When was absinthe invented

Combined 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 s, the spirit was banned in most of Europe and the United States. The bans persisted for over years. We now know that the toxic effects of thujone were greatly exaggerated. 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. Some had levels as low as. That means, according to The Wormwood Society, you would die of alcohol poisoning before you consumed enough absinthe to be poisoned by 30mg of thujone.

It makes one wonder about the way we regulate scary chemicals. Thujone, like any other natural or artificial chemical, is only toxic at certain levels. The science behind this report frequently relies on experiments in which high doses of chemicals are administered repeatedly to rodents.

This article was originally published on 6. Earliest origins date back to ancient Egypt and medicinal use of wormwood is mentioned in Ebers Papyrus, circa BC. The ancient Greeks used wormwood extracts and wine-soaked wormwood leaves as remedies and there is also evidence of the existence of a wormwood-flavoured wine around this time made by Hippocrates that was handed down as a cure for digestive and flatulence disorders.

Modern-day absinthe originated around the time of the French Revolution when thousands of French loyalists sought safety through exile in Switzerland, Alsace, and other nearby countries. Thus far the story is well substantiated. According to popular legend and Pernod-Ricard's marketing bumph , Dr Ordinaire started work on creating a new elixir drink using plant extracts, in particularly wormwood, long considered to have medicinal properties.

He sought to make a tonic which made ingestion of the bitter herb more palatable and, in , the good doctor utilised distillation to arrive at his final formula involving the maceration of fifteen botanicals in grape spirit. These included wormwood bark, star anise, liquorice, fennel, hyssop, parsley, chamomile, spinach and coriander, but he called the drink Extrait d'Absinthe after Artemisia absinthium, the Latin name for wormwood.

On his death, Dr Ordinaire left the recipe for the drink and a substantial sum of money to his trusty housekeepers, the Henriod sisters. They made small batches of his potion and started hawking it as Dr Ordinaire's Absinthe. The doctor's tipple attracted the interest of another French expatriate and lace merchant, Major Daniel-Henri Dubied. After trying the drink Dubied made an offer to the Henriod sisters for both the recipe and their business. A Swiss version of this legend, supported by a Neuchatel newspaper advertisement for 'Bon Extract d'Absinthe', suggests that the Henriod sisters were making absinthe long before Dr Ordinaire's arrival in the village.

First of all, the rise of absinthe coincided with The Great French Wine Blight, when Phylloxera destroyed vineyards across the country, making wine far too rare and expensive a commodity for the vast majority of the population. The conspiracy theory goes that once the vineyards recovered and wine was poised to make a comeback, the powerful wine industry ran a smear campaign against what had become the country's most popular drink, highlighting a couple murders for which absinthe was allegedly responsible.

Again, the definition of 'real absinthe' is non-existent, but in the U. Virtually every absinthe would pass that test. Still, the absinthe ban was officially lifted in — 95 years after it went into effect. Most artisanally made absinthes range in color from chartreuse yellow to chartreuse green, but they can also be clear. The thing to look for is that the absinthe is naturally dyed, getting any color it does have from the chlorophyll from its macerated herbs.

The traditional way to drink absinthe is by placing a slotted spoon with a sugar cube on top of a glass of absinthe, then slowly dripping ice cold water from an absinthe fountain, which slowly dissolves the sugar into the glass.