![]() Valentin Magnan even went so far as to blame absinthe for what he saw as a collapse of French culture. Being both the latest fad in booze and extremely high in alcohol content, absinthe was sometimes to blame for bouts of raging drunkenness, occasional delirium, and even death - kind of like Four Loko in the late aughts.Īs its popularity spread, incidents of absinthe-related alcohol abuse did as well. Society gradually came to associate absinthe with alcoholism and degeneracy in general, and a French psychiatrist named Dr. That’s because basically everyone who was cool between 18 was an absinthe fan. If you check out a list of famous people who drank absinthe, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of them, including Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, and Ernest Hemingway. Prior to the ban in the early 1900s, absinthe was ubiquitous. But why is thujone so dangerous that its presence in your glass of booze needs to be regulated by the FDA? The answer has more to do with history than science. Absinthe contains thujone, a chemical found in several edible plants - including tarragon, sage, and wormwood. In the U.S., absinthe alcohol is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and the reason it was banned for so long has to do with one particular ingredient. The first two give absinthe its characteristic licorice taste, while wormwood imparts a bitter flavor and is the source of absinthe’s famed mystique and jade-green hue. So what is absinthe, and why was it once deemed so dangerous that people weren't even allowed to buy it? Absinthe is a grain alcohol of Swiss origin that is made by macerating herbs and spices, the most important of which are fennel, anise, and wormwood. Today, you can easily get your hands on a bottle of the liqueur, but before you do, it's worth learning a bit more about it. and much of Europe until relatively recently, and the "green fairy" still carries with it an air of mystery. The alcohol - which was hugely popular in the late 19th century - was banned in the U.S. There are few beverages as intriguing as absinthe.
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