So absinthe has to be one of the most controversial drinks in all of history
partly because it was banned for most of the 20th century
and this is the story of why it was banned particuarly
the story of a murder most foul and to tell this story I think I need to make myself
an absinthe in the traditional French style.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we explore the controversial history of absinthe
this time on Drinking History.
So first off new set for Drinking History.
I finally got everything pretty much all set up, still working on the lighting and things and I really, really need a rug in this room because
it's rather echoey. I don't know if that's coming across, but if it is I promise that will be fixed.
Now when it comes to absinthe just like any other spirit there are many ways to use it.
It can be used in all sorts of cocktails and in the 19th and early 20th century it was often an ingredient in a lot of cocktails,
and then there was of course the absinthe cocktail where it was the main ingredient along with anisette and bitters.
It could also be made in the Italian style which included
maraschino liqueur and then there were several American styles most of which included gum syrup, or simple syrup.
But most famous and probably the simplest is the French method
which was made with either just water, or water and a sugar cube and that's what we're making today.
Now the recipe that I'm going to reference comes from the 1908 cocktail book 'The World's Drinks and How To Mix Them'.
And this is a very special cocktail book because I'm pretty sure it's the only cocktail book
I've ever come across that starts off with a Bible verse. It's from Revelation,
and it talks about the main ingredient in absinthe.
"And the name name of the star is called wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood;
and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter."
Post Bible passage the author gives several ways to make the absinthe including a few French versions one being
"Absinthe Veilleuse. A Parisian fad. The only way to prepare absinthe with sugar."
And it essentially calls for dripping absinthe over a cube of sugar into some ice water though
most French recipes call for it going the other way, dripping ice cold water over a sugar cube
into the absinthe and that's how we're going to do it today because
then you get to use all of these wonderful accoutrements like the absinthe glass, the absinthe spoon, and the absinthe fountain.
Now the glass was designed with this bulb at the bottom that is perfect because
it holds the exact amount of absinthe that you require for one drink so you don't have to measure it out.
You just fill this bulb at the bottom and then the top is usually either three or four times as much
as the bulb and that's how much water you're supposed to add in.
It does vary, sometimes it can be up to five times but usually it's about three to four.
The spoons became popular just after 1843 when the sugar cube was invented,
and they were mainly only popular in France and Europe, Belgium, that area.
They never really became popular in the United States and that's why most US recipes from the early 20th century
still call for using gum syrup or simple syrup.
The other thing that was never as popular in the US as it was in Europe was the absinthe fountain and that's because the
drink absinthe was not as popular in the US as in Europe.
So it takes a while to prepare the absinthe in the French style by dripping water on it,
and so it would take the bartender a long time to make one drink for each person so they would make these fountains
with four or even eight spigots on it where the person ordering could then sit there and drip water into their drink.
Mine only has two but it's still gonna work.
Though even if you don't have a cool fountain like this that you can get it online you can just use a carafe
like in Vincent Van Gogh's 'Cafe Table With Absinthe.'
So Van Gogh was an avid drinker of absinthe as i learned by watching the series
'In the Footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh' which is available on Wondrium who happens to be today's sponsor.
Wondrium formerly The Great Courses Plus which I've talked about many times on the channel
is an absolutely fantastic source of these constant rabbit holes that I love tumbling down as I do research
for different episodes simply because even if there isn't a video directly on what I'm researching
I always kind of tangentially fall into one and end up watching it for you know hours and hours on end, and that's okay.
Taught by experts in the field Wondrium has series on science, food, history, economics and art like this one on Van Gogh.
One thing I had never thought about was why does he almost always sign his paintings with just his first name?
Well as he told a Dutch friend of his he believed
that the French would never be able to pronounce his name correctly so he just went with a simple Vincent.
Even now I don't know that I'm pronouncing it right because it turns out Dutch is a really, really hard language.
Anyway everything I've ever watched on Wondrium
is just filled with interesting little tidbits like this so if you want some interesting tidbits for yourself
visit wondrium.comtasting history there's a link in the description below and you can start your free trial today.
Now Van Gogh's link with absinthe is so famous today
that there's actually a brand of absinthe now named after him but
I am going to be using of the very oldest brands of absinthe Pernod, and I'll put a link in the description to where you can get this online from Curiada.
So Pernod started making absinthe in 1805 and they continued making
faux absinthe without wormwood after it became illegal but then when it became legal again
they say that they reverted to their original recipe which includes two types of wormwood as well as
anise, hyssop, and Melissa
not Joan Hart but the herb that sometimes is called lemon balm.
So to make this drink is very, very simple all that you do is pour yourself an ounce or
up to the bulb of absinthe and you'll see this wonderful kind of emerald green and it's not too too dark.
Sometimes you'll find them a much darker green and usually that's because they've they've added
something to kind of darken it up but it is a beautiful kind of emerald green especially if
you put some light behind it absolutely gorgeous and you want to get yourself a sugar cube
and your absinthe spoon and set the sugar cube on top and then set the glass under the water
and yeah start dripping and you do just pretty much want a drip.
You don't want it to go too fast, that's part of the magic and as the water hits the absinthe it starts to
become murky and it's called luge which is a french term that refers to a cloudy water,
and it's sometimes called the ouzo effect and eventually it will actually turn the absinthe
kind of an opalescent white and it's it's gorgeous it has a wonderful glow to it but
it can take a little time seeing as it's just dripping in hence the fountains.
So as we wait for it to finish dripping let's take a look at the rather controversial and dark history of absinthe.
So you wouldn't usually think that the French wine industry and the temperance movement had a lot of common ground but
in the late 19th century they did have a common enemy and it was absinthe.
Now it's obvious why the temperance movement didn't like absinthe but why the wine industry?
Well absinthe had been gaining popularity in France since around the late 1700s but
it was still a very, very minor player until the great French Wine Blight of the 1860s.
It was caused by an insect called Grape Phylloxera which came in and destroyed two-thirds of the vineyards across all of Europe.
Suddenly there was not enough wine to meet the demand and so absinthe rolled in and kinda took its place,
but a few years later when the wine industry got back up on its feet and
absinthe was still there doing better than it ever had the wine industry had to knock absinthe off its pedestal.
Thus in a deal with the devil they teamed up with the temperance movement to figure out
how to get rid of absinthe and some of the work had already started to be done for them.
See there had been a lot of fake absinthe being made while absinthe was becoming more popular to meet the demand,
and these fake absinthes were usually clear and so to make them green because people
expected them to be green they would add copper sulfate to give it that luxurious color of Scheele's green
that was so popular in the 19th century.
Now in the episode on cucumber ice cream a couple months ago we talked about using this in food to dye food green,
and while it makes it pretty it can also kill people so not great for absinthe.
So like I said some of the groundwork was already laid when the wine industry and the temperance movement
hired a quack doctor named Magnan to study the effects of absinthe,
and to come up with conclusions that they wanted.
Well essentially after doing a bunch of experiments that would not follow the scientific method at all
he discovered a syndrome which he called absinthism.
"In absinthism, the hallucinating delirium is most active, most terrifying,
sometimes provoking reactions of an extremely violent and dangerous nature.
Another more grave syndrome accompanies this: all of a sudden the absinthist cries out,
pales, loses consciousness and falls; the features contract, the jaws clench, the pupils dilate,
the eyes roll up, the limbs stiffen, a jet of urine escapes, gas and waste material are brusquely expulsed."
He actually goes on for quite a bit longer in a lot more graphic detail before finally saying that the sufferer
"Suddenly lifts his head and casts his eyes around him with a look of bewilderment.
Coming to himself after awhile, he doesn't remember one thing that has happened."
This syndrome was and still is today often blamed on one of the key ingredients in wormwood and that is thujone
which can be poisonous if you have too much of it but to get too much of it by drinking absinthe
you would have to have gallons of absinthe within a matter of hours and you would have died of alcohol poisoning
long before the thujone ever hit you but regardless of the doctor's pseudo-scientific conclusion
many people began to believe it. At the same time there was another portion of the population
who were drinking absinthe more than ever so these two groups were about to come to a head in 1905.
At dawn on the 28th of August 1905 French-born Jean Lanfray got up
and dressed quietly on the second floor of his farmhouse in Commugny Switzerland.
So as not to wake his children he crept down stairs where his father and brother who lived with him were already waiting,
and instead of a cup of coffee he decides to pour himself a glass of absinthe because
if there is one thing to remember it is that Lanfray was a raging and violent alcoholic.
Well after awhile his wife comes downstairs to make the boys their breakfast and Jean tells her that he's planning
on going out to pick mushrooms the following day so when he got home that day he needed to have his boots be waxed,
and she kind of shrugged him off and he barks the order at her again,
then pours himself a second absinthe with water. Then he and his brother and his father go off to work in the vineyards and on the way
they stop in at a cafe and he drinks a coffee mixed with brandy.
He also has a couple creme de ments and a cognac with soda your standard second breakfast.
Anyway, during lunch and their afternoon break he downed six glasses of Piquette which is a type of wine that was made for the vineyard workers.
Technically it's not a wine, it's something else but for our purposes it's a wine, and I'll have to do another video on Piquette another time.
Anyway at 4:15 they finish up work
and head home but not before stopping in at another cafe and having another coffee with brandy.
Finally they make their way home and he's already drunk so he slams the door and kind of annoys his wife
who's trying to work on her needlework. Then he and his father drink themselves each another liter of wine.
He and his wife start arguing about milking the cows while he pours himself then another cup of coffee
this time with a shot of Marc which is a brandy made with pumice that is really, really strong,
and that is when he glimpses his boots beneath the sink still unwaxed.
Well he flies into a rage and starts yelling and berating his wife.
It turns into a fight and he goes to the closet, pulls out a rifle that he had had from the army and proceeds
to shoot and kill his wife. His father freaks out and runs out of the house and Jean goes upstairs
and kills his two young children before turning the gun on himself but
because it's a rifle not able to get a good shot and just blows his jaw off instead.
He passes out and then the police come and take him away to the hospital.
Now an inquiry into the incident discussed how Lanfrey would drink liters of wine, up to five liters of wine each day along with plenty of brandy,
but what they ended up focusing on were those two ounces of absinthe that he had had that morning.
The murder quickly became known as the absinthe murder and it was picked up in newspapers all around Europe,
and people followed it closely coming to the conclusion that
"Absinthe is the premier cause of bloodthirsty crime in this country now."
One of the reasons that they focused not on all of the other liquor that he had had that day but on the absinthe
was because that was actually his defense.
His defense was because he had absinthe that he was a victim of absinthism.
It was a classic case of absinthe madness and an expert witness Dr. Albert Maheim testified that
"Without a doubt it is the absinthe he drank daily and for a long time that gave Lanfray the ferociousness of temper
and blind rages that made him shoot his wife for nothing and his two poor children whom he loved.
Now the prosecution of course knew him just to be a violent drunk
and they won and he was found guilty and ended up committing suicide a couple days later
but popular opinion stuck with the absinthe and very quickly it was actually banned in his area of Switzerland,
and not long after the Swiss government decided that anyone selling absinthe
would need a license and actually thought that maybe they should take over the entire absinthe industry
but the anti-absinthe lobby claimed that "This would make the State an entrepreneur of immorality.
Why doesn't it also get a monopoly on prostitution? What's the difference?
And the populace was with them and the next year the Swiss government changed the constitution to
completely outlaw absinthe in the country, this was followed by similar measures in the Netherlands
and the United States and then pretty much all of Europe.
The last bastion of absinthe was in France
but even then on the eve of World War I it was banned in France as well.
For "if absinthe isn't banned, our country will rapidly become an immense padded cell
where half the Frenchmen will be occupied putting straight jackets on the other half."
And for the better part of a century it remained banned. Other versions were made without wormwood,
but the wormwood style of absinthe which is actually absent remained banned until the 80s and 90s and some places even the early 2000s
when absinthe became legal again and in recent years it has really made a comeback,
and now all sorts of new producers are making absinthe,
and I'm glad that they are because it allows me to try this concoction for myself.
So once it's mostly filled up with water and the sugar is dissolved off of the spoon,
go ahead and give it a stir you want to make sure all of the sugar is properly dissolved into the drink and then....
bottoms up. To the green fairy.
It's very pretty. It really becomes this kind of opalescent greenish white.
It's a cool looking drink.
So really smells like anise, that black licorice really hits you and the flavor
same but sweeter. Well I guess like black licorice can be sweet but
it needs that sugar in my opinion because I'm not a big anise fan.
I actually wouldn't mind it even maybe a little bit more watered down, and yeah I probably could have added a bit more water.
But if you like that flavor then this is is really wonderful now what makes
Pernot and different from other absinthe is going to be all of the different other herbs that they use
but the thing is other than the anise I don't really get any of those herbs,
especially not the Melissa though I don't really know what that tastes like, but overall it's sweet and mild and
kind of- it's kind of light and I could see sipping this in a French cafe all afternoon.
Though actually probably after one I'd switch over to wine.
Anyway make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller
and I will see you next time on Drinking History.