?