Imagine exploring musky French wine caves in search of a legendary green fairy, all in the name of science. Such was the task of Dirk Lachenmeier, PhD, a food chemist with the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory in Karlsruhe, Germany. He and his colleagues recently evaluated vintage stashes of absinthe, a once widely consumed aperitif associated with bohemian artists and authors in late 19th century France.
Early imbibers called absinthe “the Green Fairy.” During its heyday, the colorful cordial was considered a powerful intoxicant that purportedly caused hallucinations, drove men mad, instigated epileptic seizures, motivated murders, and even made Vincent Van Gogh whack off his ear. Absinthe had such a reputation that its manufacture was banned in France in 1915, despite the absence of any scientific evidence that it was dangerous.
The composition of absinthe manufactured during the so-called pre-ban era, from about 1805 until 1915, has been a matter of debate for decades. Thujone, a proven epileptiform convulsant considered absinthe’s “active” ingredient, spearheaded the controversy.
Thujone is a natural essence derived from common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and Roman wormwood (Artemisia pontica). Additional ingredients in absinthe include green anise, hyssop, lemon balm, and Florence fennel. The goal of Dr. Lachenmeier and his collaborators was to determine the composition, and in particular the thujone content, of pre-ban absinthe.
The Investigation
Manufacture was legalized in the European Union in 1988, but concerns remained about absinthe’s potential for deleterious effects and any public health issues they might cause. “Since then, it has been unresolved if modern absinthes made from published 19th century recipes are chemically similar to those actually made by the large commercial manufacturers of the pre-ban era,” Dr. Lachenmeier says. “A thorough review of the extensive peer-reviewed literature shows only one previous test of one pre-ban absinthe sample.” The sample was made in about 1900, the test conducted in 2002.
Remarkably, in an extensive international effort, his group procured 13 samples of vintage pre-ban absinthes from bottles found in France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. The team used only bottles meeting strict authenticity standards, including intact wax seals, original corks, and labels.
Dr. Lachenmeier’s team found that the thujone concentration of pre-ban absinthe had been grossly overestimated. (Lachenmeier DW, Nathan-Maister D, Breaux TA, et al. Chemical composition of vintage preban absinthe with special reference to thujone, fenchone, pinocamphone, methanol, copper, and antimony concentrations. J Agric Food Chem. 2008;56(9):3073-3081.) “Papers published in the 1980s and 1990s postulated thujone concentrations as high as 260 milligrams per liter on the basis of purely theoretical calculations, not actual analysis,” Dr. Lachenmeier says. “It’s already well known that modern absinthes made according to historical recipes don’t have anything like these levels of thujone. This new study shows that the original absinthes of the Belle Époque also had only very moderate levels of thujone.”
The total thujone content of the pre-ban samples was found to range between 0.5 and 48.3 mg/L. Contrary to ill-informed speculation, the average thujone content of 25.4 ± 20.3 mg/L fell within the modern European Union limit of 35 mg/L. All other constituents were also toxicologically inconspicuous.
“Historical demonization of absinthe as a thujone-rich drink is unfounded,” Dr. Lachenmeier says. “Recent evaluation of the so-called syndrome ‘absinthism’ concludes that the condition probably was alcoholism.”
U.S. Approval
As of 2007, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) approves the use of the term “absinthe” on the label of a distilled spirits product and in related advertisements only if the product is thujone-free pursuant to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation 21 CFR 172.510. Based on the FDA’s prescribed method of testing for the presence of thujone, TTB considers a product to be thujone-free if it contains less than 10 parts per million of thujone.
A historical milestone occurred on March 5, 2007, when the TTB approved the first genuine absinthe (a product called Lucid, marketed by Viridian Spirits, Inc.) for U.S. distribution since 1912. For more information on absinthe, visit the Virtual Absinthe Museum at www.oxygenee.com/absinthe.
