From the Vault: Mixologia

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Vault. And apparently today the
Vault is operating a pop up bar. That's right with
the delicious cocktails for all. This was our This was
our cocktail episode where we talked about the nature of cocktails,
some of the chemistry of cocktails, and and some of

(00:26):
the very interesting cocktail ingredients and where they come from.
I remember in this one we got into some of
the weird history of absinthe. Yes we did, Robert, have
you have you had any absinthe cocktails since we did
this episode. I had some absence just last night, but
not really. Well. What I've taken to doing is I
really enjoy making tiky drinks and uh, in some cases

(00:49):
teaky drinks do actually call for absinthe, but other times
I find that a missing of absence. I have some
absence that I've put into a little spray bottle for
making a sasserac. Yeah, but it works with an number
of different cock I enjoy it with my Taie, for instance,
But just to miss the glass of little absence before
before you pour it in it, it's marvelous. I had

(01:09):
one of when I was in New Orleans this year.
One of I had one of the worst cocktails I've
ever had in my entire life. It was from one
of those bars in the French Quarter where you can
walk up and get it to to take away. Well,
now there's some very good bars that you can you
can walk up and take away. But saying there was
no inside, this was no, there wasn't inside. That's just
it looked like a cool bar. It had like old

(01:30):
wood fixtures and everything. Um. But yeah, I went up
and I was like, okay, time to get an absinthe
frap a right, I got a prey to the green Ferry.
But yeah, I I tried to get It was basically
just equal parts cheap absinthe and simple syrup, and it
was undrinkably disgusting. I had to throw it in the trash.

(01:51):
Well that's a shame, but but yeah, I do want
to drive home that that New Orleans is a place
where you can walk into some very nice bars and
get a very nice cocktail to walk the streets with,
including beach Bumberri's latitude twenty nine, which is one of
my absolute favorite Tiki bars. Man with you it is
Tiki's all the Way Down. Well, I still enjoy a
nice Manhattan as well. Yeah. Well, hey, well we're we're

(02:14):
delaying too long. Let's get into this episode, which originally
published January twelve, two thousand seventeen. Welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you,

(02:36):
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe mccormickin today in the I
guess this will be the final installment of our totally
unplanned run of food Stuffs and drink Stuffs science podcasts. Yeah,
we kind of had a post New Year's run of
foodie topics think with some exorcism there in the middle.

(02:57):
What did you you did green tea with Christian Yes,
we did. There there's a green tea and butter and
butter and now we're going to get into a little
mixology and and and we'll even come back to exorcism
at one point, believe it or not, No way, Yeah, yeah,
it comes up. It's important. When you're talking about cocktails,
you're inevitably going to talk about exercisse. Wait, is that

(03:17):
what they always meant by holy water. Um well wait
and initi'll see. But one of the important things we
want to get out at the top of this episode
is that, yes, in this episode we are going to
talk about mixology. We're gonna talk about the history and
science and botany of mixed drinks that involve various alcoholic substances. Right,

(03:40):
But we do want to make clear that we know
we've got some younger listeners out there, and so you
shouldn't take this podcast is an encouragement to go out
and try all the drinks we're gonna be talking about, right,
And we certainly have non drinkers out there as well. Uh,
don't worry. This is not going to be a scandalous,
um out of control exploration of cocktails by any means.

(04:02):
And on our personal note, I want to add that
my wife and myself we are currently doing a dry January,
so we are only doing mock tails at the moment,
which is kind of ironic having just finished research on
this episode. Yeah, well you wanted to do it, I
think because you read a couple of books this month, right, Yeah,
two books in particular that I picked up over the holidays.

(04:24):
One is Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist The Plants that
create the World's Great Drinks. And this is a really
wonderful book, very flippable, kind of the kind of book
you can bring to a bar or a nice dinner
and look up the things you're ordering. It takes a
botanist approach to all of the ingredients, basically coming down
to the fact that just about anything, pretty much anything

(04:45):
in a drink except for maybe bacon. If you if
you go that route, it's going to have some sort
of botanical origin. Where because things come from bacon, has
a botanical origin. Well, in a sense, yes, if you
follow it back far enough, all of our drinks really
have a solar origin. Just true. True, you can say
that it's all a gift of the sun. I really

(05:06):
enjoyed the Sami Stewart book. I didn't have a chance
that you you lent it to me yesterday, and I
didn't have a chance to read the whole thing yet,
but I just flipped through it, and as you say,
it is very flippable. You can just drop to any
page and there's something interesting on it. It's sort of
a mix between a science book and a recipe book,
and I like that, uh, and the other book that
you lent me, which I got through some of, and

(05:27):
I really really enjoyed the writing style of the second guys.
This book by David Wondrich, Yes he say his name, Yeah,
believe so imbibe. He has a couple of books out
related to mix streams. One is entirely about punches and
this one is really focused more in on on the
cocktail and it it has recipes in it as well,
but it is more about the history and culture, especially

(05:50):
the origins, the very American origins of the cocktail. And
along those lines, I believe you had a quote that
you wanted to read from David Wondrich's book, right, yeah,
I think this it's the tone fabulously for a lot
of what we're gonna talk about here, and just for
discussion of basically what a cocktail is. He writes, Anyone
who has spent any time pondering the origins of the cocktail,

(06:12):
be it for the months or years it takes to
write a book, or seconds it takes to internalize a
dry martini, will agree that it's a quintessentially American contraption.
How could it be anything? But it's quick, direct, and vigorous.
It's flashy and a little bit vulgar and induces an
unreflective overconfidence. It's democratic, forcing the finest liquors to rub

(06:35):
elbows with ingredients of far more humble stamp. It's profligate
with natural resources. Think of the electricity generated to make
ice that gets used for ten seconds and discarded in short,
it rocks. But the cocktail is American. It's American in
the same way as the hot dog, that is, the frankfurter,
the hamburger, the hamburger steak, and the ice cream cone

(06:57):
with its rolled good fret. As a nation, we have
a knack for taking underperforming elements of other people's cultures,
streamlining them, super charging them, and then letting them rip
from nobody to superstar with a trail of sparks and
a hell of a noise along the way. That's how
the cocktail did it, anyway. So yeah, that's uh. That's

(07:19):
from page two o nine in his book. Uh. It's
It's full of just weird historical details, colorful characters, and
more than a few classic cocktail recipes. So we'll keep
referring back to it, but I highly recommend picking it
up if you're a cocktail fan or an American history fan.
It's a great rate. Yeah, you mentioned historical characters. One
of the great colorful characters in this book is in

(07:40):
the section I was reading. I think he's a central
figure in the book is Jerry Thomas, legendary bartender who
operated bars all over the place in San Francisco during
the gold Rush boom and in New York. Who was
this crazy, flamboyant character, a man of what is it
called the sports sporting fraternity, yes, which I think generally

(08:01):
means no good lay abouts of the of the eighteen hundreds,
and who love to celebrate with these extravagant drinks that
he was very good at making. And he loved lavish clothes,
and he loved diamonds, and he loved big pieces of art.
And there's a great story where somebody interviews him for
a newspaper at some point and he's got a couple

(08:22):
of pet rats scampering along on his shoulders or something. Yeah,
he seems to have had a wonderful sense of showmanship,
which is is ultimately such a huge part of of
cocktails and cocktail cultures, Like there's the there's this the
pure mixology of what's going on, and then there's the
flash of creating something, creating an experience and selling it

(08:42):
to the customer and maybe making a few things up
if he flourishes up to to to grease the sale. Yeah,
the mixed up cocktail, the product of any real endeavor
of mixology is an event. It's not just something to
be consumed. It's something to be admired in many cases,
to watch the bartender making for you. Uh, it's a

(09:03):
process and and it's kind of a process in the
same way that I don't know, going to like one
of those Teppanyaki steakhouses is right, Yeah, we're setting it
a sushi bar for instance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get
to see the magic of the food come together. I mean,
in a sense, it's like you know, like making cocktails
at your home or cooking at your home. There's this

(09:24):
there's this experience, this this process. You're following instructions, maybe
you're improvising a little bit, You're going through an experience
to get this thing. You're richer for the experience, and
that plays a part in your enjoyment of it. Well,
before we look at the science of some cocktails and
the and the alcohols, and then maybe we should look
a little bit at the history of the cocktail though,

(09:44):
what's what's the social relevance of this tradition of mixing
different alcoholic beverages together to produce a newer, better, higher
emergent form. Well, one of the core points that one
which makes is that the the origins of the cocktail
and cocktail culture a largely American. Now, certainly it's a
culture that we lost and we had to rediscover and

(10:04):
reclaim the realm of mixology from the tyranny of apple
teen ease and an unimaginable, unimaginable tryst with vodka. This
is a thing in the book I noticed. I I
didn't get to the part where he explains this, but
he makes some snide comments about vodka. Well, I think
his main deal, wonder which is that, you know, he's

(10:25):
very interested in the origins of cocktail culture in this
golden age of cocktail culture, and vodka really didn't, you know,
make it splash until until after that point. Now, and
that's not to say there aren't some wonderful vodka cocktails
out there, but is we were discussing before the podcast,
you said that you personally feel vodka's a little bit workhorse, right, Yeah,
it's not. I mean I don't know of any of

(10:48):
my favorite cocktails that have vodka in them. It just
seems like it's something that you mix with something vaguely
sugary and it makes a drink that has alcohol in it.
I mean maybe I don't know. You see James Bond
ordering vodka martinis, but I just look at that and
be like, why not just get a real martini? What's
wrong with you? Um? Well, another thing that came up
when we were preparing for the episode, going along with

(11:10):
your your point about the food culture and the preparation
culture and how that enriches the social experience of enjoying
the cocktail. I also personally feel experimenting with with mocktails
this month, as I am that a concoction without alcohol
in it can go down a bit fast, you can
be a little bit thirstier for it, whereas my in

(11:32):
my own experience, if it has a strong spirit in there,
it forces you to take smaller drinks and it sort
of draws out the experience of enjoying the beverage. Yeah,
like the relaxation brought on by a cocktail might not
just be from the drug content, the alcohol content acting
upon your brain, but it's also from the process of drinking,
because you're you're forced to slow down and relax and

(11:55):
take your time for a moment. Yeah. Now, cocktail culture
is also something that some might argue that the Japanese
have elevated and perfected, as they've done with other Western properties,
but they not all still. But it was all still
one of America's first true art forms, at least culinarily
speak right now. To be sure, the American cocktail float
followed closely on the heels of a tradition of proper punches,

(12:18):
which one which is quick to remind us, So we're
more complex back in the day. Yeah, you can think
of the punches being like the big bowl of stuff
that somebody's drinking at a Christmas party in a Christmas
carol that that party that Scrooge won't go to their
having them punch. Sure, yeah, and it wasn't just sprite
and fruit juice and some booze it was. It was
more complex. I mean, the one which wrote an entire

(12:40):
book about it. Uh. He makes a distinction between between
today's punches and the greater punches. He calls them calls
them that were made quote long and strong. And so
this style of mixology rain from the sixteen seventies to
the eighteen fifties and then Temperance in the Temperance move
movement in Europe put the brakes on punch a bit,

(13:02):
as did the busy approach to life in the Americas.
So instead of going through the whole rigmarole of having
this giant punch bowl, with this this carefully balanced concoction
inside of it, punched by the glass became a thing,
and this was sort of a precursor to the cocktail. Yeah,
that sort of makes sense. I mean punch punches for parties.
As I was saying, it's there to serve a lot
of people in a limited time frame. Yeah, why would

(13:25):
you make make yourself a punch after work? Yeah? Or
you go into a bar, it's just you, you know,
maybe you you don't have that much of a social
situation going on. You want to a glass of punch?
Why not? Why can it not be provided by the glass?
After this, you have what Wonderage calls the children of punch.
So you have collins Is, Daisies, pizzies, sours, cobblers, coolers,

(13:49):
the swizzle, uh, the egg drinks, the various egg drinks
where you have especially the white of the egg that's
been frothed up. And before the cocktail you had toddies
ings julips. So even though just trying to figure out
what a proper cocktail is that can be kind of
hard to nail it down, you'll find various historical tidbits
and descriptions that entail cocktail like concoctions. So, for instance,

(14:14):
Dickensian Londoners that drink what we're known as pearls, this
was hot ale hold on this pearl with a U,
not yes an oysters, not like an oyster pearl like
p U r l s, And this would have been
hot ale, gin, sugar, eggs and nutmeg. So very close.
Samuel Peeps recorded the drinking of a great many things,

(14:37):
including pearls as well as gin and vermouth, so as
as one Bridge points out, he was really close to
having invented Martinish. I do remember in the Diaries of
Samuel Peeps an episode in which he drinks far too
much alcohol and has to run outside and urinate in
an alley way somewhere, but I don't remember what he's drinking.

(15:00):
In this episode. I think it is beer though, Okay, yeah,
I might. I believe he was not opposed to just
straight up beer as well. I certainly think of beer
as the quintessential uh English drink. I should also point
out there are various stories about why we even call
it a cocktail. One story I ran across is that
it had to do it was a horse analogy. So,

(15:20):
if you have an old, older horse and you're gonna
sell it off, you want to make it appear young
and spirited, so you might give it something to perk
it up, to cock its tail. No, yeah, well, I
mean I I don't know. I'm not I'm not up
in the details of how you would cock the tail.
I'm not saying this is something intrusive. Well, no, I
I've heard stories of this. Well, the idea stories are

(15:43):
like rubbing ginger on its butt. Okay, stuff, Well, I
guess the idea here, then, is that the cocktail would
be the human equivalent of a little ginger on the butt,
you know, to to perk you up, to live in
your spirits and uh and make you a little more
presentable for a short period of time. Stuff to blow
your mind does not advocate putting ginger on or some spuds. No,
not at all. So by the nineteenth century standards, a

(16:05):
true cocktail had specific ingredients spirits or wine, and then
you'd sweeten it with sugar diluted with water if you
needed to. And and it may be throwing a dash
of bitters bitters or of course a medicinal infusion of
bitter roots or spices, what have you. And if you've
ever tried to make a cocktail without bitters and wondered
what's missing, that's what's missing. Yeah, Bitters I think are essential. Yeah,

(16:29):
as you sort of triangulate the flavor, right, because you've
gotta have your your bitter, you have your sweet um.
You want you want to be able to to define
that balance. You don't want it to be just this
ultra sweet or this ultra bitter concoction. So you can
get really high and mighty about the definition of the cocktail.
You can stick to that, to a narrow definition. But
all you really need is the mixture of an alcohol

(16:51):
with some other ingredient, right, I mean a jack and
coke is a cocktail? Am I being high and mighty here?
I I promise I'm not high and mighty. That just
sounds like it really is it? By the my modern
deluded standards, I think you can say, yes, it's on
the cocktail menu. Um, but it's of course far from
a perfectly balanced Manhattan and old fashioned, etcetera. A punch

(17:15):
wasn't a cocktail. But we can certainly go back much
further in time and find examples of its basic principles.
On that note, let's take a quick break, and when
we come back, we will look at some in some
cases very ancient concoctions that you can argue where cocktails,
though you might not want to try and order them
at your favorite restaurant this weekend. So looking at the

(17:42):
origins of cocktails, I want to throw out an idea
that I'm I don't know, I've been mulling over. So
I'm sort of sympathetic to the idea that cooking has
multiple anthropological functions. Of course, there's the basic biological role
of it in that it makes food safe to eat,
you know, killing food born and bacteria and stuff like that.

(18:03):
And it makes food easier to digest. It's externalizing some
of the process of digestion. You can get more nutrition
out of the food, but it might Also I think
kind of provide a psychological effect in that it sort
of d natures or provides psychological distancing effects, um. By
putting a veneer of artificiality and civilization over the brute

(18:28):
animal activity of gorging oneself on calories of plant matter
and animal flesh in order to stay alive. It's almost
like a way of putting death out of mind in
the process of eating. Okay, kind of like how we
we distance ourselves from the reality of especially meat products. Yeah, yeah,
we like sometimes people are disturbed to see their meat

(18:50):
being cut off of an animal carcass instead of just
arriving in a wrapped container. Uh. Some people don't even
want to look at raw meat. They might buy pre
cooked meat or something like that. And I think that
there's some of the same anthropological uh desire for distancing
from our animal nature that that's operating here. And again
this is this is just my speculation. I'm not This

(19:12):
is not backed up by any hard science, um. But
I wonder if some of the same thing could be
going on with the idea of mixing alcohols uh, cocktail culture,
or even going back to some of these things we're
about to talk about. You know the origins of mixing
wine with various ingredients. It is tasty, I'll give it that,

(19:32):
so I, but also cooked food is tasty. I wonder
if there is also an element that's operating that is
putting a veneer of civilization and sophistication onto the act
of ingesting ethanol to dull your senses, right, or sort
of the to take a page from nature documentaries and
of course overdrawn at the memory bank, the idea of

(19:54):
of a monkey eating a rotting, fermenting fruit and then
falling out of a tree exactly. We don't want that experience, though, essentially,
how is it that different? Right, We've we've taken something
that has been transformed by its uh, by its demise,
we've we've we've eaten it, or we've we've sipped of it,

(20:15):
and then it's altered our senses a bit. Yeah. So
I'm certainly not saying that the you know, the visual
art and the taste and smell pleasure of a cocktail
is not the primary reason for it. But I wonder
if it's fulfilling this other role, to if it makes
us feel just a little more human and a little
bit less like an ape rolling around while we're getting

(20:38):
in the state of mind that you know, if if
it goes wrong, could lead to some actual rolling around. Well, certainly,
there's there's no shortage of of culture attacked attached to cocktails,
especially when you get into the even the particulars of
the glasses and and what sort of glass is suitable
for this type of beverage, some of which is grounded
in the physics of the chemistry of the thing, but

(21:01):
more often than not, it's just pure cultural distinctions. This
type of glack coop glass or a nick and Nora
is more appropriate for this drink. Why just because it
looks nice, Because it is. Yeah, yeah, that's how it's
always been done. That's what your culture says. Yes, But anyway,
let's go back through that culture. Let us retreat into

(21:21):
the clouds of history and see if we can find
the origins of this process of mixing alcoholic beverages. Well,
the true origins are are ultimately going to be lost
to the midst of history because essentially what we're talking
about it is just it's very basis combining wines or
other alcoholic concoctions with herbal ingredients or other ingredients that

(21:46):
alters the finished beverage, because distilled liquor is not that old.
So making wine with some selection of specialized ingredients, well,
these have been with us for for ages, so you
might choose to call them magic potions, or you might
call it a medicinal elixir. But let's consider a few
interesting examples. What do they call it in Game of Thrones?

(22:08):
Muld wine? Mold wine? Yes, and everybody drinks mould wine.
And don't forget the milk of the poppy. Oh yeah,
which will we'll kind of come back to in a bit.
So these are a few examples. These are not necessarily
in order of historical occurrence, but one of Emperor Claudius's physicians,
one Scribonious Largus Uh, prescribed the following to sue the stomachache.

(22:34):
Sweet wine combined with dissolved black myrtle berries and pills
made up updates deal saffron, nigella, seeds, hazel ward and juniper. Okay,
so it sounds like, wait, hold on, some wine. So
like wine that is a precursor of a vermouth product,
and you're getting some juniper here, So they're working on

(22:56):
a martini you could, Yeah, juniper berries are are? Are
they the key ingredient gen So you could make an
argument that, yeah, this is maybe a precursor to a martini.
Very certainly, almost certainly would not have tasted like a martini.
Here's another one. According to Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist,
an eighteenth century concoction called for boiling snails with milk,

(23:18):
brandy figs, and spices to create to treat consumption. Yeah.
Can you imagine you're you're already dealing with consumption and
then somebody who really cares about you comes at you
with a cup of this. Yeah, what's in it? Well,
you know, some brandy figs, spices, milk, Oh, sounds good,
and some boiled snails. That's that's how they get you

(23:40):
the final ingredient. Now, if we go back all the
way to a thirty BC. Virgil, the of course, the
poet who write notably guided Dante into the underworld and
the divine comedy. Uh he he wrote of of citron
is a remedy against poison. So citroning, you know, citrus fruit,

(24:02):
the peel was added to wine as a vomit inducing remedy.
So citron is one of the earliest species of citrus.
It's a parent of various citrus species that we've we
prized today and use in in concoctions, and you know,
an all manner of recipes. Um. So it has a
thick peel. It's a sour fruit. It is a quote
dinosaur of the citrus world. Uh kinda again, too many

(24:25):
fruit fruits that we cherish in our cocktails and more
closely related to the Boodhoo's hand citron. I don't know
if you've ever seen this. It's a really beautiful fruit
that has this kind of don't think of a straight
up hand, but think of a very Eastern depiction of
a curly fingered hand, and you have it. It looks
very love crafty and I just looked it up. It does,

(24:47):
it has, it has tentacles coming out of its head.
I have actually have a post about it that I'll
link to on the landing page for this episode because
it photographs beautifully just a beautiful, beautiful fruit. Now I
can't I can't recommend trying Virgil's recipe here, but it
is worth a noting that in Barbados they originally made
citron water in the eighteenth century and may have used

(25:09):
it to flavor of vermouth so there is some connection
there too, uh more or less modern drink culture. All right,
So a minute ago we mentioned the juniper berry is
one of the ingredients prescribed for this This pill combined
with sweet wine to soothe an upset stomach in ancient Rome.
But uh so, juniper actually did does, as we say,

(25:31):
end up being the main ingredient in gin. Right, And
it's a medicinal use goes way back as well, as
used as early as twelve sixty six by Belgian theologian
Thomas van Contemporary, and he recommended boiling juniper berries in
rain water or wine to treat stomach paint paint. Now, this,
it's important to note, would not have tasted like gin,

(25:51):
no matter what you're what you know, bottom shelf variety
of gin you might be thinking of. I'm sure that
tasted better than a rain water juniper concoction. Bad gin
is a bad idea, Yes, as I would. I would
advise anyone who has turned off of gen to, you know,
explore there's some there's some great gen's out there, uh
that that aren't that don't taste of rainwater. Now, in

(26:14):
the second sist century, Greek physician Galen recommended juniper berries,
to quote, cleans the liver and kidneys and uh, and
they evidently thin any thick and viscous juices, and for
this reason they are mixed in health medicines unquote. So
Stewart in her book writes that this suggests a mixture
with alcohol, which again kind of sounds like jen. Probably

(26:38):
would not have tasted anything like jen. Alright, moving on
from proto gen uh, here's an eighteen fifties recipe for
concoction to treat I was, which was some sort of
bacterial infection that afflicted the skin and the joints. So
Kentucky farmer John B. Clark listed the recipe as follows.

(26:59):
This is listed in the Drunken Botanists as well. You
would need to combine one pint of hog lard, one
handful I think you said lard. Yes, lard, yes, hog lard, yes,
straight up hog lard in the drink. Yes. Again, not
that different from the bacon related drinks that would briefly
become the fat. So okay, you get your pineahog lard,

(27:21):
you got your handful of earthworms. That's what you're gonna
You're gonna need that handful of tobacco four pods of
red pepper, a spoonful of black pepper, a race of ginger,
and you stew this together and mix with brandy. Well,
that sounds dangerous on one hand, because if you're using
tobacco and it, that sounds like you could easily accidentally

(27:44):
extract too much nicotine and poison yourself. Right. Well, this
is a good good point as well. And this this
will come up again as we discuss the weird connection
between alcohol and tobacco. There and tobacco and fused alcohols.
You can actually buy one today, but yeah, that would
have been a potential threat here. Or maybe that's how

(28:04):
it works. Maybe you're you're isolating the the true power
of this folklorimity. Yeah, I mean, I guess when you
think about it, the whole nature of of drinking ethanol
based drinks is you're kind of slightly poisoning yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
And as we get into the some of the so
called nefarious spirits that have been used in cocktails over time,

(28:24):
it's worth stressing that alcohol is kind of the nefarious spirit.
Very few of the substances that get mixed in with
it are as potentially dangerous as the thing itself. Finally,
I want to mention this is a little, a little
far less of a cocktail, but certainly a mixture of spirits. Uh.
If you look back at Homer's Odyssey, you find a

(28:48):
mixture that is referred to as kai kion, and this
would have been a mixture of beer, wine and meat
that was given by Circe to um to Odysseus crew
in the Odyssey. So a mixture of spirits and maybe
a little magic in there as well. That doesn't sound
like a good combination, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean it

(29:08):
either it doled them out enough that she could turn
them into pigs, or it had some role in turning
them into pigs. Either way, not something you want out
of your your your beverage. Bottom line, don't accept drinks
from a witch, right, yeah, never except to drink from
a witch. I think we should all we should all
know that by that point, been fooled too many times.
All right, So let's get into these nefarious spirits. Touching uh,

(29:29):
touching down once again on tobacco. So tobacco liqueur, what's
the history here? Well, we don't know for certain on this,
but Amy Stewart points out that people that the people
of Columbia, Venezuela and Brazil had a long standing practice
of soaking tobacco leaves and honey. And since honey can
of course be fermented into mead and such drinks, such

(29:51):
meat type drinks were known in South America. It's possible,
but unproven, that some manner of nicotine mead may have emerged.
So nicomede, nicomede, I guess, yeah, So it would have
your your alcohol and nicotine buzz combined into a single experience.
No need to drink and smoke, you just have one
concoction that is. Yeah. But let's leave the ambiguous world

(30:15):
of conjecture and consider actual, verified, and perfectly legal tobacco liqueurs.
The best known of these is periq liqueur did tobacco.
So this is a French tobacco liqueur, and pretty much
it be tobacco liqueur. I gotta say, I'm surprised to
I would not have expected anybody was actually making tobacco booze, yeah,

(30:35):
or that it was like a refined thing and not
some sort of weird, gimmicky somebody's dangerous backyard concoctions. Right
the distillers here at the Combert facility, they claim that
it has no nicotine in it though, and this is
apparently quite likely since the high boiling point of nicotine
is like four seventy five degrees fahrenheit, meaning that it

(30:57):
probably doesn't rise through the still during the distillation process.
That's interesting. So that makes it seem like, given that fact,
it's actually safer to have a tobacco based liquor or
liqueur than it would be to do what we were
talking about earlier, and like soaked tobacco leaves in a
wine that you're drinking or something where the essence could

(31:17):
come out into the liquid, whereas in a still you're
saying it would not evaporate correctly, right, And that's something
she points out there, is that, especially in this age
of nix nix, a logical enthusiasm and often home bitter
making projects that some some might make a cigar bitters,

(31:38):
for instance, at their house, but if you don't know
what you're doing, uh, you might accidentally create this a
supercharged nicotine concoction, and you could create a cocktail with
an inappropriate dose of nicotine in it. That sounds like
a very bad night. Now. Now some of you are
probably wondering, well, what is that actual tobacco liqueur taste

(31:59):
like well, Stewart describes it as quote sweet, aromatic and
decidedly different, and that it quote tastes the way sweet
damp pipe tobacco smells. So I know that smell, but
I can't imagine that taste. Yeah. Yeah, so that's why.
If anyone out there has any experience with this one
and has a more detailed explanation or additional thoughts on

(32:22):
it's a particular uh bouquet, then let us know. Okay,
so that's nicotine, but how about how about cocaine? How
about coca wines and tonics? Moving up the ladder of stimulants? Yeah,
this so so this is another something. Hold on, when
do we get to four loco then four local? What

(32:42):
is in four loco? I'm not familiar with this one.
Oh I just made a four loco joke, and I
don't really know. I believe it is a or at
least was a combined alcoholic beverage and energy drink. Yes,
I think it might not be anymore something. I don't know.
I've never had a four loco. I'm not advocating it, Okay, Well, mean,
of course there are other drinks out there that combine
alcohol and coffee, so or the much dreaded vodka and

(33:07):
red bull, which David Wandridge does not cover in his book.
But really it didn't make it into didn't make it in. Yeah,
it's not refined enough. Go figure. But but as far
as the history of coca leaves, the prime ingredient in
cocaine and alcohol, Uh, this this gets really interesting. So
Peruvian has made use of the coca plant leaves as

(33:28):
early as three thousand b C. So they would choose
the leaves for energy. It provided mild stimulus and it
would also help against altitude sickness. It could be brut
and tease as well. Now did we mention the the
idea that this was employed by the the runners in
the Kingdom of the Incan's, the runners who would carry

(33:49):
the not messages across the high altitude I believe we did. Yeah, yeah,
that would have been an example of usage there where
you just needed a little more boost or a little
a little better ability to uh, to really go at
it in the U in the higher altitudes, they would
have turned to the coca leaf. Now, when the Europeans

(34:11):
came in, they figured out how to extract the cocaine alkaloid,
and it was used as a pain reliever and antiseptic,
digestive and various other medical uses. In fact, in the US,
it remains a schedule to narcotic. That means it has
quote currently accepted medical use and treatment in the United
States or currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions. What

(34:34):
what what use is cocaine today in the medical community? Uh? Well,
I mean basically it comes down to some of the
properties was originally used for, um, you know, such as,
you know, alleviating pain. If anyone's ever seen the Wonderful
Blue of Cinemax show the Nick, they do a wonderful
job of exploring the use of cocaine medically at the time.

(34:57):
Uh pre anesthesia. You know, you could you could inject
cocaine and uh and and get the desired result for surgery.
Uh yeah. Wow. But it is an interesting reality to
to remind oneself that while marijuana is a Schedule one narcotic, uh,
cocaine is a schedule too. Of course, today cocaine continues

(35:18):
to power around with alcohol and illicit recreational usages, but
it also made its way into coca leaf wines and tonics,
So there was a French vin Mariani. This was a
tonic and it was patent in patented in eighteen sixty
three by French chemist Angelo Mariani, and he also offered
a coca wine called then Tonique Marianni, which was a

(35:41):
combo of Bordeaux wine and coca leaves. Now none of
that goes on, at least legally today, but coca flavoring
is still used. And you can order yourself some d
coconut cocaine eysed cocoa tea right off of Amazon. And
it's actually pretty good. It's it's you've had I've had it. Yeah, Yeah,
they've they've they've leached all of the cocaine out of it.

(36:02):
So it's perfectly, perfectly legal, perfectly reasonable thing to have.
I don't know if you should have it before a
drug test from employment or anything, but it's certainly interesting. Well,
one thing that occurs to me is if coca cola
originally was flavored with coca, wasn't it some kind of
coca product? I believe it's not anymore. Right, Well, they

(36:23):
have the whole secret recipe thing, right, and and certainly
coca can be d cocaine eyst so so it could
be d cocaine and so so, but you could think
just flavor wise, perhaps if you're mixing coca cola with
some kind of alcoholic beverage, you may be to some
very tamed extent simulating this kind of mixture. Right, And
there's apparently a liqueur called Agua sold in the US

(36:46):
and European markets, and it's marketed as quote a premium
herbal liqueur made from Bolivian coca leaves and an infusion
of thirty six herbs and botanicals. So in this case
we would be talking, uh, you know, the cocaine has
been removed from it as well, and you're just getting
the flavor profile with the leaf. And of course this
the the the excitement of oh it's it's it's cocaine liqueur. Well, yeah,

(37:09):
there you go. I mean, as we talked about, it's
not just the taste. There's an event going on, right,
it's the showman show. Now from there, let's move on
to another schedule to narcotic with a similar timeline of
traditional use, medicinal use, refinement, and then outright abuse. We're
talking of course about opium. Okay, so opium cocktails huh yeah, well,

(37:34):
you know this is this is something I didn't realize.
I guess I knew this, but I never really put
one and two together. But the seeds of the opium plant,
poppy seeds, they're sold legally since they're used in baked goods. Right.
I remember the old Seinfeld bit about Elaine having poppy
seed muffins and then flunking a drug test, But I

(37:55):
somehow didn't put put it together that it was actually
the same plant. I kind of, without thinking about it,
assume that it was just, you know, something that's closely
related to it and would trigger a false positive. Now,
I imagine this does not mean that we have to
worry about eating poppy seed muffins because they're gonna have
opioid effects on us. No, yeah, not at all. Continue
to eat your, your, your, your poppy seed muffins. Now.

(38:18):
Stewart points out that the earliest possible description of an
opium infused cocktail of sorts is again Homer's Odyssey Uh
the elixir Nephanthy that Helen of Troy drank to alleviate
her sorrows. It was mixed quote with an herb that
banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humor, and this of

(38:38):
course may have referred to opium. Or if you're a
fan of Game of Thrones and I think this might
be yeah, there you go. Now that, of course, the
more direct comparison there would be if we go to
Victorian times laudanum tonic, which was opium steeped in alcohol.
The alkaloids and opium are for more soluble in alcohol
rather than in water. There is so. I just recently

(39:01):
read the novel True Grit Oh Yeah, by Charles Portis uh,
and there is so. I've seen the movie before, but
especially in the novel, there is a scene in which
the main character, who is a girl who is very
level headed and very all business like. She she sort
of messes things up in a scene because she has

(39:22):
been given laudanum to treat a cold. It was it
was one of these things that was used to treat
just about everything. And that's the thing about opium is
that whatever ails you, at least in the short term,
a little little bit of opium will probably make it better.
It's the it's more the long term, not the problem,
not make it better, but make you not care. As

(39:44):
far as actual cocktails go, this is kind of interesting. Uh.
King George the Fifth like to consume a mixture of
brandy and laud him to alleviate his gout. So there
you go again. Not alleviate his gout, would alleviate his mind,
alleviate his his experience of the gout, or his relationship
to his experience of the count um and uh. And

(40:05):
of course Bear the Drug Company sold an opium syrup
in under the name Heroin, which was you know. Of
course often it was often marketed at kids, four kids
to help with your your cough or what whatever ails you.
I've seen those ads. Yeah, y'all out there, you should
look up these ads. Yeah, they're they the old printed

(40:25):
ads for it. It's it's phenomenal. And again, if you're
a fan of of all this, you want you want
sort of a fictional treatment of it. Uh. Steven Soderberg's
The Nick also explores uh, the early days of heroin
rather nicely. All right, well, what else do we do
we have here on the drink menu? If you will? Well,
I was just thinking about as long as we're going

(40:48):
into strange and perhaps illicit ingredients may be less illicit
than opium and cocaine. Uh. But do you remember the
bacon craze of the late two thousand's early two thousand tens.
Oh yes, how could I not. And of course coming
out of that craze, there were lots of bacon cocktails,

(41:09):
of course, you know. And not to say that that
was the first time there was ever such a thing
as like bacon infused alcohol, but it became very popular then,
and during this time it was it was like when
everybody thought it was hilarious to have an I Heart
Bacon bumper sticker or T shirt and have bacon parties,
and to have bacon on all your food, to make

(41:29):
like bacon utensils to eat your food with. Not to
disparage bacon itself, but I do think it's funny how
all of us at the time, for some reason, didn't
seem to realize that this was not just a spontaneous
outpouring of ironic Internet love, but to some extent a
result of market forces in the meat markets and a

(41:52):
manipulation of public opinion by the pork industry. I was
reading an article about that not too long ago, like,
was it really just a coincidence that you knew a
guy in college who started a hilarious bacon based garments
blog right around the same time that Wendy's introduced the
bacon eight er. Ah, that that's perfect and it again

(42:13):
it it fits perfectly in the culture of cocktails because
of that that marketing angle, and that's often a hidden
marketing angle. Like it reminds me of the origins of
the Moscow Mule, which of course is a is a
nice beverage. It has vodka, ginger beer, what some lime.
It's pretty in that copper cup. Yeah, that copper cup.
It looks beautiful. And where did it come from? That's

(42:34):
the thing you might think, Oh, well, this it's it's
called a Moscow Mule. Must have been This must have
been like a work working man's drink in Moscow, invented
by the great bartender Ivan Mulevich. No, you you might
think it might be something cool like that, but as
it turns out, it just goes back to a vodka
distributor who knew somebody. I think it was a girlfriend

(42:58):
who had all these copper mugs that that she needed
to sell. So just put one and two together and
the Moscow meal was born. It was delicious, but the
whole story, the fictional creation story behind it, just had
no basis. In fact, that is incredibly deflating. Well, you know,
you drink half of one and then you feel better
about it. Well anyway, you definitely remember though how this

(43:22):
did happen, or it was around two thousand ten. I
think that this was really peaking, that there was, you
know a little bit after the years after that were
suddenly these recipes for bacon infused bourbon and stuff like that.
We're just taking over the menus everywhere, and everybody thought
it was great to give somebody bacon old fashions or

(43:43):
for something like that for Christmas. And I think I
still see drinks of this nature on the menu every
now and then. Sometimes it's like a bacon like the
the Glasses Room, not in salt. That's some sort of
like bacon based not not straight up bacon bits, but
the fancier version of bacon bits. I think the barbecue
place here in town, Fox Brothers Barbecue in Atlanta, they

(44:04):
have a Bloody Mary that's got a bunch of bacon,
and that's of Bloody Mary's were not already pretty salty.
Um I I can't. I can't match anything that is
quite as meat centric as a bacon cocktail. But carnivorous
plants have occasionally made their way into cocktails. So you

(44:25):
have a plant by the name of an we call
sun Do. We talked about the sun Do in our
episode on carniverous Plants. Yeah, so you might remember it.
It catches insects with the sticky nectar and digest them
with his enzymes. And it was once popular in a
cordial known as rosalio. And uh today rosalio entails of

(44:45):
various liqueurs made from fruits and spices steeped in alcohol.
But sun Do was once a prime ingredient, and you
were advised to pick the dead insects out of the
fruit first. No way, yeah, no way, you're knocking that out. No,
I'm not making it the dead insects in your drink. No, no,
you would take it out before you made the drink.
Oh I see, so you'd strain it and then make

(45:05):
your cocktail. Right. Yeah. That being said, I don't know
that it that it would be that bad if they
were bugs in the drink. Speaking of dead things in
your drink and meaty flesh in your drink, I'm gonna
converge these two, uh, these two lines of inquiry into
a single cocktail, which is you may have heard about this,
you may not have, But in the town of Dawson City,

(45:28):
in the boreal yonder of the Yukon Territory, way up there,
there is a hotel bar with an infamous local tradition
of bibulation known as the sour toe cocktail. If you
heard of this, Robert, I don't think I had. And
you know, I'm already I'm at this point, I'm already
a little bit afraid because I'm I'm picturing Yukon Territory.

(45:51):
I'm picturing very rugged individuals here. Uh huh yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
there's a lot of miners, hunters, barge operators, stuff like that.
So you're probably wondering, sour toe cocktail, Okay, does it
really contain a toe? And the answer is yes, what
there's a real toe in it, a human toe. For

(46:11):
it is a dark, shriveled, mummified piece of toe jerky
and it goes in your drink for five dollars. Actually,
that's that was the price in last time. I read
a newspaper article about it, So the price may have
been hiked up since then, who knows. But wait, was
this an old thing or is the current thing does
the current? You can do this now? Oh okay, I

(46:32):
thought this was like an old uh you know, frontier beverage. No, no,
I was willing to give them a little more license.
Desperate times, uh, wilderness madness setting in, maybe you would
throw a toe into a beverage for whatever reason. No,
this is less like the frontier wine with a pound
of pork lard and more like the ironic chipster bacon cocktail. Now,

(46:54):
because this started in the nineteen seventies, so you have
to pay a five dollar toe tag X to have
this toe added to whatever alcohol you want, presumably whether
it's four fingers of Yukon jack whiskey or a cranberry
apple teeny or a glass of champagne. As you will see.
And the toe goes in your glass of booze, and
you drink the booze, and then the toe lives on. Uh. So,

(47:18):
of course I was wondering where did this toe come from? Well,
Atlas Obscura has an excellent, very short, little history of
the sour toe that you can look up, but basic
story goes like this. In nineteen seventy three, a river
barge pilot named Captain Dick Stevenson, he's cleaning out a
cabin when he came across an amputated human toe in
a jar of alcohol. So much is an appropriate place

(47:41):
to keep it to preserve it? I guess right. So
supposedly the toe had belonged to a minor named Louis Lichn,
whose toe became frost bitten sometime in the nineteen twenties
up in the Yukon, and he had to get it
amputated and decided to preserve it in this jar of alcohol.
So after Stevenson found the toe in the jar in
nineteen seventy three, he got this amazing idea to head

(48:05):
down to the local saloon and start dropping it into
people's drinks. And those who could bear to drink the
booze with the toe knocking around in the glass became
the original members of the Sour Toe Cocktail Club, which
now more than forty years later, has more than fifty
thousand members. So if you go up to the Yukon

(48:25):
Territory and you go to this bar and you order
the toe, you get a drink, pay the toe tax,
and get the toe in your drink and you drink it,
they will give you a certificate of membership that you
are now in the Sour Toe Club. It's sort of
local attraction. If you happen to end up in Dawson City,
there you go. But I know what you're thinking. Has

(48:46):
anyone ever swallowed the toe several times more than once? So?
The first time was supposedly in July nineteen eighty, when
a miner named Gary Younger had been working on his
thirteen glass of quote Sour Toe champagne. According to the

(49:07):
Sour Toe Cocktail Club account, this guy's chair tipped over
backwards and he accidentally swallowed the toe. Now I'm not
sure if I buy this story, because how do you
accidentally swallow something as big as a toe from a
champagne glass? I don't know. But because he's presumably drinking
it out of the traditional champagne flute, right, so or

(49:28):
I don't know. Maybe in the Yukon you get your
champagne and a tin cup. I don't know. Of course,
thirteen glasses in who knows what was going on? Probably yeah,
probably not in total command of his faculties. So uh,
this wasn't the only time somebody swallowed the toe. Toes
keep disappearing, so new ones have to be supplied, and
uh so. Over the years years a few more toes

(49:51):
were donated by people who had to have amputations due
to frost bite, diabetes, and a so called quote inoperable
corn his drink he keeps getting less and less appetizing um.
And one donation was apparently an anonymous donation that was
later stolen from the bar, And in probably the most
famous toe origin story, one arrived at the bar in

(50:13):
a jar of alcohol with a note that said, quote,
don't wear open toe sandals while mowing the lawn. Well,
it's one way to live, for your toe to live
on right after it's it's left your body. Yeah, but so.
More recently, the Toronto Star reports that a man known
only as quote Josh from New Orleans paid the toe

(50:37):
tax to have the toe deposited in his glass of whiskey.
And at the time there was a five hundred dollar
fee for accidentally swallowing the toe, and Josh from New
Orleans just popped the toe in his mouth and down
it went, and he immediately paid the five hundred dollar
fee in cash and walked out of the barn. And

(50:58):
last last tidbit about this, apparently, when you order the
toe the bartender recites a magical incantation to steal you
for your journey of death and alcohol, and it goes.
You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow,
but your lips must touch the toe. I can see
this is really good to you. Robert. Do you have

(51:19):
a mummified toe thing? I don't know. It just seems
it well, I mean, it seems rather unnecessary, but it
just not particularly appetizing. I guess. I don't know. I'm
just imagining this shriveled mummified toe just knocking against your
lips as you're trying to down it, kind of like
a like a like a like just any kind of

(51:39):
a garnish and a drink that you're not ready to consume.
Except it's the It's the worst possible Marischino Cherry. I
have no evidence that they actually did this, but my
idea is they should use it in place of an
ice cube, so they should freeze it so it's always cold,
and then when it gets plopped into your God, I
just assumed it was frozen. I would I would hope
it would be frozen. I don't know. I've seen pictures

(52:01):
of it, and it looks like it's room temperature, but
it's hard to tell. It's well, it's like stored in salt.
I think I've seen pictures of it in a jar
of salt. I guess to keep it desiccated and mummified. Huh.
I would love to to see or hear anyone describe
how it affects the flavor profile. If it does it all,
it could just be pure psychology of the thing, which

(52:22):
is kind of right, because ultimately, like which is worse
for your body, swallowing one dead human toe or drinking
thirteen glasses of champagne in a row, I would argue
that the champagne is actually worse for you, probably probably so.
I mean, I guess it depends on what's in the toe.
All right, we have just I certainly cannot top that
at all. We have just a few more nefarious spirits

(52:44):
to mention. One comes from uh cubab from piper cube eba,
a member of the pepper family. It produces a fruit
that wind dried resembles black pepper as a pungent, biting
flavor that comes from high levels of lemoning, which is
a flavor foundain citrus and herbs. And you'll find it
as an ingredient in various gins these days as well,

(53:06):
but it has a medicinal and even magical history. The
Victorians had cubeb cigarettes that were supposed to help you
with your asthma. Yeah, and most exciting of all, seventeenth
century Italian priest and exorcist Ludovico Maria Sinistari employed a
brandy tonic flavored with cubab, cardaman, nutmeg, birthwartz, aloe, and

(53:32):
various other roots and spices. So if you're looking to
banish demons with your cocktail, take note. All right, Another
interesting concoction comes from, and this is another example from
the drunken botanist, is uh uh Damiana, which is from
the plant turned era diffusea. So this is a Mexican
shrub produces yellow flowers and small fruits, and it's long

(53:55):
been reputed to have afrodisiac properties. So now teenth century
physicians prescribed it to female patients to promote orgasm, and
a two thousand nine studies saw that it quotes sexually
exhausted male rats. What does that mean? They just they
just kept they made of them so eager to perform

(54:15):
that it exhausted them. That's intense, so it seemed to
have afro daz ac effects on the road. In nineteen
o eight, the FEDS confiscated a shipment of so called
Damiana gin and found that it contains strict nine. Yeah. So,
and this seems to be more a matter of like
just illicit, just a poorly made and poisonous substance that

(54:40):
was that someone was trying to sell. But there have
been no human studies that that I'm aware of or
the steward was aware of regarding it's it's human use.
But it's a legal food additive. You can even find
a Mexican herbal decur called Damiana and it's sold in
like a fertility goddess kind of bottle. So if anyone

(55:02):
out there has tried that one, we would love to
hear from you as well. Now, finally, before we take
a break, I want to mention real quick, cannabis cocktails
to move back to this schedule one narcotic Well, of
course somebody has made that, yeah, but but is there, like,
is there a i don't know what you call it,
a legitimately produced version somewhere out there. Well, unsurprisingly, there

(55:26):
are a few cannabis liqueurs on the market. But the
major example of these tend to be seemed to be
flavor only, so they've captured the flavor profile of the cannabis,
but but none of the actual th HC. Part of
this probably is that in terms of making a th
HC laden cocktail, it's super easy tip to do. Uh.

(55:46):
So all you have to do is make a simple
syrup from cannabis. Cannabis simple syrup heat activates the th
HC kind of in the same way that people use
th HC butter to make brownies. Really, this is the
kind of thing you can find recipes for wherever you
find your marijuana related recipes. Uh. In the syrup enables
you to create a whole host of of drinks. For instance,

(56:08):
I found a recipe for a Malibu Malibu mule, which
is I think essentially you know a Moscow mule except
using the syrup and you And also specialty shops, especially
in California and Colorado, uh, they often sell th HC
lemonades or juices. So there you go. If you if
you desire that and it's a legally permitted avenue for you,

(56:31):
then the means are out there. I wonder what it's
like to work at one of the companies that produces
these products. I don't know, you mean just in like
th HC laden products or just the I don't know.
I wonder if you reach a point where you feel
like you've you've you've reached peak creativity for for marijuana
based food products, Like, at what point do you realize, Oh,

(56:53):
I just I just created a recipe for th HC
lasagna and now I feel a little hollow inside. Well,
I mean, I wonder so if at some point, uh,
cannabis becomes widely legal or just regulated in the same
way that tobacco products are now or something like that,
eventually does the appeal of this kind of stuff go away?

(57:16):
Is this basically all just like novelty celebration and bacon. Yeah,
where this is recently legalized and that you wouldn't have
maybe much more in the realm of cannabis inspired drinks,
you know, a hundred years down the road than you
have now this one tobacco liqueur made by what was
it some company in France. Yeah. Well, it comes down

(57:37):
to the fact, right that, uh, if something is illegal,
if it's prohibited, that just makes it all the more alluring.
And sometimes you find yourself craving a particular substance purely
because it is forbidden, like it just enhances its mythology. Well,
speaking of the forbidden, I thought that we could not

(57:58):
do an episode about the strange scientific avenues in drink making, mixology,
cocktails and liquor without taking a look at the green ferry.
So we should take a break and when we come
back we will talk about absinthe. So absently you've had,

(58:19):
You've had absence before, Yeah, yeah, I recently had the
absinthe service at a local restaurant here in town in Atlanta,
the kimble House restaurant. It is absolutely wonderful if you're
if you're around Atlanta, especially in the Decatur area. Kimble
House is amazing. But they have a sort of old
timey bar that celebrates the traditions where they will do

(58:41):
an absence service, where they will serve it up in
the traditional way, which we can describe in a minute,
I guess. But I would say maybe more than any
other liquor, absinthe is a drink that is totally surrounded
in myth I remember when I was in college, I
was once at a party where some guys were talking
about time a friend of theirs who had been in
the military had brought a bottle of absinthe back from overseas,

(59:05):
and this was at a time when absinthe was still
banned in the United States, and they claimed that when
they drank this, this green liquor, they entered a state
of green hallucinations. I remember one of them mentioning swimming
through green tunnels, and I was like, I don't know
if I believe that. But in the widespread version of

(59:27):
this story that you just substitute a person for a place,
and you can read about this everywhere. Absinthe allows one
to visit her majesty, the green fairy. So is there
anything to this, to this idea that absinthe is more
than just another alcoholic beverage, that it has these advanced
drug like properties causing hallucinations or or these also very

(59:51):
common negative reported qualities like uh, causing seizures or convulsions
or all this other stuff. Yeah, it really, it really
had that reputation for the longest until it was it
was finally legalized again in the US. Yeah, and so this, uh,
this mythology is very much a part of what absence

(01:00:13):
profile and character is. But we should take a look
at the science behind it. So, so what is absinthe. Well,
absinthe is a distilled liquor, usually a very strong one,
made by combining alcohol with wormwood. And that's a type
of plant green annis finnel like Florence finnel, and other

(01:00:33):
herbs and flowers like hiss up and lemon balm. And
the exact origins of absinthe as we know it now
are unclear by most accounts. It was invented sometime the
late seventeen DS, probably seventeen nineties, and the distiller per
Node produced its first commercial absinthe in eighteen o five,
which is when I think we should consider the birth

(01:00:54):
of the absinthe era. But uh, let's take a look
at those ingredients. So wormwood, that is an interesting name. Yes,
it brings to mind the Book of Revelation. Right, it
makes me think, doesn't C. S. Lewis have a novel
has a wormwood character? And in the screw Tape letters,
I believe he's writing to Wormwood, a lower subordinate demon,

(01:01:16):
and advising him on corrupting of a mortal soul. Right,
so wormwood is a good name for a for a demon,
I would say, yeah, it already implies some sort of
illicit magical quality. But wormwood is just a plant. It's
the the Artemisia absinthium, and it's the famed central ingredient
in absinthe and the one that would be later singled

(01:01:37):
out in the supposed case against absinthe as more poison
or more drug than than liquor. Now, it's worth noting
that vermouth is derived. The word vermouth is revived from vermut,
the German word for wormwood, and the original Vermouth's would
have contained this in some quantity. And going back to

(01:01:59):
the ingredi and so you mentioned earlier, the taste of
absinthe has far more to do with the annis in
it as opposed to the wormwood itself. Yeah, I've heard
that wormwood itself has a more mental like taste and scent. Yeah. Yeah,
And so it's basically covered up for the most part
by this, this liquorice taste. Now, the ancient Egyptians used

(01:02:22):
wormwood in wines and spirits. The the Ebber's Papyrus from
around fifteen hundred b C. And this might have been
a copy of an earlier work, recommends wormwood spirits to
treat round worm infections and digestive problems. Chinese medicinal wines
of the same era also featured wormwood, and we know

(01:02:42):
this from chemical analysis of drinking vessels that archaeologists have uncovered.
And it's also worth pointing out you're talking about the
timeline of absinthe in the Golden Age of absinthe. Uh one.
Bridge points out that absence was sold in New Orleans
by eighteen thirty seven, in New York by eighteen forty three,
but it took a while to make its way into
a true cocktail. It was something he merely dashed in

(01:03:04):
a cocktail, kind of like how if anyone's had a
proper Sasarak Chris Fame New Orleans drink, there's a there's
an absent wash of the glass before the drink is poured,
so it's it's it's It was like a bitter You
wouldn't you wouldn't just fill up a cocktail glass with it.
You would just have a dash of it for flavoring.

(01:03:25):
Right now, while it wasn't the central ingredient, and a
lot of cocktails, there was of course a ton of
just straight drinking of absinthe right rights with water and
sugar in the traditional preparation. Yeah, now wonder which he
says that by eight seventy though, that's when you saw
absent cocktails as a thing. So the absent frope, which

(01:03:46):
was absent shaken with a lot of ice and then
strained into a glass. Now, Wondridge points out that according
to a writer by the name of Clarence Louis Cullen,
another member of the Sporting Fraternity, he thought that that
the the absent frope was just the right drink to
have a first thing in the morning when you've got quote,
a head the size of a bird cage and a
mouth that smelled like a motorman's glove. So it would

(01:04:09):
have been the perfect hangover cure. I guess, uh, yeah
that I don't know the idea. I mean, all of
moralization on what people should and shouldn't drink aside, I
think the idea of curing a hangover with more alcohol
is just disgusting. I would agree that tends to be
my read on the situation as well, that the hair

(01:04:32):
of the dog and all that. But but hey, for
whatever reason, people consume them. The absent rope was popular.
There were even songs about it. Yeah, I actually had
to look up the the Absinthe Frappe, a song that
was referenced in wond Rich's book, and I found the
lyrics lyrics by Glenn McDonough. I think this was from
a Broadway play. And so the song is about the

(01:04:53):
Absinthe Frappe, and the lyrics go, it will free you
first from the burning thirst that is born of a
night of the bowl, like a sun twel rise through
the inky skies that so heavily hang over your soul.
At the first cool sip on your fevored lip, you
determined to live through the day. Life's again worthwhile. As

(01:05:16):
with a dawning smile, you imbibe your absinthe Frappe. I
think that's given a little too much credit to the
to the drink. I think so that feels a little
bit a little bit like marketing. Yeah, but anyway, so yeah,
so you said absence was being adopted in the United States.
Absence drinking was very popular, especially in France. In the

(01:05:39):
nineteenth century. It became very fashionable in Europe, especially France
and Switzerland. Famous artists and intellectuals were notorious absence drinkers.
For example, of French poets like Baudelaire and rambeau Verlaine.
In an eighteen sixty pamphlet by Henri Ballesta called Absinthe
at Absinthe Tours, he calls these types of people, quote

(01:06:02):
the brilliant young men on the boulevard who were the
absinthe drinkers. You know, these were the people who were
out there making absinthe cool. And it was also reportedly
popular with Oscar Wilde and continental artists like Van Gogh.
Did I say I've always my whole life, said van
Go And now I'm retraining to say van Gogh. Oh
is that the preferred pronunciation? Is it? I thought I

(01:06:24):
thought I heard you say it that way one time. No,
maybe I coughed a little bit. I thought it was
van Go. I've been saying van Go. I I grew
up saying van Go. We have to let you know.
We just looked it up and it's and it's. The
Internet says it's Vincent van holl Okay, Well, I think
I might just stick to van Go for simplicity. Set Okay, Well,

(01:06:44):
according to Amy Stewart in The Drunken Botanist, well I
thought this was really interesting. One explanation for the explosion
of popularity of absinthe in Europe in the nineteenth century
can actually be traced to a plant parasite. Anytime there's
a good parasite story, we gotta do it on stuff
up your mind. So it is the Philoxera pest or

(01:07:07):
Daktulos fira vitifolia, and so none other than Thomas Jefferson,
that Thomas Jefferson, not some other. Thomas Jefferson had tried
to cultivate both native American and imported European grape varieties
for making wine within the United States, and neither of
them worked. The vineyards were just no good. And the

(01:07:30):
reason for this, Stewart says, is that the American varieties
failed because they just don't make good wine, and the
European varieties failed because, unlike the sturdy, resistant American grape vines,
the delicate European grape vines were susceptible to attacks from
a tiny insect much like the apid that was only
found in the Americas, and this is philox Era. And unfortunately,

(01:07:54):
before anybody knew about this, the Americans had made gifts
of native American grape vines sent them to France, and
much like a deadly spider hiding in a bag of bananas.
The philox A repast was thus lee imported to Europe
and they laid waste to a vast new landscape of
maladapted grapes. And as a result, the French wine making

(01:08:15):
industry was severely damaged and and production was limited throughout
the nineteenth century. Well, so Frenchmen were deprived of their
wine right. And this this mattered because wine was seen
by them as as like a you know, a drink
of rectitude. It's a family drink, it's a moral drink,
it's an upstanding and civilized drink. These other drinks like absinthe,

(01:08:37):
maybe not so much. But anyway, Suart claims that it's
because of this severe shortage of wine due to the
parasite infestation that absinthe became the drink of choice in
cafes in France in the nineteenth century, feeding this surge
in absence consumption that culminated in the late eighteen hundreds
in early nineteen hundreds. So the idea here's this kind

(01:08:58):
of forced the birth of absent culture because people had
to embrace it to a certain degree and then kind
of stuck with it. Right, But absent, like I said,
was not viewed as this, you know, family values kind
of drink like wine was. And so there were plenty
of people spreading a message of fear and suspicion about

(01:09:20):
the Green Titania. And I want to read one quote
because I think it's amazing from a New York Times
article about absentthe They had an absent scare piece running
in December eighteen eighty New York Times. Yeah, so here
it goes. Quote. A French physician of eminence has recently
declared that it is ten times more pernicious than ordinary intemperance,

(01:09:42):
meaning ordinary alcohol, and that it very seldom happens that
the habit, once fixed, can be unloosed. The same authority
says that the increase of insanity is largely due to
absentthe I didn't even know there was an increase in
insanity around eighteen eighty, but can tinuing it exercises a
deadly fascination, the source of which scientists have vainly tried

(01:10:05):
to discover, although they have no trouble ascertaining it's terrible effects.
It's a moderate use speedily acts on the entire nervous
system in general, and the brain, in particular, in which
it induces organic changes with accompanying derangement of all the
mental powers. The habitual drinker becomes at first dull, languid,

(01:10:26):
is soon completely brutalized, and then goes raving mad. He
has at last holy or partially paralyzed, unless, as often happens,
disordered liver and stomach brings a quicker end. Was this
your experience at kimble House? No, though, I though to
be fair, I I am not a frequenter of absinthe cafes,

(01:10:46):
and I guess this is referring to chronic use. These
would be the absent themes which I would admit. Chronic
use of absinthe. You know, drinking a lot of absence
regularly probably does produce some very bad effects in people.
But maybe it's not the absinthe. Uh, maybe it's not
the absinthe in particular. We can look at the details
of this. So fear of this condition called quote absinthe

(01:11:10):
is um believed to be separate from and worse than
regular alcoholism, spread throughout these temperance minded circles in Europe,
and at the time there also seemed to be scientific
evidence backing this up. For example, the work of the
French physician Valentine Magnon. According to one two nine review
of Magnon's work, he found that this alcohol soluble component

(01:11:33):
that existed in wormwood did cause a lot of bad things,
including lapses of consciousness, myoclonic jerks, and tonic clonic convulsions
in animals. So what was that component? While it was
the natural plant essence found in wormwood known as thusion.
More on that compound in a bit. But in addition

(01:11:55):
looking at what caused this anti absinthe attitude, there were
the called absinthe murders. Now there are multiple versions of
this story reporting slightly different details, and the one I'm
gonna I'm gonna use comes from an article in Distillations magazine,
which is published by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. But according
to this version, in August nineteen o five, in the

(01:12:17):
village of Communie, Switzerland, a French born laborer named Jean
Lamfrey was getting ready for a day of hard work
at a local vineyard and around daybreak he had a
couple of shots of absinthe before heading off to work.
But Launfrey wasn't done, he was just getting started. At lunch,
he had six classes of wine. Then he had another

(01:12:38):
glass of wine before heading home. On the way home,
he snagged a black coffee with brandy. Then when he
got home, he had another leader of wine. Then Launfrey
got into an argument with his what with his wife,
and tragically he became enraged and he shot her with
a rifle, and then he shot his two daughters. Now
it's a horrible crime. The tale gets significantly less funny

(01:12:59):
the right there and right, But the lesson a lot
of people apparently took away from it was that absinthe
that must have messed him up. Obviously, if you're like me,
you'll you'll regard this as a kind of absurd conclusion,
Like it seems like there is at least one other
major factor at play, maybe alcohol um. But so these

(01:13:20):
forces combined, like the research on the effects of absinthe
done by people like Magnon, and these stories of these crimes.
There were some other crimes I think that were attributed
to absent There was some kind of axe or hatchet
murderer I think that was referred to as an absinthe murder.
And they combined into this whirlwind of anti absinthe public
sentiment that eventually led to the banning of absinthe in

(01:13:44):
the United States and much of Europe starting around nineteen fifteen,
and that lasted for nearly a century. So what is
all the fuss about, Like, what what's actually going on
in absinthe and in the wormwood plant? And wasn't justifying
all of this backlash? So we mentioned though jone the
compound though jone is an organic compound found in wormwood,

(01:14:07):
but also found in herbs like sage, So if you
ever made sage stuffing there, you might be getting some
through jane there. Uh. And the modern scientific consensus affirms
that it can be toxic at large doses, primarily acting
as a convulsant and also being associated with kidney failure,
so it can cause convulsions. Uh. And this might be

(01:14:27):
related to the fact that it was, you know, accused
of being a cause of epilepsy. At great enough concentrations,
it could also lead to death. There are a couple isomers.
There's alpha though jone and beta though Jane without the
alpha isomer being the more toxic of the two. And
the primary method of action in the body is that
attacks the nervous system by inhibiting the activation of GABBA receptors.

(01:14:52):
But is through Jane really to blame for the so
called effects of absynthei is um and all of these
mythological accusations that absence could cause hallucinations and other stuff
like that. Yeah, I think the mythology of it is
worth keeping in mind at all times. Kind of getting
back to the whole marketing of the cocktail. To what
extent does I mean you're already drinking, but then if

(01:15:14):
there's this mystical quality involved, does it give you license
to engage and maybe a little more um inappropriate behavior
than normal. There's a there's a quote that I run
across before that I always got to kick out of
from Ernest Hemingway. He said, got tight last night on
absentthe and did knife tricks, great success, shooting the knife

(01:15:36):
into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat
hell out of all furniture. And you can always claim
the woodworms did it. There you go. You can always
claim the woodworms did it. You can always say, hey,
it's the wormwood, it's the it's the absinthe that's responsible.
I think tight is a euphemism that we should bring
back for for drunkenness. Yeah, I think so too. I

(01:15:58):
can I can just easily imagin gen the the violent
tightness of the the absent drinkers psyche. I remember tight
also being the drunkenness euphemism used in some classic memo.
Or remember reading about Winston Churchill or his his generals
in World War two or something. We're talking about how
Winston was quite tight last night when it was giving

(01:16:21):
us our strategy. So myths aside, modern research shows that wormwood,
you know, isn't really quite that bad. So yes, the
jone can be dangerous compound at high levels. It can
cast seizure and death at high doses, but there's actually
very little of it in absinthe and other liqueurs. Most
of the tales of absinthe fuel madness probably come from

(01:16:42):
the fact that there's just a high alcohol content in
absence is compared to other, um, other other alcohols out there.
It was traditionally bottled at a b V, so that's
twice as alcoholic as your common gen So you the
scare piece of New York Times, I think it said
that it was ten times as dangerous as normal alcohol.

(01:17:03):
Now you can without quibbling on how you you factor
the numbers here, I think you could say it's at
least twice as dangerous as normal alcohol, because it's twice
as strong as most alcohols that would have been up
there on the bar for your perusal. But then again,
the traditional preparation about of absinthe as it served in
the French cafes was to dilute it, that's right. And

(01:17:24):
so if you're diluting it, I wouldn't even say it goes.
It goes as far as the alcohol concentration, and it
would would lead you to believe, because so the traditional
UH production is you get this glass, it's got specially
shaped glass back to these special glasses and making an
event out of it. It's got this kind of bulge
in the bottom, and your absence goes down in the

(01:17:44):
bulge at the bottom, and then you put a slotted
spoon on the top of the glass with a sugar
cube on it, and then they would dribble cold ice
cold water over the sugar cube and the spoon into
the drink, and when the water hit the drink, it
do this very interesting thing where the clear green absence
would suddenly froth up and become this uh. It's often

(01:18:08):
described as a pale green, milky type appearance. And I've
seen to do that. It does quite look like that,
like a cloud emerging in the depths of a crystal ball. Yeah,
it's referred to as the lush, and it's very interesting
because because you're like, wow, what's going on there? Chemically?
What's going on is that the the water is is

(01:18:28):
breaking up this the way that the oils from the
plants are held in suspension in the liquor, and when
the water enters it, it creates this emulsion essentially, like
you know, you'd create an emulsion if you're making a
vinaigrette and the salad dressing or something like that. The
oils and the water get emulsified and so it clouds
up and becomes rather beautiful. It's kind of nice it's

(01:18:50):
this production. But it also does lead to the fact
that you're deluding the drink with water, bringing it down
probably closer to or even lower than the level of
if you were dreating drinking a straight liquor of some
other kind. And I believe in this space it's been
a years since I had straight up absentthe in this scenario,
it was at a place in New Orleans called Pravda.

(01:19:12):
I don't know if it's still around. But it was
a like a Soviet theme, like the word for truth. Yeah,
like that, and also with the Soviet publication, and they
did the whole ceremony. As I recall, they also had
a version that involved fire, like a small amount of fire.
Nothing flashy, no blueblazers here. But if of course fire
is involved, you have the potential to burn off some

(01:19:33):
of the alcohol as well, which would thus, uh make
its alcoholic punch a little less. Yeah. But anyway, so
you've had absence in in this case, I've had absence.
It seems to be clear that modern absinthe is, you know,
not any more dangerous than any other alcoholic drink, with
all of the things that we should understand about the
dangerous regular alcoholic drinks. Um, but there there, it doesn't

(01:19:57):
carry this special drug like or poor isn't like property.
So what was going on with all those experiments in
the late eighteen hundreds showing absence to be a poisonous horror. Well,
recently people have gone back and reviewed this research, and
generally the problem appears to be that they were testing
the effects of not absinthe itself, but of ridiculously high

(01:20:18):
concentrations of thusion in the form of extracts and pure
wormwood essence oil essential oils UH. And so the thing
we know about doses is the dose makes the poison. Right,
pretty much all of the food and drink we consume
on a regular basis contains compounds that can be toxic
and extremely large doses. So the question is, if you

(01:20:40):
go out and get a bottle of absinthe, does it
actually contain enough thujone to hurt you? Well, if you're
getting it from a reputable distiller, the answer is no.
So modern absinthe really doesn't have enough through jone uh
to cause any of the effects in absence drinkers concentrations
are small enough, the alcohol content is high enough that
you would encounter toxicity due to alcohol way before you

(01:21:04):
would ingest enough through jone to hurt you. But there's
another question, what about the pre band absinthe, because maybe
what's going on is that absinthe is safer now and
safety standards were much lower back then. Well, there's actually
been research on this as well. So in two thousand
and eight there was a paper published by Dirk Lachenmeyer

(01:21:24):
and at All called a Chemical Composition of vintage Preban
absinthe with special reference to through Joan, finn shone, pinot, camphone, menthal, copper,
and antimony concentration. So this is looking at old old
bottles of absinthe from before the absinthe ban to say, okay,
did they have something really poisonous going on in them?

(01:21:45):
It looked at thirteen samples of vintage absinthe bottles dating
back to before nineteen fifteen, and they were analyzed for
toxicity including naturally occurring herbal lessences like through Joan all
the ones I mentioned before, and then mental higher alcohols, copper,
and antimony, and then they used gas chromatography and mass

(01:22:08):
spectrometry analysis to reveal that quote. The total through jone
content of Preban absinthe was found to range between about
zero point five and about forty eight point three milligrams
per leader of absinthe, with an average concentration of about
twenty five milligrams per leader and a median concentration of

(01:22:31):
thirty three milligrams per leader. How much is that? Turns
out not that much. This shows that vintage absinthe from
the pre Ban era is pretty much comparable to post
ban and modern commercial absinthe in terms of toxic content. Uh,
and they concluded, quote all things considered, nothing besides ethanol
was found in the absence that was able to explain

(01:22:52):
the syndrome absinthe is um. And I think that's a
that's a good note to end on the absinthe discussion with,
because from my perspective, I think the reasonable conclusion is
that absinthe is um was in fact alcoholism by another name,
rebranded alcoholism if you will. And this is a good reminder,
I guess not to end on a down note, but

(01:23:14):
but that we should always be careful when we're thinking
about about alcoholic drinks, because, as we pointed out, I mean,
ethanol is in some sense a poison. It is in
some sense a thing that is impairing our bodies. Now, generally,
responsible adults can learn to manage their ingestion of ethanol
in a way that's not too harmful in the long

(01:23:34):
term to themselves or others. But it's it's something we
have to be careful with. It's a it's a dragon
in a cage. Yeah, I mean, if you, if you
really tease it apart, what is any cocktail but a
balance of poisons that you then drink uh, and yeah,
there's there's there's there's certainly a danger in consuming too much,

(01:23:55):
and there's you know, and certain people are going to
be more susceptible to problems than others. So certainly use
use caution, uh, employer better judgment when choosing witch cocktails
and how many to consume or if to consume at all.
And again, to come back to mocktails, I will say
there are some fabulous mocktail recipes out there. Oh yeah,

(01:24:16):
So for our listeners who are underage or who are teetotallers, Robert,
what what's a great mocktail for that you would recommend? Okay,
there's a recent New York Times article that came out
because when they're not when they're not shaming absinthe in
previous times, they're putting out mocktail articles in our modern times.
But there's a mocktail article that came out recently, and

(01:24:36):
they included a recipe for something called a Mombai mule,
which you can serve in the copper uh containers if
you like. But it's a wonderful concoction that has uh
believe it was a coconut cream or coconut milk. A
few different spices, some citrus, and it has all the
complexities because I guess one of the things that you

(01:24:59):
instantly think, what if you take the liquor and the
liqueurs out of a cocktail, what are you left with
but some juices? Well, this drink, uh, I think is
a nice answer to that, because you get this this
balance of different flavor notes uh in the ingredients without
actually having to engage alcohol. So look around. You know

(01:25:21):
there's some definitely some lesser mocktails out there, but but
there are some very finely crafted concoctions that don't involve
alcohol but do give you this appreciation for the process
and and and also in appreciation for just the rich
flavor profile. Though my one criticism is that they too,
they do tend to go down a bit fast without

(01:25:41):
the alcohol in them. Yeah. I don't know if I
told you this. When I was a kid, I was
a big fan of virgin bloody Mary's. Oh but bloody
Mary with no alcohol in it? Uh. Though it wasn't
even I wasn't even preparing what would be recognized by
a bartender as a proper bloody Mary mix. What I
was drinking was like a can of vate with a
lot of tabasco sauce and celery salts in it. Well,

(01:26:05):
it's kind of like the rob Roys and the Shirley Temples.
Like I remember going out to dinner and and my
dad got a cocktail and I got to get a
rob Roy And you know, that's just what it's. It's
it's not the most finely balanced of a of a mocktail.
It's just like ginger rail and uh and in my experience,
like the bad Maraschino cherry is not the real Maraschino chair.

(01:26:27):
Um Maraschino Cherry is, by the way, a fabulous story
just about those and I believe that shows up in
The Drunken Botanists. So another reason to pick up that book. Well,
if we ever come back to doing more episodes on
food and drink, maybe we should explore cherry science. Oh yeah,
there's so much. I mean, we've touched on cherry science
a little bit in our most recent Dangerous Foods episode. Yeah,
don't grind up those pits, yeah, because that would be

(01:26:50):
that would make for pretty nefarious cocktail right there. Okay,
so hey, if you want to explore some of the
links we talked about here, check out the landing page
for this episode is have to Blow Your Mind dot com.
That's where we'll find podcast videos, blog post links out
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Who knows what they'll be in the future will probably

(01:27:10):
be on those two. We will probably active and if
you want to get in touch with us, as always,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
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