Alcohol and Drugs History Society

English whiskies to challenge Scotland's and Ireland's

For the first time in a century England is producing its own malt whiskey. The distillery is located at the edge of the Norfolk Fens. For more, see here.

Jared Gurfein and the battle to sell absinthe in the USA

The Washington Post tells the story how entrepreneur Jared Gurfein waged a legal battle to sell absinthe in the USA. For more, see here.

Revival of absinthe

Absinthe is staging a revival, including drink made in the United States. For more, see here.

Absinthe and bohemian modernism

Edward Rothstein offers an illustrated essay, "Absinthe Returns in a Glass Half Full of Mystique and Misery," New York Times, 12 November 2007. Absinthe is now legal again in the USA and Western Europe. For more, see here. Rothstein suggests for further reading:

Jad Adams, Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle
Barnaby Conrad III, Absinthe: History in a Bottle
Phil Baker, Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History
and two websites, feeverte.net and oxygenee.com

"Green Fairy" returns

After almost a century of illegality, absinthe--the so-called green fairy--has returned to barrooms. The USA (which banned the wormwood-based drink in 1912) has approved the importation of two brands. Switzerland, the land where absinthe originated, legalized its sale in 2005. For more, see here.

Absinthe's strange story

An ad for online sale of absinthe tells its strange story. For instance, it is legal to buy it in the USA but not at bars and package stores! For more, see here.

Temperance comedy troupe + absinthe video = ?

Find the website of a temperance comedy troupe here.  Find a video report on absinthe here.  (Thanks to Dave Trippel for the links). 

Absinthe for Sale

This November 29, 2005 article from the New Zealand Herald describes Ted Breaux's "obsession" with making "authentic" fin-de-siecle absinthe.

The Search for Real Absinthe

For the August/September 2005 edition of Reason, Jacob Sullum writes:

As the British journalist Jad Adams shows in his fascinating, richly detailed book Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle (University of Wisconsin Press), the lore surrounding absinthe is far more important than its taste, which is similar to those of other anise-flavored drinks, or its special psychoactive effects, which remain a matter of dispute. In the emerald green liquid devotees see visions of poets and painters in Parisian cafés who stirred together genius and madness along with absinthe and water. And while La Fée Verte is right that some contemporary brands are closer than others to the original Swiss recipe, there has always been wide variation in formulas and production techniques—one reason the hazards and benefits of 19th-century absinthe are hard to pin down.

Drinkers of today’s absinthe who expect a unique mind-altering experience usually are disappointed, explains Sullum. Find the full story here.

The glitter and the gutter

The Washington Times reviews (26 March 2005) The National Gallery of Art's "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" exhibit in Washington, which comprises more than 240 works by Toulouse-Lautrec and some of his contemporaries. 

Initially, the exhibit seems to saturate visitors with a happy-looking cast of characters. But while there is a surface happiness to the life depicted here, the underlying ambience is ominous. Evil-looking men leer at victimized women. Sex is purchased with alcohol and money, and the slide downward leads to dissolution and death. (Alcohol and syphilis both contributed to Toulouse-Lautrec's own death at age 36.) The powerful, intertwined themes of sex and death are threaded throughout the exhibit.

Toulouse-Lautrec used startling geometries such as circles, diagonals, verticals and horizontals to create unsettling effects, as in "At the Moulin Rouge," in which a table set at a sharp diagonal and the tilted, absinthe-green face of a performer contribute to a pervading sense of grotesque dislocation.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Albi in southern France. Because of family inbreeding, Lautrec's abnormally weak bones stunted his growth. Thanks to imaginative sympathy and abundant talent, the artist managed to transform an ugly world of pimps and prostitutes into something beautiful and to invest even scenes of abject despair and destitution with dignity.

Find the rest of the exhibit review here.

Absinthe Minded in Switzerland

Sign On San Diego reports (23 March 2005) that absinthe, the drink banned almost a century ago as "madness in a bottle," is making a comeback. The Swiss, who invented absinthe, legalized it this month, hoping to boost a sluggish regional economy and drag a generation of bootleg distillers into the 21st century. Find the full story here.

Absinthe (book)

Lanier, Doris. Absinthe, the Cocaine of the Nineteenth Century; A History of the Hallucinogenic Drug and its Effect on Artists and Writers in Europe and the United States. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1995.

Sometimes called the Green Peril or the Green Fairy: A history of Pernod

A history of pernod can be found here.

History of Absinthe (Book Review)

Jad Adams, Hideous Absinthe: a History of the Devil in a Bottle (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2004), reviewed by Jane Desmarais, Goldsmiths College, University of London, for the Institute of Historical Research. The review includes a link to the author's response.

Absinthe

EAbsinthe.com, a website devoted to the cultural history of absinthe and its growing visibility in contemporary culture, can be found here.

Virtual Absinthe Museum

The Virtual Absinthe Museum: The World of Absinthe and Absinthe Antiques can be found here.  The site includes a history of the drink, authentic recipes, and other absinthe memorabilia.  It also includes absinthe-related documents, such as catalogues, articles, poems, short stories, histories, and scientific papers, dating largely from the 1880s-1890s, that can be downloaded as PDFs.

Swiss Get a Taste for Absinthe Again

Roger Boyes reports for the Times Online (3 February 2005) that absinthe, the potent green drink favoured by poets and painters, is legal again in Switzerland, where it was concocted as an all-purpose medicine. The Government yesterday overturned a 97-year ban, imposed when an absinthe-crazed mountain farmer shot his family. Entrepreneurs are jostling already to open the first legal absinthe bar. The full article can be found here.

Absinthe and LSD

An online paper by Lana Pennington titled "An Historical, Social, and Cultural Look at the Demonization of Two Drugs: Absinthe and LSD."  The article is subtitled: "Why the prescription of some drugs goes beyond the health and welfare of human kind."

France and Absinthe

Lewis, Rael Anton. “Intoxication and Representation: A Visual Culture of Absinthe, 1859-1915.” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2002.