Tuesday, April 29, 2008

What's the Deal with Absinthe?

Check out this article at LiveScience.com which has some interesting insights into what does - and doesn't - make the Green Fairy dance...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Further to the article link, the thujone content has been limited to a maximum of 35ppm in the EU and 10PPM in the U.S.

Another backstory note of interest...the REAL driver of the ban on Absinthe in Europe in the early 1900's was the French wine and Cognac industry. After the phyloxera devastation in the 1870's, wine prices rose, and people shifted to Absinthe as a more affordable source of acohol. The wine and cognac folks had a vested interest in killing absinthe so they could recapture their market....it was one of the early examples of "spinning" a news story for commercial benefit.