Absinthe - Truth and Lies
Essentially what one is seeing here is a concerted and surprisingly sophisticated attempt to construct an entire alternative reality, in which the only legitimate inheritors of absinthe’s proud Franco-Swiss traditions are a handful of mainly Eastern European faux “absinths”, often absurdly bitter and luridly coloured, and all, without exception, containing artificially boosted thujone content (achieved not from wormwood plants, but by the wholesale addition of industrial thuja or cedarwood leaf oil). It’s important to stress that it’s not the location of the distillery nor the nationality of the producer that’s relevant here, but rather the quality of the product and the veracity of the marketing claims. Their are several Eastern European producers of integrity, whose products are steadily improving, and whose marketing is honest. I seldom see them mentioned on these blogs.
It’s been suggested I create either at the Virtual Absinthe Museum or at La Fee Verte a “What’s wrong with Czech absinthe” page similar to the excellent effort at the Wormwood Society. Aside from the fact that I don’t want to needlessly duplicate Hiram’s work at the WS, there’s a larger point: I think the time for such editorials, no matter how sincere, well-meant and accurate, is past. Statements, declarations of principle, formally agreed guidelines, approved answers, or anything else similar on the internet are all just chaff in the wind. The Absinthe Rend Fou people sound - to the unitiated - at least as credible as anything written here, at the Virtual Museum, at Fee Verte or at the Wormwood Society. They write with the same air of conviction and credibility, and they declare they are revealing the real truth which others for commercial reasons are trying to obscure - the exact inverse of the reality, but how is someone who is not already highly experienced to know this?
The only way to bring clarity and light to the situation is either by reference to original source documents and artifacts (the whole point of the Virtual Absinthe Museum), or by peer-reviewed scientific research. A good example of the utility of the former can be found here, where, despite the inevitable bluster, a provable reference to an original source document derailed the old “Oscar Wilde and the Wacky Tulips” story resurrected by the Absinthe Rend Fou people.
As for the latter: I’m part of a team that’s conducting a program of just such research. We’ve already published an initial paper dealing with the theoretical underpinnings of thujone calculations. Our next paper, to be published in a peer-reviewed journal in the first half of next year, will I hope put most of the questions regarding vintage absinthes beyond further debate. A further paper, likely to be published 6 months after that, will put many of the unsubstantiated claims made about modern absinthe under scientific scrutiny. That’s two of the 4 primary areas of contention covered. The third - the acute effects of thujone - has been the subject of considerable existing research, already published, which has shown that thujone at levels below 100mg/l has no observable effect at all in test subjects. The fourth and final area - the chronic effects of thujone (ie absinthism) is the hardest one to test, because no suitable population of absinthe-drinking end-stage alcoholics currently exists (despite, it must be said, a really tremendous effort from my friend Crosby and a small band of volunteers over at the Louchedlounge). However, there are promising new therapies for Crohn’s Disease based on the long term administration of wormwood oil, which has a steroid-sparing effect. Initial studies show no significant long-term side effects. It’s possible that further research in this field will serve as at least a partial proxy for research on absinthism.
