A friend of mine was able to “smuggle” (just doesn’t sound right when you’re talking about alocohol) some absinthe into the States for me that he got in Denmark (I believe). It was about 2 1/2 shots worth. Tasted like licorice. Prodcued the exact same effect as drinking a few Molson Ice. Whoop-de-doo.
I don’t know why, but the sugar doesn’t dissolve in the absinthe but it does dissolve in water. I suppose it could have something to do with the high sugar content that absinthe already has. Let’s see if we can get Cecil interested in answering this one. Moderators, are you willing to pitch this one over to Him?
Did some research on this a while back.
Thujone seems to be agreed upon as harmful, but there is no consensus concerning the level in absinthe being dangerous (it is a distilled spirit and typically around 60% alcohol, so by the time you’ve ingested significant amounts of thujone, you’ve also gotten quite drunk). Nevertheless, wormwood WAS outlawed in most of the industrialized world in the early part of the 20th century.
As alluded to, an exception is the Iberian peninsula - Spain, Portugal and Andorra. Supposedly, liquor stores in US metropolitan neighborhoods containing large numbers of Portuguese immigrants sell the stuff under the counter. Figure out how to look Portuguese, and maybe you can get some that way. And, yes, a couple of Czech firms produce it legally.
Pernod, and related legal anise-based liquors, are supposed to be close to it in taste. Some, missing the crucial wormwood ingredient, may even be sold as “absinthe”.
Here’s a link to a Czech distributor:
http://www.sebor-absinth.com/
Their export statement:
I think they may be stretching a point. “merely a scheduled compound” - if significant numbers of people started ordering the stuff, I’ll bet the FDA would do something about it.
I’d be curious to get ahold of some myself, but I don’t know that I feel like $130 to have 2 liters shipped overseas.
I have the latest issue (100th issue) of the rather lowbrow vulgar British humour magazine Viz in front of me.
I quote from an ad:
“Special Offer!! Absinthe Banned in France since World War I but, luckily for you still alive and well - and now available right here in the UK. Rumour has it that Van Gogh chopped off his ear while on an absinthe binge but drank on undeterred because of the positive effects on his creativity. Sebor Absinthe is derived from Swiss and French recipes with additional natural ingredients which give the brand its superior, smooth flavour. Double distilled for that 55 percent alcohol by volume (110 proof) content and much stronger hallucinogenic effect than its major UK competitor.”
There is a coupon to order by mail, 29.95 pounds. The illustration is of a 50 cl bottle! (That’s a half liter, roughly a pint.)
I figure rip-off. Fifty bucks for a very small bottle. Health regulations have reached a high level in the civilized world and no-one is going to market anything as toxic as the original absinthe was reputed to be. (The label on the illustrated bottle spells it “absinth”.)
Absinthe addicts supposedly went insane from the severe brain damage. Toulouse-Lautrec may have been an absinthe junky.
In Ernest Hemingway’s book, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, the American bridge blaster, who is out in the hills with the guerrillas, has a small flask from which he makes a small drink at night. I’m pretty sure the flask was absinthe although the book may not come right out and say it.
Historically, there was a jaded, burnt-out, self destructive romance about absinthe.
Ouzo is Absinthe flavor, but is actually Grappa (if you’re Italian orineted) or Pomace (if you’re French) with anise flavoring to make it tolerable. Grappa/Pomace/Ouzo is (traditionally) made by distilling the leftovers from wine pressings. (Ouzo, as I said, has anise fflavor added.) The alcohol so derived is supposed to have the essential flavor of the grapes from the pressing. The better Grappas and Pomaces do, anyway. I’ve had Grappa that tastes similar to the top single malt Whiskeys, except perhaps better.
A drink smiliar to Ouzo but stronger is known as Tsiporo in Athens and Macedonia, and Raki in Crete. You don’t add water to it, but you can float a chunck of ice. This produces a descenting cloud of milkiness. For whatever reason Australians customarily drink their Ouzo with Coca Cola. (There’s a big Greek colony in Australia). I have heard of Tsiporo (and I suppose Ouzo and Raki) referred to as “Greek Milk”. I like it, but I suppose it takes getting used to.
Further afield is Retsina, which is available here in Greek and mideastern stores. Originally, people in all the villages and so forth made their own wine but stored it in pine barrels as Greece apparently has no oak trees. The wine would soak through the pine wood if the barrels were not sealed, and they used to use pine pitch to do this. It gave the wine a flavor like you’d expect --turpentine. But it is considered a mark of hospitality to be offered (and accept) the host’s retsina. Even a lot of Greeks don’t like it.
I get this from my on-line Medical Dictionary:
Absinthe: Once a major medical hazard, absinthe is an emerald-green liqueur flavored with extracts of the wormwood plant, licorice and aromatic flavorings in a alcohol base. Absinthe was manufactured, commercialized and popularized in France in the late 1700s by Henri-Louis Pernod. It became an extremely popular and addictive drink. Among the famous figures who made absinthe a symbol of decadence were the writer Oscar Wilde, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and the artists Edouard Manet, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso.
The first important medical research on absinthe was initiated in 1864 by a psychiatrist, Valentin Jacques Joseph Magnan, who exposed a veritable Noah’s arkful of animals to wormwood oil (the essence of absinthe) and alcohol (the base of absinthe). He put cats, rabbits, and guinea pigs under an individual glass case next to a saucer of either wormwood oil or alcohol. The animals that breathed the alcohol fumes became drunk while those that inhaled the vapors of wormwood had epileptic seizures, reported Dr. Magnan in the medical journal The Lancet.
Prolonged drinking of absinthe causes convulsions, blindness, hallucinations, and mental deterioration. Absinthe has been banned but something of its taste of absinthe is still available in such drinks as ouzo in Greece and in France, pastis, long considered “the mother’s milk of Provence.”
My newspaper this morning had a San Francisco Chronicle article on absinthe under the heading “Toxicology”.
It says the emerald green liqueur “contains a neurotoxin”. A professor of toxicology and environmental chemistry at U of C at Berkley have found a substance called “alpha-thujone” which “comes from an extract of the wormwood plant”. It “can lead to the out-of-control firing of brain cells” and “absinthe acts on the GABA receptor, which governs the excitation of brain signals and is a key component in the brain’s delicate balance”. Heavy consumption “would have greatly disrupted the nervous system”. Absinthe’s active ingredient “has long been linked to psychiatric illness, convulsions, and death”.
“Today absinthe beverages…are sold legally in parts of Europe and Canada…typically with less than 10 parts per million of the active ingredient versus 260 parts per million in “old absinthe””.
The article lists Van Gogh, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and Picasso as known absinthe drinkers.
The absinthe I had didn’t affect me at all like ordinary alcohol. It was more of a short-term euphoric. Yes, it’s mighty nasty, but it’s a great buzz. Just don’t do too much, as it’s addictive and causes all kinds of maladies when taken in large quantities.
Wormwood is legal in the US, and you can get in any good herb shop. It’s just illegal to, erm, soak it in vodka or puregrain for a couple weeks with cardomum, aniseed, and orangepeel, then filter and mix with an appropriate amount of water and corn syrup. Hypothetically speaking.
Your Quadell
Perhaps I’m off base here, but an awful lot of those “absinthism” symptoms sound an awful lot like good old fashioned alcoholism. Could it be that absinthe isn’t quite as dangerous as it’s made out to be?