Absinthe Day

What the day is

Absinthe Day is observed on March 5. Absinthe is a high-strength spirit flavored with wormwood, anise and fennel, and its reputation is largely a historical accident.

Origin and background

It was banned across much of Europe and in the United States in the early twentieth century, blamed for hallucinations, madness and violence, with the effects grouped under the label absinthism and attributed to thujone, a compound in wormwood. Chemical analysis of sealed pre-ban bottles has since found thujone present only in small quantities, far below what would produce any such effect. The hallucination story does not survive testing.

What did harm people is less exotic. Absinthe is commonly bottled between about 55 and 75 percent alcohol, several times the strength of wine, and cheap brands were sometimes adulterated with toxic additives, including copper salts used to fake the green color. Heavy drinking of very strong spirits explains the medical picture without any need for a mystery ingredient.

The ban had commercial help. The French wine industry had been devastated by phylloxera, absinthe had taken its market, and the campaign against it aligned neatly with wine producers' interests and with the temperance movement. A widely publicized 1905 murder in Switzerland, committed by a man who had drunk a great deal of wine and brandy alongside two glasses of absinthe, was reported as an absinthe crime and pushed several countries to prohibition.

Bans were lifted across Europe and in the United States from the 1990s once the analysis was clear.

The clouding when water is added is real chemistry. Anethole, from the anise, dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so diluting the spirit drops it out of solution as microscopic droplets that scatter light.

How to take part

• Add iced water slowly and watch the louche form. That is the anethole coming out of solution.
• Dilute it properly. It is not a shot, and was never drunk as one.
• Correct the hallucination myth when you hear it.
• Try it once without sugar to taste what is actually there.
• Drink responsibly, and respect the strength.