Savor Classics: Absinthe

Banned for a century in many places, absinthe is officially back on the market. But was it ever dangerous in the first place? In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren drink in the history and science behind absinthe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Any
Reese and I'm Lauren Vocalbaum. And today we have a
classic episode for you about absente. Yes, and this one's
a wild one. Yeah. I love I love these. I
love these uh like Temperance Um, Moral Panic alcohol episodes.

(00:34):
They are so interesting to me about how just certain
like like just particular types of alcoholic drinks got completely
demonized yea to the fact it lingers today. I tell
the story in this episode where I thought it was
illegal right when I was I had some for the
first time. It's like, yeah, get in trouble for the Yeah. Yeah,

(00:59):
and we you recorded this in ten in January, which
is a minute ago. Now, yes, it's quite a minute.
It's a hot minute, I'll say, yeah. No. I mean
I have noticed absent on a lot more menus, and
I have some friends who have. I've been kind of

(01:20):
surprised where they'll tell me I love this cocktail and
has absent in it, and I'm kind of taken aback,
not because there's anything particular about them or absent. I'm
just kind of like, oh, absent, okay, okay, it is.
It can be a very strong flavor, especially if you
I mean like, if you use like a drop of it,
it can add a really nice little little to a drink,

(01:42):
but but more than a drop, and it gets very strong,
very quickly. And I do know a lot of people
who don't like that kind of anis flavor. So yeah, yeah,
but I find it. I find it refreshing and delicious.
I do too. I do too. Um and also brings
back good memories for me because we did back when

(02:03):
we did videos, we did a really cool slow motion
video absence kind of bizarre property. Yeah, in this episode,
you suggest doing it, and we we went on and
did it, and it was it was really fun. Yeah,
it was so fun. And Lauren and I have discussed
in past episodes we both have these kind of digital
frames now and I get pictures of that frame and

(02:27):
I love it. Every time I see it, I'm like, oh, yeah,
that was. Uh. And of course we after after we
recorded this episode, we wound up getting to go to
New Orleans to to talk about the food and drink
there and uh we in fact, we in fact had
a few mornings where we hung out at the old

(02:48):
Absence house. We did because as we mentioned, they had
WiFi and we're open early. There was no coffee in
the immediate area, but definitely an absent bar. Yep, like welp,
I guess this is what we're doing now. Okay, well

(03:11):
I suppose we should let passed Any and Lauren take
it away. Oh yeah, hello, and welcome to food stuff.
I'm Any and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking

(03:31):
about absent. Yes, absent. I'm really excited to talk about
this one. How about you? Yeah? Yeah, I love absent,
But what about what about you? Yeah? I until recently
I thought it was illegal, like like well, I mean
it had been for a minute. I thought it was
still allegal. And when I was in France, and actually

(03:53):
I was there in two thousand nine, so it was
still illegal. Still illegal. Um, there you go. I went
to some kind of castle. It was like a secret castle.
What secret castle they have those apparently you know France,
you know France castles everywhere, right, And I felt, so

(04:13):
I'm going to try to ab something the secret French castle,
and then um, it was fine. It's it's a sipping drink,
that is for sure. Oh absolutely. I'm not good at
sipping and I do like the I like the traditional
preparation that has it a little bit watered down, right right, right, Yeah,
it's speaking of when I was in Australia, I asked

(04:33):
I was at a bar and I asked for water
and the bartender said, back to me agua and I
was like, yeah, yeah, sure, um and strange for Spanish
language to be popping up at Australia, but absolutely right. Well,
he comes back with a green liquor of some kind
and I said, I'm I'm fairly certain that's not water.

(04:56):
And he said, I thought you met agua the Bolivia,
which is a drink that is not absent, but nobody
knew what it was. And we all thought of absence
because it's bright green. It's actually um coca leaf liquor.
Oh oh interesting. Did you drink it? Yeah, well he
cocked the prize. He gave it to me for free
because of the mistake. I also got water water though,

(05:18):
which was good, and that's lovely. Yes, okay, so so
so absent? Yeah, what is it? Good? Question? What is
it absent? There's a liquor, traditionally a grape distillate flavored
with wormwood and other herbs, including aniseed, and sweet fennel.
It tastes sort of like a like a floral liquorice,

(05:39):
sort of sweet and tingly and bitter and grassy or
herbal just all the same time. Oh, that's a lot
going on right there. It has a lot. Indeed, as
we as we both founded out during this research phase, yes,
has a lot going on. And speaking of having a
lot going on, um, there are actually a whole lot
of species of wormwood worm what is a a colloquial

(06:01):
term for a whole genus called Artemisia um, but the
type of wormwood needed to make authentic absinthe is the
aptly named Artemisia abscythium, more casually known as grande wormwood.
Mugwort and tarragon, by the way, are other species of
the Artemisia genus, along with another three hundred or so plants,

(06:23):
many of which are used as herbal remedies or to
flavor foods and drinks. A French poet, Arts Rumbo gave
absinthe the nickname sage Rush of the Glaciers because wormwood
is abundant in Switzerland's Val de Traverse area. This is
where the Absinthe Museum is located. Please write in if
you've been Oh there's oh man. I love it when

(06:45):
people make museums just about booze uh okay so so.
Although although there's a lot in that location, Grande wormwood
can be grown in lots of places. It's native to
temperate regions of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa,
and also grows well in North America. The word absinthe
itself most likely comes from the Greek word absynthion, which

(07:06):
means wormwood are undrinkable, which itself is derived from the
Latin name for wormwood. Yeah, I'm not sure about that
whole undrinkable meaning part I certainly, the term wormwood has
long been associated with bitter um. I think it's just
an ancient plant name, you know, like a like a
label that has come to have figurative meanings like undrinkable

(07:27):
or bitter. When it comes to that bitterness, wormwood is
second only to rue uh. And this is thanks to
a chemical compound called absynth in, and it wasn't nailed
down until nine. The bitterness threshold is so high that
if you put one ounce of it into five gallons
of water, you'd still be able to tell what was there? Oh? Wow, Yeah,

(07:51):
that's pretty bitter. Absinthe has a bunch of nicknames, most
prominently the Green Fairy, but also the Green Witch and
Queen of Poison. What if I would love a nickname
like that? Oh, we can start working on it. Okay, cool.
Before it earned its um sordid reputation, it was seen
as a muse a drink for artists, part of the

(08:13):
Bohemian movement. As such, your cup overfloweth with quotes from poets,
authors painters about absinthe. French poet role Ponchant wrote of absinthe,
it seems when I drink you, I inhaled a young
forest soul. This association between creative types and absinthe was
so strong in Paris that instead of Happy Hour at

(08:35):
five o'clock, cafes had little vail or the green Hour.
Picasso frequently featured absent in his works, even creating a
sculpture called the Glass of Absinthe. Vincent and and Go
painted Absinthe and several of his works and drink a
whole lot of the green stuff. Allegedly, some historians think
it might have led up to his mental breakdown, the

(08:56):
chopping off of his ear and maybe even played a
role in his suicide. Yeah. Other famous creative types known
to enjoy absent included, but oh my goodness, not limited
to Bottlaire Oscar Wilde, who wrote a glass of Absinthe
is as poetical as anything in the world in a
himming way. Who have this quote about it? It's supposed
to rotch your brain out, but I don't believe it.

(09:17):
It only changes the ideas. He was a huge fan
absence pops up in the sun also rises and for
whom the belts holes. And he invented a cocktail that
combined champagne and absentthe he dubbed death in the Afternoon.
I love this cocktail, by the way, have you had it? Oh?
It's yeah, it's delicious. In the book that the recipe

(09:38):
was published in, the recipe says drink three to five
of these slowly, so I certainly headache in the afternoon.
By the way, we forgot to mention at the top
of the show, but hey, kids, drink responsibly. Yes, absolutely yes.
And then, of course there is the infamous bohemian Henry
did telous Latrek, who is reported to have kept vials
of absent in the top of his walking cane towards

(10:00):
the end of his life. There is a traditional preparation
for drinking absinthe, including all this really pretty old timey
coutremont called absintheana, which is also a metal band um
and and a built in watering down process with actual water,
not champagne this time hemmingway yeah yeah um. This this ritual,

(10:22):
and it is called the absent ritual, is definitely part
of the whole mystique of the liquor. And it goes
like this. So you pour one to one and a
half ounces of absinthe into a small stemmed glass. You
place on top of the glass a flat slotted spoon,
and then stack a sugar cube on top of that.
Then you slowly pour cold water like three to five
ounces to taste over the cube, allowing it to melt

(10:44):
slowly into the booze below. Super Traditionally, you might drip
water down over the spoon using an absent fountain, which
is this large glass decanter that has multiple spikeots at
the bottom designed to dispense chilled water one drop at
a time. You stir the sugar in with the spoon,
you sip and enjoy. Yeah, hypothetically, unless you really hate

(11:05):
liquorice flavors, and then you probably aren't drinking it at all.
Probably not. Yeah, we did do this. We went on
a field trip to a local restaurant nearby and well,
I got absent. I don't know that you did. I
think I got an absent cocktail. Yeah. Well, there's a
place near us that kind of specializes in absent and oysters,
and we went and got both. So it's lovely. But
the first time I saw this ritual, I had no

(11:26):
idea what was happening. Oh yeah, I was really confused
about it. I was I was like, what is that
fancy punch bowl? And why does it appear to have
vodka in it? What's going on here? Anyway? Um. Part
of the reason for adding water to absent slowly like
this is that it becomes cloudy in these pretty swirls

(11:47):
as the water hits it, and this is called the luch.
The term luche, by the way, is a French word
that means obscured or clouded or short, sort of like
like shady or shifty um by extension, and was borrowed
into English in the early eight hundreds to mean like
disreputable in an appealingly sordid, rakish and maybe sort of

(12:08):
overly glam kind of way. And now I'm really wondering
if the word lush comes from the word lush. Doesn't
seem like that much of a stretch to me. Anmalogy
is really exciting. Um. Scientifically, this cloudiness happens because absinthe
contains aniseed, which contains an oily compound called an athol.

(12:30):
Anathol is soluble in alcohol but not in water, So
when water is mixed into absinthe, it beats up, the
anathol beats up, and those beads dispersed themselves evenly throughout
the alcohol and water solution. And this isn't like all
that interesting into and of itself, except for the fact
that it stays beaded and dispersed in a way that

(12:50):
essentially confounds modern physics. Oh, I'm so excited to hear
about this. I mean, you basically just heard about it.
Like researchers have no idea what's going on, but they're
looking into ways that this reaction, which is called the
Uzo effect due to the Greek liquor uzos, similar annis
based properties could be applied to all sorts of industries
from like food science to cosmetics to nanotechnology. That's awesome. Also,

(13:15):
I think it might be time for us to break
out our slow motion camera and film this. Oh yes,
oh man, if there was ever a time for slow
motion camera, now's the time, and a time to buy
a bottle of absent on the company Time will answer
the call, don't you worry. Despite the rep absent has

(13:35):
of being dangerous and therefore illegal, it's probably legal where
you live. In fact, even though a majority of western
countries did ban it in the early twentieth century, it
may have never really been illegal. Technically. There were a
lot of loopholes that allowed for continued production, distribution, and
consumption of absinthe by the nineteen nineties, the largest loophole

(13:58):
being most choose do not have a legal definition of
absinthe uh, meaning you can make absinthe, call it something else,
and sell it no harm, no foul. Laws are generally
more concerned about the level of to jon, the powerful
chemical present and absent that usually gets the blame for

(14:19):
its psychedelic properties. Um. The more on that later, But
there really isn't that much in absence. No, no, no,
you can get around it too, by using stage oil
to joan versus wormwood to joon, which they do specify.
For example, stage by the way, has way more to
joon than wormwood does. The FDA here in the US

(14:40):
puts to jon in the same category as chocolate or caffeine.
The laws regarding distilling and selling of absence in the
US relax a bit in two thousand seven, and the
first absent distillery in the U s since nineteen twelve
opened in California that same year. Yeah, you can sell
absent throughout the European Union, and the rates of to
jon they allow are much higher than what we allow

(15:01):
in the US. The birthplace of modern absence, Switzerland lifted
its absence ban in two thousand five. Now they only
have two laws on the books for it. Um that
it must be distilled and not artificially colored. Oh yeah,
more in that later. Yeah, it was illegal in France
until two thousand eleven. Um. Even though the EU legalized it,

(15:23):
in France preserved that part of the law saying Nope,
you can do it in the EU, but here in
France not here. Um, distillers could make it and export it.
But that was about it, and due to another French
chemical restriction found in Fenel. Until recently, the pure stuff

(15:44):
coming out of Switzerland was completely illegal in France. But yeah, um,
Australia has even higher allowances for two joe than the EU,
and the UK never banned it, so they, you know,
been enjoying it in this entire time or not. Really,
it never really caught on there, that's true. That's probably
why it wasn't worthy abandoned. Um. So that kind of

(16:04):
leads us to history, and absent history is rife with scandal,
intrigue art, so let's get to that. Yeah, but first
let's get to a word from our sponsor and we're back.

(16:27):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Records show that the
ancient Egyptians and Greeks used wormwood key ingredient in absente Medicinally,
it appeared in the fifteen fifty BC Ebers Papyrus out
of Egypt, though the writings on it could be as
old as three thousand, and Greeks made remedies out of

(16:49):
wormwood leaves that were soaked in wine. Some sources also
suggest that Hippocrates might have been whipping together a wormwood
flavored wine that he would recommend for flatulence and their
digestive problems. Plenty ore Pliny wrote about wormwood in the
first century CE. Of course he did, uh. He said
that it was useful against intestinal worms. According to him,

(17:11):
Roman chariot race champions drink wine with wormwood leaves in
it as a reminder that even glory could be bitter.
Oh that is so goth, I know, isn't it. That's great.
In second century CE, Gallen recommended wormwood for swooning and
to ease an upset stomach. Swooning. Yeah, do you. Scarieties
wrote about wormwood in his influential medical book from six

(17:33):
positing that wormwood juice on your arms and legs would
keep away fleas and nets, and if you left wormwood
leaves wherever you kept your clothes, it would repel moss
like an early version of I think there is a
little bit of camphor in wormwood, in wormwood, which is
kind of the active ingredient in mothballs. So I guess,
I guess could actually work out. That's so exciting. Yeah.

(17:54):
Wormwood is mentioned in the Bible and Revelations. When the
seven trumpets sound herald the end of the world on
the third wormwood will replace a third of the world's water,
unless little way a pretty good chunk of the population.
As early as first century CE, Chinese scholars wrote about
wormwood's efficacy as a malaria treatment. British herbalist John Jared

(18:18):
Gerard wrote in fifteen seven wormwood voteth away the worms
of the guts, and in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds
people would burn wormwood to smoke the bubonic plague out
of infected homes. Absent modern history began in seventeen ninety
two when a retired French doctor by the name of

(18:39):
Pierre Ordinaire Pierre Ordinaire, it rhymes and it no, I
know it's perfect relocated to Switzerland to escape the French Revolution.
At the time, wormwood was used to improve childbirth and
rheumatism and that whole plague thing, and ordinary wanted to
find a new way for humans to use it medicinally.

(19:01):
Since wormwood was quite better, he got the idea to
distill it, so he did, using a grape spirit as
the base and adding macerated star annis, licorice, spinach, coriander, parsley, finnel,
and other botanicals about fifteen total. He named his elixir
x straped up Synth. When Dr Ordinare died, he left
his house, a decent amount of money and his absence

(19:23):
recipe to his housekeepers, the Henriott sisters. They started selling it,
making small batches at a time, under the name Doctor
Ordinaire's Absentthe enter another Frenchman, Major Daniel Henri Dubide, who,
after trying the elixir one of the whole operation for himself.
He must have made the sisters and offer they couldn't
refuse because they sold him both the recipe and their business.

(19:47):
Or that's one version of the story. Yeah, and add
for a bonus Chapdancan out of the local Swiss paper
from seventeen sixty nine suggests that the sisters have been
making absent way before Dr or showed up, and that
he maybe stole it from them. He definitely was a
real person that definitely sold absent and it definitely originated

(20:10):
in the Val de Travers region of Switzerland. But beyond
that lost to history mysteries of history, history mysteries. Whatever
the case, Major Duvide was the one to commercialize absence in.
A fellow by the name Abron Louis Perannu started to
distill it as a drink thing and not a medicine thing.

(20:33):
Probably people were drinking too much assent to keep good records,
I guess, I don't know. Um Duvid's daughter Almodi married
Parentus son, Henri Louis in and as part of that,
Dubide got the ascent formula from parentew if he didn't
get it previously from the Henryod sisters, so you know,

(20:54):
whatever he got it, he got it, and Duvide hired
his son in law to do the distilling. A year later,
in to Be hired his own sons and named the
business Do be Pa Feasts to avoid paying taxes associated
with the French border. Crossing the French border Andnri Louis
changed his last name just the spelling really and up

(21:15):
and moved to a French town right on the border.
There he set up his own absent manufacturing company called
pod New Feast which is almost the same. Yeah, but
from there it made it all over, including the US.
In eighteen o six, the Old Absent House opened its
doors in New Orleans. It was well known for its

(21:36):
absentth cocktail, a mixture of absinthe and sugar water. The
assm Frope, also known as the Green Monster. It was
quite the happening spot. In eighteen twelve, the pirates Jean
Lafitte and General Andrew Jackson negotiated joining forces in the
War of eighteen twelve. The Feet asked for and got

(21:57):
pardons for all of his men that participated, and they
helped end the War of eighteen twelve. That's the legend anyway. Also,
as with most things in New Orleans, as numbered to
be haunted, ghosts of plenty there Yeah, still there did
shut down during prohibition, but it reopened its doors and
is open for business. Absence. Reputation for settling the stomach

(22:17):
and curing fevers and discouraging insects gave the drink its
crucial cultural boost in the eighteen thirties and forties. During
that time, France was attempting to take control of the
territory that's now Algeria. Due to this whole quarrel with
the Ottoman Empire and you know, trade and resources and
money reasons. The government sent its military rations of wormwood

(22:39):
and absinthe with the thought that it could purify water
and help fight illnesses like malaria. When the soldiers returned victorious,
they brought with them a serious taste for absinthe and
a whole lot of cultural sway. National pride was really high.
By eighteen forty nine, France's twenty six absent distilleries were
making ten million ters per year. In eighteen fifty nine,

(23:03):
Manet debut his first major painting, The Absinthe Drinker. Debut
makes it sound grander than it was actually. It was
widely criticized for his choice of subject matter, an alcoholic
fellow with a glass of absinthe, even by his mentor
who told him, my poor friend, you are the absent drinker.
It is you who have lost your moral faculty. Yeah,

(23:25):
those are some strong words. Later on, in eighteen seventy six,
de Got would face a similar blacklash with his painting
Love Songs. You've probably seen it. A woman stares off
forlornly a glass of absence on the table. People called
it repulsive, not because it was poorly painted, but because
it showcased vice. Yeah, but part of the popularity of

(23:48):
absinthe had nothing to do with absence itself, but rather
with the French wine industry. The French wine industry, oh yeah.
In the eighteen sixties through the nineties, a mysterious leg
wiped out millions of hectors of French vineyards. The plants
were withering on the stalk. No one had any idea
what to do. Wine makers were burning entire fields to

(24:10):
attempt to contain the disease, but to no avail. And
people blamed everything from the laying of iron railways in
the soil to the sins of mankind. And they tried
everything from volcanic ash from Pompeii to mixtures of like
whale oil and gasoline, and for decades nothing worked. Farmers
started fleeing to Algeria and South America for fresh starts.

(24:31):
Wine costs skyrocketed, the the upper upper crust of the
military turned to whiskey and soda, I know, ridiculous, and
the proletariat turned to absinthe It turned out that this
American a fit was to blame, then named Filo's Sarah
Vasta tricks. A few of these tiny yellow bugs had
hitched a ride over in eighteen sixty two on a

(24:53):
case of American vines, which are resistant to the insects.
The French vines weren't, and the bugs were burrowing into
the soil and sucking the vines dry through the roots,
and each one of these buggers could could produce over
twenty five billion descendants per year. Whoa, uh, upwards of
sevent of French vineyards had to be entirely replanted, this time,

(25:18):
grafting on a varietal of wine grape from Texas called St.
George to lend the genes would prevent destruction, but the
damage was done, and absinthe was the drink of the
children of the revolution. Ah. We'll have to do a
whole episode on this wine plague sometime. It's a really
fascinating story about scientific fallacies and cultural biases and like

(25:38):
to this day, these bugs are a problem around the world,
and Chile is the only major wine producer on the
planet that has survived completely unscathed and ungrafted with American vines. Huh. Anyway, Uh, yeah,
folks were drinking absinth instead of wine. Yes, yes. In
the eighteen seventies and eighties, the bourgeois got in on

(25:59):
the abs absent trend as well, and this is where
you get the aforementioned um absintheana from famous silversmiths and
glassblowers were creating these ever fancier spoons and fountains to
enjoy your absence. With absence, therefore, was not only a
drink of of commoners gutter escapism and of the poor

(26:19):
but decadent bohemian, but also of the wealthies showy extravagance.
Some of these implements, by the way, are still kicking
on the collector's circuit and cost thousands of dollars like
per spoon, her spoon, her spoon, spoon budget. You know,
I'm working towards that level one day. In France, the

(26:41):
amount of absentthe consumed increased by fifteen times from eighteen
seventy five to nineteen and meanwhile, the public mood in
France was changing. With the Industrial Revolution came the economic
and cultural movements that allowed for all of this art
and opulence. But there were also more poor, working class

(27:01):
folks struggling in cities, and lower birth rates because of
the higher employment and education of women and all those
convention defying artistic types, and a a boost in diagnoses
of insanity, probably because of a shift in in diagnostics.
But public officials were concerned. There was this nationalistic concept

(27:21):
that the French population was in decline or even degenerating,
and people wanted reasons enter one. Valentine Magnon, a psychiatrist
working as the physician in chief at the Saint Anne Asylum.
He saw that the mental and physical health effects of
over indulgence in absinthe, and he set out to prove
that it was worse than regular alcohol. He set up

(27:45):
this experiment where he placed he had two guinea pigs. Okay,
he put one in a glass case with an open
dish of pure alcohol and the other in a case
with an open dish of wormwood oil. Uh. The alcohol
guinea pig got all stump rely and drunk. The wormwood
guinea pig got kind of excited and then went into seizure.

(28:05):
Oh no, yeah, yeah. But he tried this with other animals,
but I'm not going to go through all of them
because it's kind of depressing. Um. He would go on
to publish a study of two fifty alcoholics who he
said had seizures and hallucinations on absinthe but not on
regular alcohol. Yeah. He thus defined absinthe is um as
different than alcoholism in eighteen sixty nine, and people took

(28:29):
to this definition. Of course, it didn't hurt that the
temperance movement was in full swing at this point, and
lots of people who were preaching the evils of alcohol
were super ready to get on board with the demonization
of any alcoholic beverage right. In eighteen ninety, Marie Corelli
published Wormwood, an anti absentthe book following the downfall of

(28:49):
the once respected Gaston thanks to Absinthe. It had super
subtle anti Absinthe, anti French sentiments like this one. There
are no doubt many causes for the wretchedly low standard
of moral responsibility and fine feeling displayed by the Parisians
of today, but I do not hesitate to say that
one of those causes is the reckless absinthe mania which

(29:13):
pervade all classes, rich and poor. Like no romanticist can
exaggerate the terrific reality of the evil. Yeah, some reports
say that in nineteen o three that compound we mentioned
earlier called to Jean was reported by a French doctor
to be the key ingredient in the madness of absinthe.
But like Man, I cannot track down a reliable source

(29:33):
for this. Uh. It had been isolated to Jean from
Wormwood back in eighty five, and like the Turn of
the century, was around the time that mcnunn and his
ideological followers latched onto to Jean as the culprit of
Absinthe is um though, Yeah, there's a lot of a
lot of trouble tracking down of resources, there's a there's

(29:55):
a lot of mystique. There is oh, speaking of mystique.
This as to the Absinthe Murder. A new podcast coming
to you from How Stuff Works. I wouldn't be surprised,
look for it. No, I don't know um. Towards the
end of August, in a small village in Switzerland, three coffins,

(30:16):
one larger and two smaller, stood in the open air,
and the larger one was the wife of Jean Lefrey,
and the smaller two held his daughters, aged four and
two years old. Laundrey had shot and killed them, but
claimed he couldn't recall doing it. Please tell me I
haven't done this, he said. The day of his family's murder,
he had andvibed a substantial amount, beginning with a pre

(30:42):
dawn shot of absent mixed with water that was followed
with another shot, then six glasses of wine for lunch,
then one more glass before he left work, and then
on his way home he got some brandy laced coffee
at a cafe. That's where I thought it ended. But no.
Then when he got home here a liter of wine.
He and his wife got in a fight and he

(31:04):
grabbed a loaded rifle from the wall and shot her
in the head. The oldest daughter came to see what
the commotion was and he shot her two. Then he
took his rifle and went to the room of the
youngest daughter and shot her as well. Some sources wrote
that his wife was pregnant, so that's another victim. And
then he shot himself in the head, but he survived.

(31:24):
The community decided the Absinthe was to blame despite all
the other Yeah, it was the okay, sure, totally. In
a public address, the mayor named Absente as the direct
cause behind a quote series of bloody crimes. And it
took only a few days for a petition to ban
it to garner over eight two names. And this was

(31:47):
before online petitioning, So yeah, people were. People were up
in arms about it. Yeah, and then comes the press,
capitalizing on the anti absentthe sentiment growing throughout Europe, giving
it the name the Absinthe murder. One Swiss paper wrote
the premier cause of bloodthirsty crime in this century absinthe

(32:07):
Wow yeah um. When time came for Lamfrey's child, his
lawyers claimed it was an open and shut case of
absent madness. That defense didn't hold, and he was found
guilty on four counts of murder. On his third day
in jail, Lafrey hung himself. The canton, which was U
sort of a district or territory, outlawed absent a month later,

(32:28):
and a neighboring canton that suffered its own absence murder
did the same soon after. By nineteen ten, it was
illegal in all Switzerland, as well as the Netherlands and Belgium,
which had outlawed it in the nineteen o five. France
wasn't slowing down, though, going through about thirty six million
liters of absent per year in nineteen ten. The U

(32:49):
S Pure Food Board banned it in nineteen twelve with
these words, one of the worst enemies of man. And
if we can keep the people of the United States
from becoming slaves to this demon, we will do it. Wow.
I feel like we need a lot of like like
Gavel noises in the back. It's a very fist pounding
kind of episode. It is. France did go on to

(33:11):
ban it in nineteen fifteen. The government blamed it for
alcoholism in the country and for the French army up
to of men failed the army's health test, so they
were like, it's time to shape up and stop drinking
this absence stuff. Oh yeah, and that ban, as we said,
what wasn't lifted in France until and even then it

(33:31):
was basically under economic pressure provided by Switzerland having lifted
that ban into two thousand five and the US and
two thousand seven. Yeah. But this brings us to the
appertaining question. Was there really a difference and a danger
between absinthe drunk and good old regular drunk. We'll get
into that after we get into one last break for

(33:52):
a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsors.
So what's the deal with all this absinthe madness? Does
it really cause hallucinations? Will it drive you insane? Will it? No? Okay?

(34:16):
The absence that was being sold in the mid eight
hundreds was around a hundred and ten to a hundred
and forty proof. That's like alcohol by volume. Your average liquor,
by the way, like gin or whiskey, r vodka today
is about eight to nine proof or about forty alcohol
by volume, which means that drink for drink people were

(34:38):
mostly just getting drank yeah yeah um, and maybe lightly
poisoned by cheaply distilled alcohol base, especially as the wine
plaguement that good quality grape distill it became scarce and
producers turned to cheap stuff like beats and grains and
cheap manufacturing methods that might have led to adulter in
like copper sulfate or chloride getting bottled in along the booze.

(35:01):
Uh you know, same as the problem with cheap gin
in England around the same period of Totally there's a
myth that these absence were made with more wormwood and
thus contained more to jon than modern absence, but that
conclusion was based in bad science. Contemporary absence contained as
much or less to joan as modern stuff does, and

(35:23):
laws current laws do say that absence must contain less
than ten milligrams of t jon per leader of alcohol
in the U s y. Yeah, in the EU it's
more like thirty five milligrams, but that doesn't really matter anyway. Oh.
A research in the mid twentieth century revealed that although
to joan and the active ingredient in cannabis. Th HC

(35:44):
have a similar molecular structure to zone, doesn't trigger cannabinoid
receptors the way that th HC does. It does, however,
to joan inhibit a process in the brain, which in
very large doses means that it can cause muscles, as
ms and convulsions. But really, like you'd have to be
consuming pure warm with oil to get this effect the

(36:06):
amount in absinthe, you'd pass out a long time before
you could get poisoned by the two zone, right, So yeah, drunkenness, Yeah,
I mean, I guess if you're getting there much faster
than you're used to on anything else, I mean drunk drunkeness.
And they were, they were high on life. I'm sure
they weren't high on anything else. Oh yeah, absolutely not,

(36:28):
no way. Um oh and other science note. Absinthe is
made by taking um, a high proof, colorless flavorless alcohol,
and then redistilling it with a steam bag or maceration
of your botanicals. Again just like gin. Yeah. Yeah. Traditionally,
you get the color into a little bit of extra
flavor and absent by soaking another bag of botanicals in

(36:51):
that distillate. Afterward, the green coloration of absinthe was from
chlorophyll from the herbs leaves. Due to that second mass serration,
the colorful molecules would break down when exposed to sunlight, though,
which is part of why absinthe was bottled in those
green or sort of cloudy or sort of cloudy green bottles. Also,
they're just pretty. Yeah, the color today maybe artificial, as

(37:14):
it is more expensive to do that final maceration soak
than it is to just you know, toss in some
food coloring. But as we said at the top of
the episode, that is illegal to be called absinthe in
some some places like Switzerland, absent just has this whole
mystique to it. That's a good word. Um, it is beautiful.
It is and I think I um, the first time

(37:37):
I heard of it, it was I can't believe this
is the second time we're going to mention Bulan rouge
on food stuff, the beginning of food stuff like a
Wamacgregor goes to Paris and drinks absynth and he sees
the green fairy at the beginning of mulan rug, at
the beginning of food stuff. Yes, yes, if that's how
food stuff becan for you, you're absolutely maybe it's maybe

(37:59):
there is uh, I mean there is a green ferry
at play, but yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just it's got
this kind of fascinating it has such a feel to
it that we've we've put on it. But I think
it's really really interesting. It's all. It's all about that
that milky swirl. For me, it's so perlescent and just
pretty to look at. Ye like it is magic. It's nanotechnology.

(38:23):
That is awesome. Yeah. So that's Absent. Yeah, yeah, And
that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did,
and it certainly has had We've mentioned Absent and numerous
episodes because it did have quite an impact, especially on

(38:45):
the cocktail in the cocktail world. Yeah, yeah, we we
still need to we still need to dig into the
French wine grape light. Yes, oh yeah, we do need
to do that, um, because they had massive impact. Sure.
And also, I mean in these are times of well

(39:06):
my times of multiple Star Wars holidays, I was looking
through I was looking through some Star Wars recipes and
cookbooks and a lot of them do use Absent because
of the color. I largely suspect. Oh sure, yeah, yeah,
but I got some I got some idea, some thoughts,
whip up something new, yeah, totally. Oh and UM, I

(39:27):
wonder I wonder if you could do something. I wonder
if you could do something with like a butterfly, pea
flowers in combination with an absent or an uzo situation,
Like if you could get one of the gin's that
contains it or something like that, um, and then pair
that with an absent there uzo so that you could

(39:48):
get the combined uh milkiness that you get when you
add water to an absent with the color change, do
a whole thing. You're a gene is, Lauren, you are
a genius. I mean, it's an honor to know you.
I'm very excited about this, Okay, giving me ideas, all right,

(40:10):
this is like really excitement I feel right now. Great. Yeah. Well, oh, listeners,
if you have any ideas, yeah, please send them to us.
Our email is hello at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio.

(40:32):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can visit
the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.