The Absinthe Prohibition is Over!

Author: spencer

5 Dec

…and it only took 95 years to make it legal! Yes, the drink attributed to Van Gogh cutting off his ear (actually, the more likely cause was schizophrenia or delicious period paint flavors) and Hemingway being…well, Hemingway, is now once again legal in the United States.

Mmmm….
spencer drinking absinthe at work

It’s being produced in Alameda, CA, by our new best friends St. George Spirits, and of course, in Europe. For anyone who’s not yet had the pleasure, absinthe is a liquor distilled from, among other things, wormwood, and is said to have hallucinogenic effects. I tried it once and I did not in fact trip balls, but one shot got me significantly buzzed. It kind of tastes like licorice and gasoline. DELICIOUS!

Supposedly, the kind you can buy legally in America has less than 10 parts per million thujone, whereas absinthe “bottled before 1900 packed up to 260 p.p.m. of thujone.” Oh well, I’m still gonna party like Sherlock.

“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.” — Oscar Wilde

Absynthesis.

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8 Responses for "The Absinthe Prohibition is Over!"

Ms. Nickels December 5th, 2007 at 6:15 pm 1
Best. Blog. Ever. “Hey gurl, absinthe brings out the blue in your eyes.”
James December 6th, 2007 at 11:41 am 2
Sorry, kids. No thujone, no absinthe. You’ll have to live out your 19th century artist fantasies some other way.
Hiram December 6th, 2007 at 2:26 pm 3
Wrong. Flat wrong. Unless you can back that up with science.

No wormwood, no absinthe, yes. Thujone has never been a reliable indicator of the presence of wormwood since there is such a wide variation of thujone content in the wormwood plants, some of which, from France, have virtually none.

The 260ppm figure was an untested paperwork estimate from one source, Dr. WN Arnold, which has been demonstrated by actual analysis to have been in error.

Read more about this here.
spencer December 6th, 2007 at 3:21 pm 4

Thanks for the clarification, Hiram. I took the 260 figure from an article in Time that I linked to in the post.

Sadly, I’m only vaguely more interested in this kind of discussion than when my pot head friends discuss THC percentages, marijuana strains and such. I tend to be more interested in the possibilities of effects than the chemistry behind the effects. Maybe that’s my loss.
AbsintheMan.com December 6th, 2007 at 5:40 pm 5
Just a personal test alone is proof enough. I have noticeable secondary effects while drinking absinthes that have low thujone levels such as Logan Fils, Kubler, Lucid, La Fee, Pernod 68, Un Emile, PF 1901, etc, etc but have NO secondary effects when drinking King of Spirits Gold, which trumps high thujone levels. From my personal experience, go with what tastes and suits you best, not the proported thujone levels. If its made with grande wormwood (in which St. George, Kubler and Lucid are) then it is real absinthe.
Hiram December 6th, 2007 at 8:04 pm 6
I agree, but I’d have to add anise to the equation. Absinthe has always been an anise spirit with grand wormwood for additional flavor and character.

I’ve experienced secondary effects from a spirit which contained only 68% alc/vol and an amount of fennel seed equivalent to what would traditionally go into an absinthe. I was testing the particular fennel cultivar for flavor.

Personally, I put much more stock in anethole (the “licorice” flavor plant oil) than in thujone. I’m convinced it’s the synergy of all the herbs involved. While like the above commenter I’ve had secondaries from many traditional style absinthes, I’ve never gotten them from the high-thujone, anise-free varieties.

I drank two full, disgusting glasses of King of Spirits Gold in a row and got nothing. I’d sooner drink Pepto-Bismol. This coincides with a study which was done to test the effects of thujone in which 22 out of 25 subjects were unable to correctly identify which of three drinks contained 0 thujone, 10mg/L or 100mg/L.

Spencer, my comment was to “James”. You’re completely within reason to be bored with the molecule fetish so prevalent in drug culture, and it’s that demographic that’s being targeted with the thujone hype.

Thujone is irrelevant to absinthe quality or effects, but the marketers of the fake absinthe wannabes troll blogs like this to shill their “high thujone” product, which in most cases is entirely unlike absinthe. They tout the thujone to the gullible because otherwise they have nothing to offer but artificially colored and flavored alcohol at obscene prices.

Absinthe is a very pleasant and uniquely invigorating alcoholic beverage with a fascinating history, but it is not now, nor has it ever been, a hallucinogenic, a psychedelic or an aphrodisiac.

Cheers,
Gwydion Stone, aka Hiram
AbbieAbsinthe February 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 am 7
Whatever you are looking for in terms of Absinthe, they have it! Click my name to see for yourself.
Craig June 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am 8
Fuck you for breaking the back button on my browser.