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The Myth of Absinthe · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here as well, and it's
0:15
Speaker 1: the Three Green Fairies coming to bring you madness and delirium. Possibly. Yeah,
0:22
Speaker 1: on Stuff you Should Know. I wish I wish Jerry
0:26
Speaker 1: would put like some sort of twinkle effect in there
0:28
Speaker 1: after I say stuff you should Know too, just a
0:31
Speaker 1: nod to the fairy thing. Yeah, yeah, well you know
0:34
Speaker 1: she's listening. She is, and she's furiously scribbling notes in
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Speaker 1: my imagination, yes, only in your imagination. That's right. She's
0:44
Speaker 1: really stirring me. So yeah, that's right. Man, smells nice.
0:49
Speaker 1: Um So, Chuck, I mentioned Green Fairies because that is
0:52
Speaker 1: a nickname for what we're talking about today, which is
0:55
Speaker 1: absentthe we've gathered here today to talk about this thing
0:59
Speaker 1: called absent dearly beloved, that's right. Uh, that's right. And
1:06
Speaker 1: this was my pick in Olivia. I think this is
1:08
Speaker 1: Olivia right, helped us that with this. I believe this
1:11
Speaker 1: was a grabster pick, which Chuck, I'm glad you said that,
1:14
Speaker 1: because this makes this week a grabster tri fedka is
1:19
Speaker 1: it the grabster because it seems like one. I was
1:22
Speaker 1: just talking recently on the show about how it's certain
1:25
Speaker 1: topics fit certain writers, and this certainly fits Grabster. Not
1:28
Speaker 1: that he's a big absent head, but oh, if he's anything,
1:32
Speaker 1: he's a huge absence. But it just feels like an
1:35
Speaker 1: ed thing. But for some reason, it was spaced like
1:38
Speaker 1: Olivia spaces things. I'm almost positive that it was absent.
1:43
Speaker 1: I'm I'm pretty sure that it was. I mean, it
1:47
Speaker 1: was the Grabster. No, I'm sorry, so it was Olivia.
1:50
Speaker 1: You're right. Wow, he comes off like a grabst article,
1:55
Speaker 1: for sure. It does. At any rate. This idea came
1:59
Speaker 1: to me not too long ago, because I don't I
2:03
Speaker 1: didn't definitely didn't see the movie again. But I saw
2:05
Speaker 1: that scene from the Johnny Depp Jack the Ripper movie
2:10
Speaker 1: that I can't remember the name of from Hell from Hell,
2:14
Speaker 1: where Johnny Depp is in the bathtub and he is
2:19
Speaker 1: uh may be because of that trial is going on
2:21
Speaker 1: or something I don't know, um, and he does his
2:24
Speaker 1: absinthe ritual, which includes uh, supersizing his the effects by
2:30
Speaker 1: do you remember what he does? Uh? I've not seen
2:33
Speaker 1: that one. Okay, it's okay, you know, it's fine. I
2:37
Speaker 1: remember hearing that it was just fine. Yeah, it was
2:40
Speaker 1: good enough. But he does the and we'll talk a
2:43
Speaker 1: little bit about the sort of ritual of how you
2:46
Speaker 1: prepare absinthe. But one such ritual is to light sugar
2:50
Speaker 1: on fire and let it drip through a slotted spoon
2:54
Speaker 1: into the absinthe, which is not recommended for a number
2:57
Speaker 1: of reasons obviously, uh not the which is alcohol and
3:00
Speaker 1: fire mixing. Um. But what he does is he drops
3:04
Speaker 1: uh laudan in. Is that what it is? I think?
3:09
Speaker 1: So alcohol and opium mix together. Yeah, some sort of
3:13
Speaker 1: opium from a dripper bottle, dropper bottle, and he drops
3:16
Speaker 1: it on the sugar then lights that on fire. So oh,
3:19
Speaker 1: that's a pretty hardcore. I guess that's the way they
3:21
Speaker 1: did it back then. The other big movie moment that
3:25
Speaker 1: I know of is in that bos Lerman uh Mulan
3:28
Speaker 1: rouge where you and McGregor and John Leguizama and some
3:34
Speaker 1: other pals all are all drinking absent and they see
3:38
Speaker 1: the green ferry. Kylie Minogue, I forgot about that. Have
3:43
Speaker 1: you seen the trailer for his Elvis movie coming out? No? Oh,
3:47
Speaker 1: it looks so good. I can't wait. What a great
3:50
Speaker 1: combination they all. I think the only one who could
3:52
Speaker 1: do maybe a better Elvis bio pick is maybe David
3:56
Speaker 1: Lynch and bos Lerman might have him, might have him
3:59
Speaker 1: beaten fun It looks awesome, man and the guy they
4:02
Speaker 1: got to do it just snails the body movements and
4:05
Speaker 1: like all the way up to the Vegas Elvis just
4:08
Speaker 1: stone cold? Was it? Peter stars Guard? Is that you
4:14
Speaker 1: think should play him? No? Okay, no, he's on my
4:19
Speaker 1: mind because I I, um, we're going to talk about
4:21
Speaker 1: Wormwood in a second, and I was like, man, wasn't
4:24
Speaker 1: that like a series on on Netflix? And sure enough
4:28
Speaker 1: it was with directed by Errol Morris. Oh I remember that?
4:32
Speaker 1: Was it called Wormwood? Yeah? It was about the MK
4:35
Speaker 1: Ultra program that. Yeah, it was really good. But uh yeah,
4:40
Speaker 1: So anyway, um, okay, I think we've covered everything movie
4:44
Speaker 1: wise right well so far. Okay. So the reason that
4:48
Speaker 1: I brought up Wormwood is because it is this main
4:51
Speaker 1: ingredient and absence. If you make absence, which, by the way,
4:55
Speaker 1: if if you're not if you don't know what we're
4:56
Speaker 1: talking about, absent is a type of liquor or liqueur.
5:00
Speaker 1: I guess it's a it's usually made from a neutral
5:03
Speaker 1: grain spirit. If you really want to get kind of authentic,
5:06
Speaker 1: you would make it from grapes um, distilled grapes um,
5:10
Speaker 1: and then you you kind of process it like you
5:13
Speaker 1: would if you were making gin. You take some botanicals,
5:17
Speaker 1: distill it together, and then the resulting stuff that cools
5:22
Speaker 1: down after after you evaporated is absentthe and to make
5:26
Speaker 1: absinthe you have to have three main ingredients distilled with
5:30
Speaker 1: the liquor um, fennel, annis and then wormwood. And wormwood
5:36
Speaker 1: is the big tricky key to the whole thing that
5:38
Speaker 1: has caused a lot of problems and misconceptions over the years.
5:42
Speaker 1: That's right, a lot of myths there. Absinthe is obviously
5:46
Speaker 1: known for its very bright green color before you have
5:51
Speaker 1: gone through your ritual, because it kind of changes the
5:53
Speaker 1: color a little bit, but that comes from reinfusing after
5:58
Speaker 1: it's distilled, reinfusing it with more of those ingredients. You
6:02
Speaker 1: don't have to do that. There is such thing as
6:04
Speaker 1: clear or white absinthe. But you know, if you really
6:09
Speaker 1: want to have the absent experience, it's got to be green. Yeah,
6:12
Speaker 1: why isn't this absinthe green? Take it away? Gar song? Right,
6:19
Speaker 1: that's right. Nice ref um. That was very postmodern of you.
6:23
Speaker 1: Thank you so um that that that essential ingredient. Wormwood
6:29
Speaker 1: has been known to humanity for thousands and thousands of years. Um.
6:33
Speaker 1: The earliest reference written reference to it comes from the
6:36
Speaker 1: Ebbers Papyrus, which um dates back to Oh I would
6:41
Speaker 1: say something like about thirty five hundred years ago something
6:45
Speaker 1: like that. It's possibly earlier than that. And that was
6:48
Speaker 1: just the first written reference. So we already knew we
6:51
Speaker 1: being humans, knew about wormwood long before that, and up
6:55
Speaker 1: until the mid nineteenth century it was all is treated
7:00
Speaker 1: as like basically a medicinal plant. That's right, Um, there
7:05
Speaker 1: were you know, this is sort of one of the
7:07
Speaker 1: heydays of medicinal plant use. And you know, all kinds
7:11
Speaker 1: of supposed cures ills being cured, uh, including but not
7:17
Speaker 1: limited to, if you have stomach pains, if you want
7:21
Speaker 1: to get your mensies going h Uh. They say it
7:24
Speaker 1: could be hypnotic. They say it could give you a
7:27
Speaker 1: pick me up if you were tired. Um, what else? Uh,
7:33
Speaker 1: if it's an if it wasn't something you didn't want
7:35
Speaker 1: to drink before then, Knowing that wormwood was used as
7:38
Speaker 1: an insect repellent and an antiseptic for cleaning up a
7:42
Speaker 1: bacteria ridden mouth might do the trick right. And also
7:45
Speaker 1: one of the long standing um uses for it has
7:49
Speaker 1: been as an antihelmetic, which means that it's a d
7:52
Speaker 1: wormer And apparently when you ingest wormwood, it actually stuns
7:57
Speaker 1: the worms that are attached to your gut lining enough
7:59
Speaker 1: that they let go and you poop them out the
8:02
Speaker 1: other end um, and it really does work. The modern
8:05
Speaker 1: modern investigations of wormwood have verified it is an effective
8:08
Speaker 1: d werm er um, and it also is an appetite
8:12
Speaker 1: stimulant too, So um as we'll see, it became an
8:15
Speaker 1: appartif which you drink before you eat, and that makes
8:17
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, the little wormwood in it. But
8:20
Speaker 1: in German there's a little there's a little tiny facts
8:23
Speaker 1: here there in this episode. It's one of those which
8:25
Speaker 1: I love. But in German wormwood is called the ver moot,
8:30
Speaker 1: and that might sound familiar. Vermouth is a fortified wine
8:33
Speaker 1: that contains wormwood, among other things. Did you know that?
8:38
Speaker 1: I did know that? Because I love vermouth, I do too,
8:42
Speaker 1: I still didn't know what I also know that it's
8:46
Speaker 1: Modern studies even show that it can aid digestion, which
8:49
Speaker 1: gives credence to the old saying absinthe makes the farts
8:53
Speaker 1: grow stronger. My goodness. So, first of all, I know
8:57
Speaker 1: that that wasn't off the cuff. It's just not possible.
9:00
Speaker 1: You want to hear something terrible, I've been I made
9:04
Speaker 1: up that joke in my head years ago. Did you really?
9:08
Speaker 1: And I've never had the opportunity to drop it. You're
9:12
Speaker 1: you're in a chicken processing plant thinking that, and you're like,
9:14
Speaker 1: I need to get a job where I'm really public
9:16
Speaker 1: facing so I can share this one. Well, it's a
9:19
Speaker 1: punch line. It's not a joke. I thought of that
9:20
Speaker 1: punch line, and I've I've long tried to create a
9:24
Speaker 1: joke that would just take hold and spread around the world. Uh,
9:28
Speaker 1: but I just made a fun one. You just did
9:31
Speaker 1: that just spread around the world like this boslerman Elvis
9:34
Speaker 1: Biopick is about to let me ask you something though,
9:37
Speaker 1: Have you ever had malart? Yes, which is it's just
9:43
Speaker 1: such hipster ridiculousness, But yes I have, so, my lord,
9:48
Speaker 1: for those of you listening, Uh, that pretty good descriptor.
9:51
Speaker 1: I guess it's a liquor or a liqueur made from wormwood.
9:55
Speaker 1: It is very popular, almost exclusively in Chicago. Uh and
10:00
Speaker 1: Jepson's malard and it's you know, it is a kind
10:02
Speaker 1: of a hipster thing, like you get a PBR's All
10:04
Speaker 1: Boy and with the malard back at any hipster bar.
10:08
Speaker 1: But that was something that uh at max Fun Con,
10:11
Speaker 1: which is the podcast network Maximum Fun has this summer
10:15
Speaker 1: retreat they do every year where John Hodgeman and I
10:18
Speaker 1: do are pub tribute thing which is now ended. But uh,
10:23
Speaker 1: traditionally John would do the benediction, pass around bottles of
10:27
Speaker 1: malort and everyone would drink it. And that, my friend,
10:30
Speaker 1: is a taste that will stay with you for hours. Yes, yeah,
10:35
Speaker 1: because wormwood is a really really bitter tasting something. Um,
10:42
Speaker 1: and it's actually so. Wormwood has a compound in it
10:47
Speaker 1: called absinthe in, and absinthe itself is a Greek word
10:52
Speaker 1: that means undrinkable. That's how it bitter it is. The
10:56
Speaker 1: Polish apparently have a saying called bitter as wormwood, right,
11:00
Speaker 1: and um, this stuff absentthe that gives wormwood it's bitter
11:04
Speaker 1: taste is so bitter. Chuck that one ounce of absinthein,
11:08
Speaker 1: if you could extract it from the wormwood and you
11:11
Speaker 1: came up with just one ounce of it, if you
11:14
Speaker 1: poured it into five hundred and twenty four gallons of water,
11:18
Speaker 1: mixed it up, and then offered someone a cup of
11:20
Speaker 1: that water, they would be able to detect the bitterness. Wow. Yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: I believe that wormwood oil. Um, well, we might as
11:28
Speaker 1: well go ahead and get into this a little bit. Um.
11:31
Speaker 1: Wormwood oil has a substance in it about of which
11:35
Speaker 1: this is a substance called food jone. And since time
11:40
Speaker 1: and memoriam, when people had absinthe, they used to talk
11:43
Speaker 1: about the fact that you would have hallution, uh, hallucinations
11:47
Speaker 1: and seizures. So this is one of the big myths
11:49
Speaker 1: that we're gonna bust is that's really not true. Uh,
11:54
Speaker 1: that food jone can cause seizures. And we know why.
11:58
Speaker 1: It's a it's a gabba inhibitor, and it's going to
12:00
Speaker 1: block the receptors that lead to these convulsions. But there's
12:05
Speaker 1: and and they've even done tests of of pre nineteen
12:09
Speaker 1: tin absence recipes and found it's about the same amount
12:12
Speaker 1: as today. And I saw one article that said it's
12:15
Speaker 1: basically about enough food jone that you would find from
12:18
Speaker 1: sage in a box of stove top stuffing, which has
12:23
Speaker 1: long been known to give you hallucinations and convulsions in
12:27
Speaker 1: addition to being very delicious. Yeah, so there's just not
12:30
Speaker 1: enough in there, like it does food jone does come
12:33
Speaker 1: from wwood oil, and it does cause seizures. But there's
12:36
Speaker 1: just apparently trace amounts and it's even restricted by law
12:39
Speaker 1: how much you can have in it, right, right, And
12:41
Speaker 1: it's the same thing is like, um, if you ate
12:44
Speaker 1: a kilogram of salt, it would affect you physiologically in
12:46
Speaker 1: some terrible ways, like you would just have to drink
12:49
Speaker 1: so much of it. Um. And then also because worm
12:52
Speaker 1: was so bitter that even like the staunchest wax bearded
12:56
Speaker 1: hipster in the country could probably not drink enough wormwood
13:02
Speaker 1: to uh to bring on a convulsion or hallucinations. Now,
13:06
Speaker 1: so that's just a big myth. The fact that, I mean,
13:08
Speaker 1: we'll get into the history of it, which is pretty interesting.
13:10
Speaker 1: But you know, it was all basically because people were
13:13
Speaker 1: getting blasted on alcohol, right, so the but but like
13:18
Speaker 1: you said, since time immemorial people have said, like this
13:21
Speaker 1: wormwood stuff, it'll make you trip. That was enough to
13:24
Speaker 1: attract some um artists, bohemians, writers poets um around the
13:31
Speaker 1: turn of the last century, particularly in Paris, to the
13:35
Speaker 1: idea of absinthe. We're not quite there yet, but once
13:38
Speaker 1: we get there, bear in mind all of this is
13:41
Speaker 1: wrong and made up, and it makes all it makes
13:45
Speaker 1: an entire basically the Impressionist art movement really cringe e
13:49
Speaker 1: that they were all just self deluded in thinking that
13:52
Speaker 1: this this stuff was like causing them to hallucinate and
13:56
Speaker 1: maybe get a little mad, and all this stuff it was.
13:58
Speaker 1: It's really just kind of uncomfortable to look back on now,
14:02
Speaker 1: it really is. So Chuck, let's say we'd take a
14:05
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and really kind of
14:06
Speaker 1: dig into the history a little more. Let's get our
14:09
Speaker 1: shovels out and get ready. Stuff you should know, lash
14:29
Speaker 1: sh stuffy should know. Okay, Chuck. So I mentioned earlier that, um,
14:38
Speaker 1: you know, wormwood was long considered a medicinal plant. And
14:42
Speaker 1: there's a story that goes that a doctor named Pierre
14:45
Speaker 1: Ordinaire who was hiding out from the French Revolution just
14:48
Speaker 1: across the border in Switzerland, uh in a town called Kuvey, Switzerland,
14:52
Speaker 1: in particular, um that Dr Ordinaire was um looking for
14:58
Speaker 1: a way to make worm would palatable to create a
15:01
Speaker 1: medicinal lick, sir, and that that is how he ended
15:04
Speaker 1: up coming up with absente. That's right, that's how the
15:08
Speaker 1: story goes. Like you said earlier, if you want the
15:11
Speaker 1: real authentic kind, use grape spirits, because distilled grapes is
15:16
Speaker 1: how it started. Now it's just sort of you know,
15:19
Speaker 1: a base um like a you know, any sort of uh,
15:24
Speaker 1: distilled vodka type bass like white lightning. Why am I
15:28
Speaker 1: tripping over all that? I don't know. It's almost like
15:31
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say it or something. I know,
15:35
Speaker 1: you really don't like that white lightning, do you know?
15:38
Speaker 1: But back in the day it was distilled grape spirit
15:41
Speaker 1: and it did have the worm would because that's what
15:43
Speaker 1: he was trying to make palatable, and he did. It
15:46
Speaker 1: appears at a bunch of botanicals to make it taste better.
15:50
Speaker 1: You know that star and niece was probably in it.
15:52
Speaker 1: Liquorice I see. Olivia also mentioned the finnel and the
15:56
Speaker 1: hyssop and parsley, coriander, kim a meal and spinach, which
16:00
Speaker 1: is quite a mixture. M hmm. When you take a
16:03
Speaker 1: little sip of absinthe and your friend would be like
16:06
Speaker 1: you've got a little spinach in your teeth. That is
16:09
Speaker 1: a really strange sounding mixture. Especially parsley would throw the
16:13
Speaker 1: whole thing off. You've ever had like a Green's drink,
16:16
Speaker 1: like fresh juice, the moment they put parsley in, it
16:20
Speaker 1: turns immediately south. It's horrible. It's horrific. Plea, leave parsley
16:25
Speaker 1: out of everything drinkable. Okay, yeah, never. We we go
16:29
Speaker 1: through periods where we're gonna we juice alli at at
16:32
Speaker 1: the house, but I know we've never added parsley because
16:35
Speaker 1: you're sensible salary. It's like, okay, you're getting a little
16:39
Speaker 1: close to messing this up. But then once you had
16:40
Speaker 1: the parsley is awful. It's it's punishment from that point on.
16:45
Speaker 1: So you want to leave the parsley out whether you're
16:46
Speaker 1: making juice or absinthe Um, and you said one thing, Melissa, Um,
16:51
Speaker 1: that's actually lemon ball. I saw as well, What did
16:56
Speaker 1: I say, Melissa? That's another term for lemon ball. And
16:59
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, it's not like you were incorrect
17:01
Speaker 1: in saying Melissa did say Melissa? I thought you said
17:05
Speaker 1: Melissa in there as well. Sorry it comes up later then, Okay,
17:09
Speaker 1: he said, did I say, Melissa, am I driving you mad?
17:12
Speaker 1: Like the green ferry? About one of one of us
17:14
Speaker 1: is on absinthe right now. So, um, that whole story
17:19
Speaker 1: about Dr Ordinair coming up with this chuck is um
17:22
Speaker 1: possibly wrong because at the end of the story, Dr
17:26
Speaker 1: Ordinair turns out to be this kind, benevolent man who
17:30
Speaker 1: leaves his recipe for absinthe um to the Henryoade's sisters
17:35
Speaker 1: who were his housekeepers, and they go on and start
17:39
Speaker 1: making this stuff um and sell it to a guy
17:42
Speaker 1: named Major Enri Danielle do bed Do bid um and
17:47
Speaker 1: probably make a tidy sum from that. But some historians
17:51
Speaker 1: have said no, actually, it looks like other people might
17:54
Speaker 1: have been making this stuff before him, including the henryode sisters,
17:57
Speaker 1: so it's possible that Dr Ordinair actually stole this from them. Yeah.
18:03
Speaker 1: And it was also a time where there was you know,
18:06
Speaker 1: this was the golden age of medicinal elixirs, so who knows,
18:12
Speaker 1: like everyone was experimenting with different recipes for stuff. And
18:16
Speaker 1: I definitely think we can't say for sure that it
18:18
Speaker 1: was Dr Pierre Ordinaire, but it is a great name. Um.
18:24
Speaker 1: But at some somehow Dr major Dubia did come into
18:28
Speaker 1: this recipe and started making absinthe, and he had a
18:31
Speaker 1: daughter named Emily spelled like your wife's name. Yeah, And
18:36
Speaker 1: Emily married another man, Henri Louis Peria Nude and Peria
18:42
Speaker 1: Nude Para Nude. Sorry I was adding an extra syllable
18:46
Speaker 1: in the Para nude. Um was the son of another
18:50
Speaker 1: family that had been making absinthe, And so the Dubids
18:55
Speaker 1: and the Para Nudes got together and became basically like
18:58
Speaker 1: an absentthe making dying is the along the Swiss French border.
19:03
Speaker 1: That's right. And what was the last name in that
19:05
Speaker 1: other family, Well, Para Nude finally changed their name to
19:09
Speaker 1: Pernode p r an o D, which is a very
19:13
Speaker 1: famous brand of liquorice flavored liqueur that was once absinthe
19:19
Speaker 1: that had the wormwood removed and became that's right, and
19:24
Speaker 1: they're now a I believe there was a merger in
19:27
Speaker 1: the mid seventies with another beverage brand and now they're
19:30
Speaker 1: a huge sort of liquor company that owns I think
19:35
Speaker 1: they owned Sea Grims, They own a couple of other vodkas.
19:38
Speaker 1: They owned lots of stuff and you can see that
19:40
Speaker 1: green pernol on any liquor store shelf, and you've probably
19:43
Speaker 1: if you're not an aficionado, you've probably always wondered, is
19:47
Speaker 1: that absinthe? Or what the heck is up with that
19:48
Speaker 1: bright green stuff. Well, as we'll see, it was a
19:51
Speaker 1: stand in for absinthe, which had become kind of popular
19:56
Speaker 1: taste wise. Um, after it got banging. That's right, since absence, man,
20:05
Speaker 1: you're full of it today, you're just full of like it,
20:08
Speaker 1: he splits in vinegar. I've never heard that term. I
20:12
Speaker 1: just made it up. Okay, So, uh, we're still not
20:16
Speaker 1: at this point where absinthe has become an actual popular
20:19
Speaker 1: drink really honestly. So Dubi Ed was like, I want
20:22
Speaker 1: to buy this, but I think you're wasting it selling
20:24
Speaker 1: it as a medicinal. I think people would actually like
20:26
Speaker 1: to drink this, And he was right. But it wasn't
20:29
Speaker 1: until it was used extensively as a medicinal with the
20:32
Speaker 1: French army who were sent off to North Africa by
20:35
Speaker 1: Napoleon in the eighteen forties, I believe, and we're given
20:39
Speaker 1: absinthe during their stay to fight off malaria. Um. The
20:43
Speaker 1: absence became popular because those French soldiers came back and said, hey,
20:47
Speaker 1: have you guys tried the absence stuff? Like they gave
20:49
Speaker 1: it to his medicine. But we loved drinking it regardless,
20:53
Speaker 1: And the French Army was popular enough of the time
20:55
Speaker 1: that whatever was fashionable with them became fashionable with the
20:59
Speaker 1: rest of France as well. That's right, So they bring
21:02
Speaker 1: the taste of absinthe back. At first, it is expensive,
21:07
Speaker 1: and it is you know, basically people with money, sort
21:10
Speaker 1: of the higher class that are drinking absinthe. And then
21:13
Speaker 1: even early on, because of its reputation as a hallucinogen,
21:17
Speaker 1: artists were into it, trying to get inspiration for their
21:21
Speaker 1: poems and paintings and things like that. And things change though,
21:24
Speaker 1: starting in about the eighteen seventies when there was a insect,
21:30
Speaker 1: the Philo Rexerra, the rexa mhm by Losera. There we're
21:39
Speaker 1: adding letters all over the place today. Uh so it's
21:43
Speaker 1: the insect five loserra. It really in you know, France,
21:46
Speaker 1: as everyone knows, is most famous for its wine growing,
21:49
Speaker 1: and this devastated grapes in France and that was a
21:52
Speaker 1: bad thing for the wine industry because that just meant obviously,
21:56
Speaker 1: when something like that happens, wine is going to be
21:58
Speaker 1: more expensive, and so absinthe came along and said, hey,
22:03
Speaker 1: we can make this with anything. We don't need grapes,
22:06
Speaker 1: we can make it with cheaper stuff, and all of
22:09
Speaker 1: a sudden, absinthe is cheaper, and all of a sudden
22:11
Speaker 1: that people drinking absinthe became just sort of the working
22:14
Speaker 1: class because wine was so expensive. All of a sudden, yeah,
22:18
Speaker 1: because the French said, we got to drink something. So
22:20
Speaker 1: they replaced their wine, which is now ridiculously expensive, which
22:24
Speaker 1: with much, much, much cheaper absinthe. But the thing is,
22:27
Speaker 1: Chuck is absinthe is a spirit. Wine is not a spirit.
22:31
Speaker 1: So you know, wine definitely contains alcohol, and you can
22:34
Speaker 1: make wine with more or less you know, alcoholic content.
22:38
Speaker 1: But one of the things about absinthe is it's one
22:40
Speaker 1: of the highest proof liquors on the market. I didn't
22:44
Speaker 1: know it's. It frequently hits sixty to seventy up to
22:49
Speaker 1: eight alcohol. So if you get a really um high
22:55
Speaker 1: a b V or high proof absinthe and you are
23:00
Speaker 1: yourself a glass of it, that is not alcohol. The
23:05
Speaker 1: other is pure alcohol. So that's a really big switch.
23:10
Speaker 1: That's a huge switch over from wine, drinking a couple
23:14
Speaker 1: of glasses of wine and dinner, and drinking a couple
23:16
Speaker 1: of glasses of absinthe at dinner. It's a big difference. Yeah,
23:19
Speaker 1: I guess I should have asked, have you ever had absinthe,
23:21
Speaker 1: like just real deal, straight up at some drink or
23:24
Speaker 1: not in cocktail, but it's absinthe? Yes, yeah, you mean,
23:28
Speaker 1: got me a little bottle of St. George absinthe. I
23:30
Speaker 1: think they're out of San Francisco. Um yeah, yeah, they
23:34
Speaker 1: make really good gin too, um uh and a little spoon,
23:39
Speaker 1: a little slotted spoons. So I made this absinthe here
23:41
Speaker 1: there a couple of times. It's fine, okay, home about Yeah,
23:45
Speaker 1: all right, I've never had it. I meant to get
23:48
Speaker 1: some and try this. I'm gonna try it after now
23:50
Speaker 1: that I know the whole deal and how to do it.
23:53
Speaker 1: But I can already tell that it's not going to
23:54
Speaker 1: be like something I'm gonna drink a lot of. No.
23:57
Speaker 1: I mean, it's tasty, you definitely want, and diluted with
24:00
Speaker 1: water and sugar water in particular as we'll see. Um
24:03
Speaker 1: and but it's neat that there's like a ritual to it.
24:06
Speaker 1: It's fun to like kind of learn the ritual, make
24:08
Speaker 1: the drink like that, you know, following these this kind
24:11
Speaker 1: of ritualized, and then never do it again. Sure, and
24:14
Speaker 1: then yeah, the problem is when you want like a
24:16
Speaker 1: second one or something like that, it's like, oh, I
24:18
Speaker 1: gotta go through this whole rigamarole again, you know. So
24:22
Speaker 1: it's one of those things, you know. Uh, then you
24:25
Speaker 1: just crack a beer when it is less beer. Yet
24:28
Speaker 1: you don't drink beer anymore, do you? Oh? Yeah, sometimes,
24:32
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean once in ace in a while.
24:34
Speaker 1: It's not frequent or anything, but um uh last beer
24:38
Speaker 1: I had it was probably a few months ago. But
24:41
Speaker 1: they I don't drink it much anymore. I miss it.
24:43
Speaker 1: If you want a beer and you have a beer,
24:46
Speaker 1: it can be really satisfying under the right conditions, you know. Yeah.
24:50
Speaker 1: And I think what I do with beer now is uh,
24:54
Speaker 1: it used to just be beer, beer, beer, you know,
24:56
Speaker 1: when you're younger or when I was younger. But now
25:00
Speaker 1: I treat beer as like a treat that I have
25:03
Speaker 1: every once in a while and I'll have one, maybe two,
25:07
Speaker 1: and that's it. And that kind of think back, like, man,
25:09
Speaker 1: how did I used to drink like a lot of this?
25:11
Speaker 1: That's just a lot of liquid, yeah, a lot of bourbon, yeah,
25:15
Speaker 1: a lot of like your pants falling down, I mean,
25:17
Speaker 1: like a lot of weird stuff happens when you drink,
25:20
Speaker 1: and a lot of beer. Yeah. So anyway back to
25:24
Speaker 1: absinthe um, where are we? Okay, it is now the
25:28
Speaker 1: working classes drinking it, they're loving it. And advertising what
25:32
Speaker 1: we know is like modern advertising is just starting to
25:35
Speaker 1: be a thing. And in France they went a few
25:38
Speaker 1: different directions, kind of like with I mean, look at
25:41
Speaker 1: any beer now and you can kind of say the
25:43
Speaker 1: same thing. Some of it was patriotic, like they would
25:46
Speaker 1: adorn it in the French the colors of the French flag, um.
25:49
Speaker 1: Some of them were even called things like patriot uh.
25:52
Speaker 1: And then they had the sexy ads with you know,
25:55
Speaker 1: sexy ladies drinking absinthe uh. And so that's like any
25:59
Speaker 1: you know, that could be a Budweiser poster. But the
26:03
Speaker 1: thing that they don't do on a Budweiser poster is
26:05
Speaker 1: they also advertise it as a hygiene product. Right because again,
26:10
Speaker 1: remember this whole thing started off as a medicinal liquor
26:14
Speaker 1: medicinal lick, sir, So they could still kind of lean
26:17
Speaker 1: on that because it was close enough in the recent
26:20
Speaker 1: past that people recognized it as such. You know, got
26:24
Speaker 1: worms drink absinthe or got bad breaths drink absin imagine
26:31
Speaker 1: switching it around in your mouths. Yeah, it's probably like
26:34
Speaker 1: a mouthwatch, I guess a little bit. It's like um,
26:40
Speaker 1: you know that old timey liquorice flavored toothpaste. I imagine
26:43
Speaker 1: to be like that. Yeah. Probably. So we should also
26:46
Speaker 1: point out this is mainly in Europe. It never really
26:49
Speaker 1: took off in the United States around this time, except
26:52
Speaker 1: and of course French inspired New Orleans. It was pretty
26:56
Speaker 1: popular there. Yeah, But like you said, in Europe it
27:00
Speaker 1: was very popular, especially among artists, in particular Bohemian artists.
27:04
Speaker 1: And there was a real transition going on in the
27:06
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century early twenty, very very early twentieth century
27:12
Speaker 1: um the aughts, as you call them, UM, where art
27:17
Speaker 1: was getting a little more rebellious, a little less stuffy um.
27:22
Speaker 1: And the old guard did not really like this very much.
27:24
Speaker 1: But the new Guards said they cared not um, and
27:28
Speaker 1: one of the one of the things that they were
27:30
Speaker 1: interested in was changing altering their perceptions. So they used opium.
27:36
Speaker 1: They drank lots of booze. But there was this idea
27:39
Speaker 1: that um, in particular absenthe could change your perceptions of
27:43
Speaker 1: the world and life and yourself in ways that nothing
27:47
Speaker 1: else could. Again because of this super hallucinatory wormwood, that
27:51
Speaker 1: if you drank too much, it might drive you mad.
27:54
Speaker 1: And so they adopted absence to kind of fuel this
27:57
Speaker 1: transition to a much more rebellious um like type of
28:02
Speaker 1: art or movement of art. Yeah, and I think, you know,
28:06
Speaker 1: I didn't quite get with you Mentalier about looking back
28:09
Speaker 1: on it, it is kind of gross and embarrassing because
28:12
Speaker 1: they were just getting plowed on liquor, is what was happening.
28:16
Speaker 1: And you know, they were writing poems about it, and
28:18
Speaker 1: they were painting paintings, you know about absinthe. Then you know,
28:23
Speaker 1: Manet had one called the Absinthe Drinker, and it was
28:26
Speaker 1: a man. It was a portrait of a man named
28:30
Speaker 1: Colordette who was just sort of a street drunk who
28:33
Speaker 1: was dressed up a little fancy. And that was a
28:36
Speaker 1: big scandal because you weren't supposed to paint portraits of
28:39
Speaker 1: people like that. And van Go drank a lot of
28:42
Speaker 1: abs And then Picasso had a sculpture called the Glass
28:46
Speaker 1: of absinthe, and there were poems written about it in stories,
28:49
Speaker 1: and it was just it was all it was all
28:51
Speaker 1: fake when you look back, it was nothing but getting
28:54
Speaker 1: plowed on liquor. Yes, exactly right. And um to give
28:58
Speaker 1: an example of how it's just kind of uncomfortable, it
29:01
Speaker 1: can make you. Bode laire um who I always think
29:05
Speaker 1: of with um, what was that bomb vivant that John
29:08
Speaker 1: Lovitts played on SNL kind of a dandy, the one
29:13
Speaker 1: I'm an actor. Maybe I just remember him invoking bodel Oh, Bodelaire,
29:20
Speaker 1: And this is who he was talking about was Charles Baudelaire,
29:22
Speaker 1: who was a very influential poet of this time who
29:25
Speaker 1: really liked getting wasted, and he in particular thought that
29:30
Speaker 1: getting wasted on absinthe was amazing because quote, neither wine
29:34
Speaker 1: nor opium equals the poison welling up in your eyes.
29:38
Speaker 1: That show me my poor soul, reversed my dreams, thronged
29:42
Speaker 1: drink at those green distorting pools absinthe, when really it
29:47
Speaker 1: was just high proof licker. That was it. Everybody that
29:50
Speaker 1: was it? Yeah, he could have been said, I've been
29:55
Speaker 1: about hunch punch exactly. You know, like college Freshman wrote
30:01
Speaker 1: similar poems inspired by Jim Morrison and hunch Punch. Oh yeah, exactly.
30:05
Speaker 1: Hunch Punch really does get on top of you pretty
30:07
Speaker 1: quick too. That never had that stuff. If it's well made,
30:10
Speaker 1: you don't even taste the incredible amount of high high hy. Yeah,
30:16
Speaker 1: it's crazy. You're like, how is this being hidden? But
30:18
Speaker 1: it does, I guess because it's a neutral spirit. But
30:21
Speaker 1: it's um wow, And for some reason it's all there's
30:25
Speaker 1: always like an entire garbage can full of it. It's
30:27
Speaker 1: never like a small amount. Nobody ever makes like a
30:29
Speaker 1: nice cocktail of hunch punch. Here and there there's a
30:32
Speaker 1: garbage can. It's a very dangerous thing to do. Actually,
30:36
Speaker 1: in retrospect, I have a theory about absence, and I
30:40
Speaker 1: haven't really seen anything about this, but I think the
30:43
Speaker 1: mere fact that it was this bright, bright green just
30:47
Speaker 1: I think if it would have been a clear or
30:49
Speaker 1: brown liquor, it wouldn't have taken hold like it did.
30:51
Speaker 1: I think there was something about that color that just
30:53
Speaker 1: sort of entranced people. I think you're totally right, and
30:57
Speaker 1: the point that shouldn't be mistaken is that in some way,
31:00
Speaker 1: shape or form, absent, even if it was a mythological
31:03
Speaker 1: concept when you really get right down to it did
31:07
Speaker 1: fuel some really creative art at that time. I mean
31:12
Speaker 1: we're talking about man A Dega van go All. These
31:15
Speaker 1: guys were like fueled by absinthe. Like it really did
31:19
Speaker 1: have a huge impression on the art world, even if
31:21
Speaker 1: they were kind of self deluded. Yeah. The Oscar Wild quote,
31:25
Speaker 1: of course, you know every Oscar Wild quote is pretty great.
31:29
Speaker 1: But he liked the stuff, and he said, after the
31:32
Speaker 1: first class of absinthe, you see things as you wish
31:34
Speaker 1: they are, wish they were. After the second you see
31:37
Speaker 1: them as they are not. Finally, you see things as
31:40
Speaker 1: they really are, and that that is the most horrible
31:43
Speaker 1: thing in the world, which just means you're plastered. Yeah. Um.
31:48
Speaker 1: Another one that we could not just not shout out
31:50
Speaker 1: though was pretty much the the head cheese as far
31:54
Speaker 1: as getting super plowed on absinthe goes, which is to
31:57
Speaker 1: loose la trek, Henrida, to loose la trek. He loved
32:00
Speaker 1: the stuff, very famous with pastel portraits, very famous. Um,
32:05
Speaker 1: just kind of hard living, hard drinking French dude from
32:08
Speaker 1: the era um. And he apparently loved absence so much
32:13
Speaker 1: that he had a walking cane that he carried a
32:15
Speaker 1: little like a couple of shots of absente poured into
32:19
Speaker 1: hollowed out walking cane with him everywhere he went. That's
32:23
Speaker 1: a nice party trick. So it was, Um, it was
32:25
Speaker 1: really something like everybody was really getting plowed on absence.
32:28
Speaker 1: Remember a lot of working class French people replaced their
32:33
Speaker 1: morning afternoon and evening glasses of wine with morning afternoon
32:37
Speaker 1: and evening glasses of liquor absinthe instead, and this was
32:44
Speaker 1: starting to like make a lot of people worried. Um,
32:47
Speaker 1: there was a temperance movement in eighteen seventy two, beginning
32:50
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two in France, and it was not
32:52
Speaker 1: gaining traction, and then absinthe really started to come along
32:56
Speaker 1: and a target began to emerge. And Chuck, I say
32:59
Speaker 1: that we take a uh break and then come back
33:02
Speaker 1: and talk about how the ban on absinthe began. Let's
33:05
Speaker 1: do it. Stuff you should know, lawsham shure stuff you
33:29
Speaker 1: should know, all right, So you teased that. Uh, the
33:33
Speaker 1: temperance movement in France didn't take at first because simmas France,
33:38
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the French should love to drink lots of
33:41
Speaker 1: wine and other things. God God bless him, but absinthe
33:46
Speaker 1: is started to grow in popularity, and they rode in
33:50
Speaker 1: and said, all right, here's our chance. This stuff is
33:53
Speaker 1: is the devil's juice, and we can really have a
33:57
Speaker 1: way in here if we target absent as a thing.
34:01
Speaker 1: And then wine makers, which is sort of weird, got
34:03
Speaker 1: involved in the temperance movement in a way when they said, yeah,
34:07
Speaker 1: absentthe is terrible and it's not like cognac, which is
34:12
Speaker 1: you know, it was just really sort of high falutin
34:14
Speaker 1: alcohol made from uh, distilled grapes. Um. But this stuff
34:19
Speaker 1: is really bad stuff. It's cheap and it's it's it's petty,
34:23
Speaker 1: and it's for the lower class. So we're going to
34:25
Speaker 1: join up in the temperance movement ourselves to help get
34:28
Speaker 1: rid of it. Yeah, and it worked really really well.
34:31
Speaker 1: I mean they had a common enemy, absence. And then
34:33
Speaker 1: what was really kind of helped alonger helped the entire
34:36
Speaker 1: thing along. We're a couple of things. One was a
34:40
Speaker 1: psychiatrist named Valentine Magnart Magna in Magna And sorry, I
34:48
Speaker 1: printed this undraft setting so I can't see very well. Um,
34:53
Speaker 1: but even and we'll come back to magna and slash
34:55
Speaker 1: magnart in a second. Um. But what what really kind
35:00
Speaker 1: of shocked the nation's and in fact the world's conscience
35:05
Speaker 1: about just letting absinthe flow freely was um jehan le
35:10
Speaker 1: phrase murder of his entire family Um while he was
35:14
Speaker 1: about as drunk as a human being can be, right,
35:17
Speaker 1: but not so much on absinthe, which is the irony here.
35:21
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen o five, and as the story
35:25
Speaker 1: goes in court, they say he drank five liters of wine,
35:30
Speaker 1: six classes of cognac to crim demense, just you know,
35:34
Speaker 1: because a coffee with brandy, I guess to sober up,
35:39
Speaker 1: and then but two ounces of absinthe, gets in a
35:43
Speaker 1: fight with his wife, his pregnant wife murders her with
35:46
Speaker 1: a gun and his two and three year old daughters
35:50
Speaker 1: amazingly horrible domestic comicide case. Then tried to kill himself,
35:55
Speaker 1: survived it and was basically spared the death penalty. But
36:00
Speaker 1: because they said he was in the throes of absinthe
36:02
Speaker 1: madness and it worked. Yeah, there was a psyche, a
36:04
Speaker 1: different psychologist from Switzerland named Albert Albert Albert Mayhem, and
36:09
Speaker 1: uh he said no, this man was was in the
36:12
Speaker 1: grips of this absinthe madness, even though he just had
36:15
Speaker 1: two ounces of absent throughout the whole day. But the
36:18
Speaker 1: fact that he had had absinthe and absinthe had this reputation,
36:22
Speaker 1: he was able to seize on it. And so that
36:25
Speaker 1: that really caught the attention of everybody that if you
36:28
Speaker 1: drank absinthe it could drive you to murder your own family.
36:33
Speaker 1: That really made a lot of people reconsider it. And
36:36
Speaker 1: then either um, like before this, well full thirty years
36:41
Speaker 1: before this, there was a um a psychiatrists in France
36:46
Speaker 1: named Magnan Valentine Magnan and he I guess was part
36:51
Speaker 1: of the temperance movement as well. Um and he had
36:54
Speaker 1: conducted some studies where he got his hands on wormwood
36:57
Speaker 1: and just basically kept giving wormwood or two dogs until
37:01
Speaker 1: they'd finally start having convulsions and seizures. And then he
37:05
Speaker 1: published a study saying wormwood I will give you convulsions
37:08
Speaker 1: and seizures. Doesn't really matter how much wormwood oil you drink.
37:11
Speaker 1: Just the fact that wormwood oil was in absinthe made
37:15
Speaker 1: it questionable, made it dangerous. And so these two things
37:18
Speaker 1: Magnan's pretty much made up study and Jean Le phrase
37:23
Speaker 1: horrific crime came together to give that strange bedfellow um
37:29
Speaker 1: joint movement between the temperance people and the wine industry
37:33
Speaker 1: a huge target on the back of absinthe. And they
37:36
Speaker 1: went after absinthe full bore. And it did not take
37:39
Speaker 1: very long after Jean Le phrase crime for absence to
37:43
Speaker 1: start to get banned around the world. Yeah, I mean
37:46
Speaker 1: that had they made up a name for it, even
37:47
Speaker 1: it's called absinthe is um instead of alcoholism. And I
37:52
Speaker 1: think the murder was in He, by the way, appears
37:55
Speaker 1: died by suicide just a few days after he was
37:57
Speaker 1: put in jail. Just to put a button on that,
38:00
Speaker 1: but that was in nineteen oh five. Switzerland bandit in
38:04
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight. Uh, the US bandit in nineteen twelve.
38:07
Speaker 1: France finally gave in in nineteen fifteen, and then that
38:12
Speaker 1: is when in nineteen twenty we mentioned that Pernou started
38:16
Speaker 1: making pernol a nie which is now just known as
38:19
Speaker 1: perno as that substitute for absent in nineteen twenty. Right,
38:25
Speaker 1: So there's a band and a lot of different countries,
38:28
Speaker 1: not all countries. Apparently the UK never banned it, but
38:31
Speaker 1: I read that it was partially because they were just
38:33
Speaker 1: ignoring things that have to do with French tastes for real. Um.
38:39
Speaker 1: The UH the checks never never banned it. So you
38:43
Speaker 1: could go to Prague, which was also a center of
38:45
Speaker 1: like artsy intellectual um Bohemian vibes. In fact, I think
38:49
Speaker 1: Bohemia actually is in that area. UM, so they would
38:54
Speaker 1: definitely have an original claim to that UM. But for
38:57
Speaker 1: the most part, if you wanted to get absinthe, it
39:00
Speaker 1: was very, very difficult, and because it could drive you mad,
39:04
Speaker 1: it can make you kill your family. And you mentioned
39:06
Speaker 1: it a second ago. Absinthe is um this UH syndrome,
39:11
Speaker 1: which was the collection of maladies everything from m hallucination, sleeplessness, tremors, convulsions,
39:17
Speaker 1: madness from drinking absinthe. And in retrospect historians say this
39:23
Speaker 1: didn't exist. Like what this person was describing was excessive
39:27
Speaker 1: alcohol use, like all this stuff you can get from
39:30
Speaker 1: drinking way too much high proof alcohol, which is what
39:33
Speaker 1: they were doing. So in addition to like just this
39:36
Speaker 1: kind of moral panic about it making you kill your family,
39:40
Speaker 1: there was an accompanying made up syndrome to to give
39:44
Speaker 1: like a veneer of science to the moral panic as well,
39:47
Speaker 1: and it was so effective Chuck that absinthe was banned
39:50
Speaker 1: for over a hundred years in places. Yeah, I mean
39:54
Speaker 1: it took the liquor industry and distilleries basically beating the
39:59
Speaker 1: drum saying, you know, we want to make absent, we
40:01
Speaker 1: want to make this probably highly marketable. Super hopped up
40:05
Speaker 1: liquor again and they said all right. The EU started
40:10
Speaker 1: lifting the band in the in the late eighties and
40:12
Speaker 1: eight Uh. France, it was sort of in a gray
40:16
Speaker 1: area basically, but they finally removed the law against it
40:20
Speaker 1: in I believe the US was two thousand seven when
40:26
Speaker 1: the a T the Alcohol, Tobacco, Tax and Trade Bureau
40:30
Speaker 1: said all right, well, here's what you can do. You
40:33
Speaker 1: can distill this liquor. You can call it absinthe, but
40:37
Speaker 1: it can't it's gotta be through jone free. It's got
40:39
Speaker 1: to have less than ten parts per million. And uh,
40:43
Speaker 1: if it's coming across the border, if you're importing it,
40:46
Speaker 1: you can't import something labeled absinthe or any bottle that
40:50
Speaker 1: you know, shows like people tripping or any kind of
40:53
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic effects on the bottle, right, which just underscores the
40:57
Speaker 1: government's preoccupation with control link citizens perception of reality really
41:03
Speaker 1: strange if you step back and think about it. You know, so, Um,
41:07
Speaker 1: you can get absinthe here today. In Switzerland they have
41:12
Speaker 1: one of those. Man, I can't remember what it's called,
41:14
Speaker 1: but where you know, in Champagne there's rules about what
41:17
Speaker 1: qualifies a champagne and anything that don't follow those h
41:21
Speaker 1: something about appellation I can't remember, but um, Switzerland has
41:25
Speaker 1: something like that. And Couvey is kind of I saw
41:27
Speaker 1: it described as the spiritual home of absinthe. UM, so
41:31
Speaker 1: you can get it. Uh. It's widely available today and
41:34
Speaker 1: there's some really good craft distillers making absinthe all around
41:38
Speaker 1: the world. And if you do get your hands on
41:40
Speaker 1: it and you do say like I want to try this,
41:42
Speaker 1: there is a pretty interesting ritual involved. Um and absinthe
41:46
Speaker 1: is typically drunk, at least with water and sugar, and
41:52
Speaker 1: the way that you combine those two things with absinthe
41:54
Speaker 1: is kind of where the rituals start to kick in.
41:57
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. And firstly, you should look for abs
42:00
Speaker 1: sinth that is not made green with some artificial coloring.
42:05
Speaker 1: You don't want that. You want something that's like genuinely
42:07
Speaker 1: colored from the post distillation process of infusion. So once
42:13
Speaker 1: you've got your hands on some good absinthe, uh, there's
42:15
Speaker 1: different ways you can do it. There are cool little
42:18
Speaker 1: things that look good on your bar. I've seen some.
42:21
Speaker 1: They look sort of like these clear vases with a
42:24
Speaker 1: a little spout on one side. But you don't even
42:27
Speaker 1: need all that stuff. Really, you just all you really
42:29
Speaker 1: have to do is poor and you don't even need sugar.
42:32
Speaker 1: I think sugar helps the taste. But if you want
42:35
Speaker 1: to uh, what is it pronounced the luch, that's what
42:39
Speaker 1: I think, l o U c h E. If you
42:41
Speaker 1: want to create the luch, which is this sort of
42:44
Speaker 1: cloudy effect in your absinthe, all you really have to
42:48
Speaker 1: do is dribble ice cold water in your absinthe. So
42:52
Speaker 1: you know, you pour just a little bit. You don't
42:54
Speaker 1: need much, like an ounce, maybe two ounces if you're
42:56
Speaker 1: really going for it, and then you want to mix
42:59
Speaker 1: about four parts ice cold water, just dribble it in
43:03
Speaker 1: the little flat spoon on top. If you want to
43:05
Speaker 1: get into the ritual, it can be a little fancier,
43:07
Speaker 1: but I saw people online that literally just sort of
43:10
Speaker 1: held a glass of ice cold water high above their
43:13
Speaker 1: absent glass and just sort of dribble the water in. Yeah,
43:16
Speaker 1: those drippers that are really cool. They look like a
43:19
Speaker 1: virus almost like three or four legged virus that sits
43:23
Speaker 1: atop your glass, and then there's a tray beneath it
43:26
Speaker 1: that you put the sugar cuban and then you just
43:28
Speaker 1: pour the four or five ounces of cold water into
43:30
Speaker 1: the reservoir above the tray over the glass, and it
43:33
Speaker 1: drips it onto the sugar at a steady rate, which
43:36
Speaker 1: drips the sugar water into the glass of absinthe below. Um.
43:40
Speaker 1: And they're very, very pretty for the most part, like
43:43
Speaker 1: that bellop hoc Perry look um, and it's yeah, it's
43:48
Speaker 1: really cool. It's like I could see how people get
43:51
Speaker 1: into this kind of thing too. But that loose chuck.
43:54
Speaker 1: There's a really cool legend about it. So the luci
43:56
Speaker 1: is created when the water dissolve some parts of the
43:59
Speaker 1: alcohol but not some of the oil based plant stuff,
44:03
Speaker 1: and rather than just separating like oil and water, it
44:05
Speaker 1: separates out enough to just kind of create this vapor cloud.
44:09
Speaker 1: And there's a legend, I don't know if it's true
44:11
Speaker 1: or not that at the Pernode Distillery Um there was
44:15
Speaker 1: a lightning strike that threatened to blow up. I guess
44:18
Speaker 1: created a fire that threatened to blow blow up thousands
44:20
Speaker 1: of barrels of absinthe, So the workers were dumping it
44:24
Speaker 1: out as fast as they could into the nearby river,
44:26
Speaker 1: the Dubes River, and um, there was a local theory
44:31
Speaker 1: that the Dubes River fed another river through an underground channel,
44:35
Speaker 1: and when the other river showed a lush a couple
44:38
Speaker 1: of days later, that confirmed that theory, which is pretty
44:41
Speaker 1: neat although not necessarily a fully documented story. It's a
44:44
Speaker 1: good story though. Yeah, and the lucio is cool looking,
44:47
Speaker 1: like admittedly it's you know what you start out if
44:50
Speaker 1: you've never seen it, what you start out with with
44:51
Speaker 1: absinthe is uh, sort of a see through green, very
44:55
Speaker 1: bright green thing. And the lush, once it gets cloudy,
44:58
Speaker 1: it ends up looking kind of almost like, uh, lime juice,
45:03
Speaker 1: sort of a cloudy lime juicy look. And again it's
45:07
Speaker 1: it's mostly water. Uh. And you know there is that
45:11
Speaker 1: fire method where you light the sugar cuban fire uh
45:14
Speaker 1: and then extinguish it with cold water after it drips
45:18
Speaker 1: down and melts into the thing. But I saw that
45:20
Speaker 1: a this was not a good idea for a lot
45:22
Speaker 1: of reasons because the danger of fire. If you're in
45:25
Speaker 1: a bright room, you might not see that light blue
45:27
Speaker 1: flame and go to drink something that's still on fire. Uh,
45:31
Speaker 1: and that it's really uh it's usually or historically was
45:34
Speaker 1: a way to disguise like really bad absent. Then if
45:37
Speaker 1: you have good absinthe then it's not something you need
45:40
Speaker 1: to do at all. The best thing, in my opinion,
45:44
Speaker 1: that you can do with your absence is use it
45:45
Speaker 1: to rinse a glass that you're about to make a
45:47
Speaker 1: sazarek in. Yeah, I've heard of that. Oh man, it's good.
45:50
Speaker 1: A good sazarek is, Oh my gosh, I like a sazarek.
45:54
Speaker 1: I'd never I don't think I saw. I've seen one
45:57
Speaker 1: being made at like a bar. It has come to
46:00
Speaker 1: me at the table. So I don't know if they've
46:02
Speaker 1: done that or not. They most definitely have if they
46:04
Speaker 1: if they're making anything approaching an accurate sas reck, I
46:08
Speaker 1: guarantee they have for sure. Like you just put just
46:10
Speaker 1: a little bit in, like a quarter ounce or less
46:13
Speaker 1: of absence and then you turn the glass kind of
46:16
Speaker 1: on its side and twisted around in a circle on
46:18
Speaker 1: its axis. Yeah, I guess with yaw control. Maybe I'm
46:22
Speaker 1: not sure, and um, now your your glass is ready
46:25
Speaker 1: to have the sas rec poured in. Or if you
46:27
Speaker 1: really want to get fancy, they sell little atomizers like
46:30
Speaker 1: those perfume atomizers that you can put absinthe in and
46:34
Speaker 1: just spray it on the inside of your glass and
46:37
Speaker 1: it should stick to the sides. Yeah, that's when I
46:39
Speaker 1: get a You know, I love my martinis, but I
46:42
Speaker 1: like a martini with a little vermouth in there. Not much.
46:45
Speaker 1: I like them dry, but I do like a little
46:47
Speaker 1: actual vermouth in there. And uh, it annoys me when
46:51
Speaker 1: asked for a dry martini when they just put their
46:53
Speaker 1: vermouth in, swish it around, then dump it out. I'm
46:57
Speaker 1: always like, come on, just just a little bit, put
46:59
Speaker 1: it like a bone dry martini, or or they don't
47:03
Speaker 1: even like the thought of vermouth isn't even an option.
47:07
Speaker 1: It's just straight up gin. I'm like, Martini, it's supposed
47:10
Speaker 1: to have a little vermouth in there. Yeah, you might
47:12
Speaker 1: as well say, can I have three ounces of gin? Please?
47:15
Speaker 1: Yea cold gin. That's basically what I have with a
47:17
Speaker 1: little brine. Yeah, So you got anything else about absinthe?
47:22
Speaker 1: Nothing else? There are plenty of cocktails out there that
47:24
Speaker 1: have a little absent in there if you're into that.
47:26
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna give it a try. I'm gonna see
47:29
Speaker 1: what it's all about. Some have a lot of them.
47:31
Speaker 1: I saw the Necromancer. It's equal parts um, absinthe, lilas blanc,
47:36
Speaker 1: Saint Germain and lemon juice with a dash of gin.
47:40
Speaker 1: Saint Germaine is green, right, No, it's a kind of
47:44
Speaker 1: a goldish color. It's elder flower liqueur. Okay, it's not cream.
47:48
Speaker 1: You're thinking of art truce. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of,
47:51
Speaker 1: which is another difficult thing to find recipes for. Actually, yeah,
47:56
Speaker 1: I've got some of that stuff on my bar now
47:58
Speaker 1: and it remains largely touched into digging. I think that's
48:02
Speaker 1: another one that sorted out as a botanical medicinal remedy too. Yeah,
48:07
Speaker 1: well that's it for botanical medicinal remedies. Everybody, in particular absinthe.
48:12
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about absent, then
48:14
Speaker 1: just check it out. See what you think you should
48:17
Speaker 1: be over twenty one though, you know, just c o A.
48:19
Speaker 1: And since I said just c o A, it's time
48:21
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Yeah, and don't do the fire method.
48:26
Speaker 1: Just don't do it, agreed, No need. All right, this
48:29
Speaker 1: is a Simpsons reference that we missed. I always love these,
48:33
Speaker 1: and this is from Lauren, Andrew and Homer. Believe it
48:36
Speaker 1: or not, Hey, guys, just listen to the wonderful episode
48:39
Speaker 1: on postmodernism. So forgive me. This has already been pointed
48:42
Speaker 1: out to you, but I couldn't believe that no one,
48:44
Speaker 1: especially Josh, made any reference to the classic Simpsons episode
48:48
Speaker 1: Homer the Mo in which Moe transforms the tavern into
48:52
Speaker 1: a swanky club called m Right. Do you remember that one? Yeah,
48:59
Speaker 1: there's a great scene where Homer and the other longtime
49:01
Speaker 1: patrons are questioning Mo about some eyeball art on the wall,
49:06
Speaker 1: and after some attempt to get the guys to understand
49:08
Speaker 1: it is poem, he finally describes it as being we
49:12
Speaker 1: had for the sake of weird and they all get it. Uh.
49:16
Speaker 1: This definition has been what I think of when I
49:19
Speaker 1: think of postmodern art for my entire adult life. So
49:22
Speaker 1: I thought i'd share again from Lauren, Andrew and Homer.
49:26
Speaker 1: Prince's actual name pretty great. Thank you for that. Thank
49:30
Speaker 1: you for waking us over the coals from missing that one.
49:33
Speaker 1: But is pretty obvious and we should have thought about it,
49:36
Speaker 1: I didn't kind of king. Yeah, I guess so still
49:40
Speaker 1: hurts so bad. But if you want to make us
49:44
Speaker 1: hurt so bad, you can get in touch with us
49:46
Speaker 1: like Lauren Homer and uh and Andrew and if you
49:50
Speaker 1: want to make it hurt so good to get in
49:51
Speaker 1: touch with John Mellencamp. It's my last joke that wasn't
49:57
Speaker 1: a joke. You can send us an email to stuff
50:03
Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
50:08
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