The mystique surrounding the famous drink has been stripped away, writes Derek Scally.
FOR OVER A CENTURY, absinthe has had a unique selling point to die for. While Guinness was once sold as being "good for you", absinthe was marketed as being bad for you. An evil spirit, even.
The 140-proof liquid is distilled from herbs like fennel and anise but it is the extract from the wormwood plant, also known as artemisia absinthium, that gave the drink its name and its notoriety.
First distilled in Switzerland in 1792, absinthe became the smart set's drink of choice in Belle ÉpoqueParis.
Oscar Wilde was a fan, once woozily declaring: "What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?" In the last quarter of the 19th century, the drink dubbed the "Green Fairy" went mainstream, with annual consumption in France alone exploding from 500,000 to 36 million litres.
The drink was celebrated less for its taste than its supposed hallucinogenic, mind-expanding properties: Vincent Van Gogh sliced off part of his ear, reportedly in an absinthe haze.
Moral crusaders were not amused and decided to create a new plague around absinthe far worse than alcoholism: "absinthism", they said, caused hallucinations, facial contractions, numbness, epilepsy, "criminal dementia" and even death.
Their campaign was aided by several high-profile cases, like in 1905 when a Swiss farmer drank two glasses and shot dead his wife and two children.
The lobby brushed over the fact that, before reaching for his gun, the farmer had also downed a crème de menthe, a cognac, a brandy coffee and three bottles of wine.
The anti-absinthe campaign successfully transformed the "Green Fairy" into the "Green Menace" and the drink was banned in most European countries by the end of the first World War. But 90 years on, a team of German scientists have published a study which may strip absinthe of its chic mystique.
Its effect has nothing to do with the wormwood extract, the scientists say, and everything to do with its 70 per cent alcohol content. The scientists studied the make-up of samples from 13 different century-old bottles of absinthe, focusing on thujone, the oily wormwood extract viewed as absinthe's dangerous "active ingredient".
They were surprised to find that all of the absinthe samples contained levels of thujone far too low to cause any noticeable effect on a human, and even well within the modern EU limits of 35 mg/l.
Absinthe lovers don't get high, the Germans claim, they get loaded.
"Evidence is completely lacking to distinguish this (absinthe) syndrome from general alcoholism," writes lead researcher Dr Dirk Lachenmeier in the paper, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
"Today it seems a substantial minority of consumers want these myths to be true, even if there is no empirical evidence that they are.These consumers seem to feel that absinthe, in view of its fabled and exotic reputation, ought to be dangerous, even in the absence of evidence that it is."
In Berlin's "Absinth Depot", owner Hermann Plöckl is not impressed by the scientist's attempt to poo-poo his product. "Every 10 years or so Dr Lachenmeier tries to ruin absinthe for the rest of us," he says, standing before a floor-to-ceiling shelf filled with bottles of every shape and colour.
"No scientist will ever be able to explain absinthe's unique kick," he says. "Other alcoholic drinks have a depressive effect on the brain, but absinthe gives a lift. I think the secret lies in absinthe's mix of essential oils. But no one has ever gone looking there and I hope they never do."
