Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the Vault. And apparently today the
Speaker 1: Vault is operating a pop up bar. That's right with
Speaker 1: the delicious cocktails for all. This was our This was
Speaker 1: our cocktail episode where we talked about the nature of cocktails,
Speaker 1: some of the chemistry of cocktails, and and some of
Speaker 1: the very interesting cocktail ingredients and where they come from.
Speaker 1: I remember in this one we got into some of
Speaker 1: the weird history of absinthe. Yes we did, Robert, have
Speaker 1: you have you had any absinthe cocktails since we did
Speaker 1: this episode. I had some absence just last night, but
Speaker 1: not really. Well. What I've taken to doing is I
Speaker 1: really enjoy making tiky drinks and uh, in some cases
Speaker 1: teaky drinks do actually call for absinthe, but other times
Speaker 1: I find that a missing of absence. I have some
Speaker 1: absence that I've put into a little spray bottle for
Speaker 1: making a sasserac. Yeah, but it works with an number
Speaker 1: of different cock I enjoy it with my Taie, for instance,
Speaker 1: But just to miss the glass of little absence before
Speaker 1: before you pour it in it, it's marvelous. I had
Speaker 1: one of when I was in New Orleans this year.
Speaker 1: One of I had one of the worst cocktails I've
Speaker 1: ever had in my entire life. It was from one
Speaker 1: of those bars in the French Quarter where you can
Speaker 1: walk up and get it to to take away. Well,
Speaker 1: now there's some very good bars that you can you
Speaker 1: can walk up and take away. But saying there was
Speaker 1: no inside, this was no, there wasn't inside. That's just
Speaker 1: it looked like a cool bar. It had like old
Speaker 1: wood fixtures and everything. Um. But yeah, I went up
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, time to get an absinthe
Speaker 1: frap a right, I got a prey to the green Ferry.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I I tried to get It was basically
Speaker 1: just equal parts cheap absinthe and simple syrup, and it
Speaker 1: was undrinkably disgusting. I had to throw it in the trash.
Speaker 1: Well that's a shame, but but yeah, I do want
Speaker 1: to drive home that that New Orleans is a place
Speaker 1: where you can walk into some very nice bars and
Speaker 1: get a very nice cocktail to walk the streets with,
Speaker 1: including beach Bumberri's latitude twenty nine, which is one of
Speaker 1: my absolute favorite Tiki bars. Man with you it is
Speaker 1: Tiki's all the Way Down. Well, I still enjoy a
Speaker 1: nice Manhattan as well. Yeah. Well, hey, well we're we're
Speaker 1: delaying too long. Let's get into this episode, which originally
Speaker 1: published January twelve, two thousand seventeen. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe mccormickin today in the I
Speaker 1: guess this will be the final installment of our totally
Speaker 1: unplanned run of food Stuffs and drink Stuffs science podcasts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of had a post New Year's run of
Speaker 1: foodie topics think with some exorcism there in the middle.
Speaker 1: What did you you did green tea with Christian Yes,
Speaker 1: we did. There there's a green tea and butter and
Speaker 1: butter and now we're going to get into a little
Speaker 1: mixology and and and we'll even come back to exorcism
Speaker 1: at one point, believe it or not, No way, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes up. It's important. When you're talking about cocktails,
Speaker 1: you're inevitably going to talk about exercisse. Wait, is that
Speaker 1: what they always meant by holy water. Um well wait
Speaker 1: and initi'll see. But one of the important things we
Speaker 1: want to get out at the top of this episode
Speaker 1: is that, yes, in this episode we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about mixology. We're gonna talk about the history and
Speaker 1: science and botany of mixed drinks that involve various alcoholic substances. Right,
Speaker 1: But we do want to make clear that we know
Speaker 1: we've got some younger listeners out there, and so you
Speaker 1: shouldn't take this podcast is an encouragement to go out
Speaker 1: and try all the drinks we're gonna be talking about, right,
Speaker 1: And we certainly have non drinkers out there as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't worry. This is not going to be a scandalous,
Speaker 1: um out of control exploration of cocktails by any means.
Speaker 1: And on our personal note, I want to add that
Speaker 1: my wife and myself we are currently doing a dry January,
Speaker 1: so we are only doing mock tails at the moment,
Speaker 1: which is kind of ironic having just finished research on
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, well you wanted to do it, I
Speaker 1: think because you read a couple of books this month, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: two books in particular that I picked up over the holidays.
Speaker 1: One is Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist The Plants that
Speaker 1: create the World's Great Drinks. And this is a really
Speaker 1: wonderful book, very flippable, kind of the kind of book
Speaker 1: you can bring to a bar or a nice dinner
Speaker 1: and look up the things you're ordering. It takes a
Speaker 1: botanist approach to all of the ingredients, basically coming down
Speaker 1: to the fact that just about anything, pretty much anything
Speaker 1: in a drink except for maybe bacon. If you if
Speaker 1: you go that route, it's going to have some sort
Speaker 1: of botanical origin. Where because things come from bacon, has
Speaker 1: a botanical origin. Well, in a sense, yes, if you
Speaker 1: follow it back far enough, all of our drinks really
Speaker 1: have a solar origin. Just true. True, you can say
Speaker 1: that it's all a gift of the sun. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the Sami Stewart book. I didn't have a chance
Speaker 1: that you you lent it to me yesterday, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance to read the whole thing yet,
Speaker 1: but I just flipped through it, and as you say,
Speaker 1: it is very flippable. You can just drop to any
Speaker 1: page and there's something interesting on it. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a mix between a science book and a recipe book,
Speaker 1: and I like that, uh, and the other book that
Speaker 1: you lent me, which I got through some of, and
Speaker 1: I really really enjoyed the writing style of the second guys.
Speaker 1: This book by David Wondrich, Yes he say his name, Yeah,
Speaker 1: believe so imbibe. He has a couple of books out
Speaker 1: related to mix streams. One is entirely about punches and
Speaker 1: this one is really focused more in on on the
Speaker 1: cocktail and it it has recipes in it as well,
Speaker 1: but it is more about the history and culture, especially
Speaker 1: the origins, the very American origins of the cocktail. And
Speaker 1: along those lines, I believe you had a quote that
Speaker 1: you wanted to read from David Wondrich's book, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this it's the tone fabulously for a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're gonna talk about here, and just for
Speaker 1: discussion of basically what a cocktail is. He writes, Anyone
Speaker 1: who has spent any time pondering the origins of the cocktail,
Speaker 1: be it for the months or years it takes to
Speaker 1: write a book, or seconds it takes to internalize a
Speaker 1: dry martini, will agree that it's a quintessentially American contraption.
Speaker 1: How could it be anything? But it's quick, direct, and vigorous.
Speaker 1: It's flashy and a little bit vulgar and induces an
Speaker 1: unreflective overconfidence. It's democratic, forcing the finest liquors to rub
Speaker 1: elbows with ingredients of far more humble stamp. It's profligate
Speaker 1: with natural resources. Think of the electricity generated to make
Speaker 1: ice that gets used for ten seconds and discarded in short,
Speaker 1: it rocks. But the cocktail is American. It's American in
Speaker 1: the same way as the hot dog, that is, the frankfurter,
Speaker 1: the hamburger, the hamburger steak, and the ice cream cone
Speaker 1: with its rolled good fret. As a nation, we have
Speaker 1: a knack for taking underperforming elements of other people's cultures,
Speaker 1: streamlining them, super charging them, and then letting them rip
Speaker 1: from nobody to superstar with a trail of sparks and
Speaker 1: a hell of a noise along the way. That's how
Speaker 1: the cocktail did it, anyway. So yeah, that's uh. That's
Speaker 1: from page two o nine in his book. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: It's full of just weird historical details, colorful characters, and
Speaker 1: more than a few classic cocktail recipes. So we'll keep
Speaker 1: referring back to it, but I highly recommend picking it
Speaker 1: up if you're a cocktail fan or an American history fan.
Speaker 1: It's a great rate. Yeah, you mentioned historical characters. One
Speaker 1: of the great colorful characters in this book is in
Speaker 1: the section I was reading. I think he's a central
Speaker 1: figure in the book is Jerry Thomas, legendary bartender who
Speaker 1: operated bars all over the place in San Francisco during
Speaker 1: the gold Rush boom and in New York. Who was
Speaker 1: this crazy, flamboyant character, a man of what is it
Speaker 1: called the sports sporting fraternity, yes, which I think generally
Speaker 1: means no good lay abouts of the of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and who love to celebrate with these extravagant drinks that
Speaker 1: he was very good at making. And he loved lavish clothes,
Speaker 1: and he loved diamonds, and he loved big pieces of art.
Speaker 1: And there's a great story where somebody interviews him for
Speaker 1: a newspaper at some point and he's got a couple
Speaker 1: of pet rats scampering along on his shoulders or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he seems to have had a wonderful sense of showmanship,
Speaker 1: which is is ultimately such a huge part of of
Speaker 1: cocktails and cocktail cultures, Like there's the there's this the
Speaker 1: pure mixology of what's going on, and then there's the
Speaker 1: flash of creating something, creating an experience and selling it
Speaker 1: to the customer and maybe making a few things up
Speaker 1: if he flourishes up to to to grease the sale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the mixed up cocktail, the product of any real endeavor
Speaker 1: of mixology is an event. It's not just something to
Speaker 1: be consumed. It's something to be admired in many cases,
Speaker 1: to watch the bartender making for you. Uh, it's a
Speaker 1: process and and it's kind of a process in the
Speaker 1: same way that I don't know, going to like one
Speaker 1: of those Teppanyaki steakhouses is right, Yeah, we're setting it
Speaker 1: a sushi bar for instance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get
Speaker 1: to see the magic of the food come together. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a sense, it's like you know, like making cocktails
Speaker 1: at your home or cooking at your home. There's this
Speaker 1: there's this experience, this this process. You're following instructions, maybe
Speaker 1: you're improvising a little bit, You're going through an experience
Speaker 1: to get this thing. You're richer for the experience, and
Speaker 1: that plays a part in your enjoyment of it. Well,
Speaker 1: before we look at the science of some cocktails and
Speaker 1: the and the alcohols, and then maybe we should look
Speaker 1: a little bit at the history of the cocktail though,
Speaker 1: what's what's the social relevance of this tradition of mixing
Speaker 1: different alcoholic beverages together to produce a newer, better, higher
Speaker 1: emergent form. Well, one of the core points that one
Speaker 1: which makes is that the the origins of the cocktail
Speaker 1: and cocktail culture a largely American. Now, certainly it's a
Speaker 1: culture that we lost and we had to rediscover and
Speaker 1: reclaim the realm of mixology from the tyranny of apple
Speaker 1: teen ease and an unimaginable, unimaginable tryst with vodka. This
Speaker 1: is a thing in the book I noticed. I I
Speaker 1: didn't get to the part where he explains this, but
Speaker 1: he makes some snide comments about vodka. Well, I think
Speaker 1: his main deal, wonder which is that, you know, he's
Speaker 1: very interested in the origins of cocktail culture in this
Speaker 1: golden age of cocktail culture, and vodka really didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: make it splash until until after that point. Now, and
Speaker 1: that's not to say there aren't some wonderful vodka cocktails
Speaker 1: out there, but is we were discussing before the podcast,
Speaker 1: you said that you personally feel vodka's a little bit workhorse, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. I mean I don't know of any of
Speaker 1: my favorite cocktails that have vodka in them. It just
Speaker 1: seems like it's something that you mix with something vaguely
Speaker 1: sugary and it makes a drink that has alcohol in it.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I don't know. You see James Bond
Speaker 1: ordering vodka martinis, but I just look at that and
Speaker 1: be like, why not just get a real martini? What's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Um? Well, another thing that came up
Speaker 1: when we were preparing for the episode, going along with
Speaker 1: your your point about the food culture and the preparation
Speaker 1: culture and how that enriches the social experience of enjoying
Speaker 1: the cocktail. I also personally feel experimenting with with mocktails
Speaker 1: this month, as I am that a concoction without alcohol
Speaker 1: in it can go down a bit fast, you can
Speaker 1: be a little bit thirstier for it, whereas my in
Speaker 1: my own experience, if it has a strong spirit in there,
Speaker 1: it forces you to take smaller drinks and it sort
Speaker 1: of draws out the experience of enjoying the beverage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the relaxation brought on by a cocktail might not
Speaker 1: just be from the drug content, the alcohol content acting
Speaker 1: upon your brain, but it's also from the process of drinking,
Speaker 1: because you're you're forced to slow down and relax and
Speaker 1: take your time for a moment. Yeah. Now, cocktail culture
Speaker 1: is also something that some might argue that the Japanese
Speaker 1: have elevated and perfected, as they've done with other Western properties,
Speaker 1: but they not all still. But it was all still
Speaker 1: one of America's first true art forms, at least culinarily
Speaker 1: speak right now. To be sure, the American cocktail float
Speaker 1: followed closely on the heels of a tradition of proper punches,
Speaker 1: which one which is quick to remind us, So we're
Speaker 1: more complex back in the day. Yeah, you can think
Speaker 1: of the punches being like the big bowl of stuff
Speaker 1: that somebody's drinking at a Christmas party in a Christmas
Speaker 1: carol that that party that Scrooge won't go to their
Speaker 1: having them punch. Sure, yeah, and it wasn't just sprite
Speaker 1: and fruit juice and some booze it was. It was
Speaker 1: more complex. I mean, the one which wrote an entire
Speaker 1: book about it. Uh. He makes a distinction between between
Speaker 1: today's punches and the greater punches. He calls them calls
Speaker 1: them that were made quote long and strong. And so
Speaker 1: this style of mixology rain from the sixteen seventies to
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties and then Temperance in the Temperance move
Speaker 1: movement in Europe put the brakes on punch a bit,
Speaker 1: as did the busy approach to life in the Americas.
Speaker 1: So instead of going through the whole rigmarole of having
Speaker 1: this giant punch bowl, with this this carefully balanced concoction
Speaker 1: inside of it, punched by the glass became a thing,
Speaker 1: and this was sort of a precursor to the cocktail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sort of makes sense. I mean punch punches for parties.
Speaker 1: As I was saying, it's there to serve a lot
Speaker 1: of people in a limited time frame. Yeah, why would
Speaker 1: you make make yourself a punch after work? Yeah? Or
Speaker 1: you go into a bar, it's just you, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you you don't have that much of a social
Speaker 1: situation going on. You want to a glass of punch?
Speaker 1: Why not? Why can it not be provided by the glass?
Speaker 1: After this, you have what Wonderage calls the children of punch.
Speaker 1: So you have collins Is, Daisies, pizzies, sours, cobblers, coolers,
Speaker 1: the swizzle, uh, the egg drinks, the various egg drinks
Speaker 1: where you have especially the white of the egg that's
Speaker 1: been frothed up. And before the cocktail you had toddies
Speaker 1: ings julips. So even though just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what a proper cocktail is that can be kind of
Speaker 1: hard to nail it down, you'll find various historical tidbits
Speaker 1: and descriptions that entail cocktail like concoctions. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: Dickensian Londoners that drink what we're known as pearls, this
Speaker 1: was hot ale hold on this pearl with a U,
Speaker 1: not yes an oysters, not like an oyster pearl like
Speaker 1: p U r l s, And this would have been
Speaker 1: hot ale, gin, sugar, eggs and nutmeg. So very close.
Speaker 1: Samuel Peeps recorded the drinking of a great many things,
Speaker 1: including pearls as well as gin and vermouth, so as
Speaker 1: as one Bridge points out, he was really close to
Speaker 1: having invented Martinish. I do remember in the Diaries of
Speaker 1: Samuel Peeps an episode in which he drinks far too
Speaker 1: much alcohol and has to run outside and urinate in
Speaker 1: an alley way somewhere, but I don't remember what he's drinking.
Speaker 1: In this episode. I think it is beer though, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I might. I believe he was not opposed to just
Speaker 1: straight up beer as well. I certainly think of beer
Speaker 1: as the quintessential uh English drink. I should also point
Speaker 1: out there are various stories about why we even call
Speaker 1: it a cocktail. One story I ran across is that
Speaker 1: it had to do it was a horse analogy. So,
Speaker 1: if you have an old, older horse and you're gonna
Speaker 1: sell it off, you want to make it appear young
Speaker 1: and spirited, so you might give it something to perk
Speaker 1: it up, to cock its tail. No, yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean I I don't know. I'm not I'm not up
Speaker 1: in the details of how you would cock the tail.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is something intrusive. Well, no, I
Speaker 1: I've heard stories of this. Well, the idea stories are
Speaker 1: like rubbing ginger on its butt. Okay, stuff, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess the idea here, then, is that the cocktail would
Speaker 1: be the human equivalent of a little ginger on the butt,
Speaker 1: you know, to to perk you up, to live in
Speaker 1: your spirits and uh and make you a little more
Speaker 1: presentable for a short period of time. Stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind does not advocate putting ginger on or some spuds. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. So by the nineteenth century standards, a
Speaker 1: true cocktail had specific ingredients spirits or wine, and then
Speaker 1: you'd sweeten it with sugar diluted with water if you
Speaker 1: needed to. And and it may be throwing a dash
Speaker 1: of bitters bitters or of course a medicinal infusion of
Speaker 1: bitter roots or spices, what have you. And if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to make a cocktail without bitters and wondered
Speaker 1: what's missing, that's what's missing. Yeah, Bitters I think are essential. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you sort of triangulate the flavor, right, because you've
Speaker 1: gotta have your your bitter, you have your sweet um.
Speaker 1: You want you want to be able to to define
Speaker 1: that balance. You don't want it to be just this
Speaker 1: ultra sweet or this ultra bitter concoction. So you can
Speaker 1: get really high and mighty about the definition of the cocktail.
Speaker 1: You can stick to that, to a narrow definition. But
Speaker 1: all you really need is the mixture of an alcohol
Speaker 1: with some other ingredient, right, I mean a jack and
Speaker 1: coke is a cocktail? Am I being high and mighty here?
Speaker 1: I I promise I'm not high and mighty. That just
Speaker 1: sounds like it really is it? By the my modern
Speaker 1: deluded standards, I think you can say, yes, it's on
Speaker 1: the cocktail menu. Um, but it's of course far from
Speaker 1: a perfectly balanced Manhattan and old fashioned, etcetera. A punch
Speaker 1: wasn't a cocktail. But we can certainly go back much
Speaker 1: further in time and find examples of its basic principles.
Speaker 1: On that note, let's take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will look at some in some
Speaker 1: cases very ancient concoctions that you can argue where cocktails,
Speaker 1: though you might not want to try and order them
Speaker 1: at your favorite restaurant this weekend. So looking at the
Speaker 1: origins of cocktails, I want to throw out an idea
Speaker 1: that I'm I don't know, I've been mulling over. So
Speaker 1: I'm sort of sympathetic to the idea that cooking has
Speaker 1: multiple anthropological functions. Of course, there's the basic biological role
Speaker 1: of it in that it makes food safe to eat,
Speaker 1: you know, killing food born and bacteria and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And it makes food easier to digest. It's externalizing some
Speaker 1: of the process of digestion. You can get more nutrition
Speaker 1: out of the food, but it might Also I think
Speaker 1: kind of provide a psychological effect in that it sort
Speaker 1: of d natures or provides psychological distancing effects, um. By
Speaker 1: putting a veneer of artificiality and civilization over the brute
Speaker 1: animal activity of gorging oneself on calories of plant matter
Speaker 1: and animal flesh in order to stay alive. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a way of putting death out of mind in
Speaker 1: the process of eating. Okay, kind of like how we
Speaker 1: we distance ourselves from the reality of especially meat products. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we like sometimes people are disturbed to see their meat
Speaker 1: being cut off of an animal carcass instead of just
Speaker 1: arriving in a wrapped container. Uh. Some people don't even
Speaker 1: want to look at raw meat. They might buy pre
Speaker 1: cooked meat or something like that. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's some of the same anthropological uh desire for distancing
Speaker 1: from our animal nature that that's operating here. And again
Speaker 1: this is this is just my speculation. I'm not This
Speaker 1: is not backed up by any hard science, um. But
Speaker 1: I wonder if some of the same thing could be
Speaker 1: going on with the idea of mixing alcohols uh, cocktail culture,
Speaker 1: or even going back to some of these things we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. You know the origins of mixing
Speaker 1: wine with various ingredients. It is tasty, I'll give it that,
Speaker 1: so I, but also cooked food is tasty. I wonder
Speaker 1: if there is also an element that's operating that is
Speaker 1: putting a veneer of civilization and sophistication onto the act
Speaker 1: of ingesting ethanol to dull your senses, right, or sort
Speaker 1: of the to take a page from nature documentaries and
Speaker 1: of course overdrawn at the memory bank, the idea of
Speaker 1: of a monkey eating a rotting, fermenting fruit and then
Speaker 1: falling out of a tree exactly. We don't want that experience, though, essentially,
Speaker 1: how is it that different? Right, We've we've taken something
Speaker 1: that has been transformed by its uh, by its demise,
Speaker 1: we've we've we've eaten it, or we've we've sipped of it,
Speaker 1: and then it's altered our senses a bit. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not saying that the you know, the visual
Speaker 1: art and the taste and smell pleasure of a cocktail
Speaker 1: is not the primary reason for it. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's fulfilling this other role, to if it makes
Speaker 1: us feel just a little more human and a little
Speaker 1: bit less like an ape rolling around while we're getting
Speaker 1: in the state of mind that you know, if if
Speaker 1: it goes wrong, could lead to some actual rolling around. Well, certainly,
Speaker 1: there's there's no shortage of of culture attacked attached to cocktails,
Speaker 1: especially when you get into the even the particulars of
Speaker 1: the glasses and and what sort of glass is suitable
Speaker 1: for this type of beverage, some of which is grounded
Speaker 1: in the physics of the chemistry of the thing, but
Speaker 1: more often than not, it's just pure cultural distinctions. This
Speaker 1: type of glack coop glass or a nick and Nora
Speaker 1: is more appropriate for this drink. Why just because it
Speaker 1: looks nice, Because it is. Yeah, yeah, that's how it's
Speaker 1: always been done. That's what your culture says. Yes, But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's go back through that culture. Let us retreat into
Speaker 1: the clouds of history and see if we can find
Speaker 1: the origins of this process of mixing alcoholic beverages. Well,
Speaker 1: the true origins are are ultimately going to be lost
Speaker 1: to the midst of history because essentially what we're talking
Speaker 1: about it is just it's very basis combining wines or
Speaker 1: other alcoholic concoctions with herbal ingredients or other ingredients that
Speaker 1: alters the finished beverage, because distilled liquor is not that old.
Speaker 1: So making wine with some selection of specialized ingredients, well,
Speaker 1: these have been with us for for ages, so you
Speaker 1: might choose to call them magic potions, or you might
Speaker 1: call it a medicinal elixir. But let's consider a few
Speaker 1: interesting examples. What do they call it in Game of Thrones?
Speaker 1: Muld wine? Mold wine? Yes, and everybody drinks mould wine.
Speaker 1: And don't forget the milk of the poppy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: which will we'll kind of come back to in a bit.
Speaker 1: So these are a few examples. These are not necessarily
Speaker 1: in order of historical occurrence, but one of Emperor Claudius's physicians,
Speaker 1: one Scribonious Largus Uh, prescribed the following to sue the stomachache.
Speaker 1: Sweet wine combined with dissolved black myrtle berries and pills
Speaker 1: made up updates deal saffron, nigella, seeds, hazel ward and juniper. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like, wait, hold on, some wine. So
Speaker 1: like wine that is a precursor of a vermouth product,
Speaker 1: and you're getting some juniper here, So they're working on
Speaker 1: a martini you could, Yeah, juniper berries are are? Are
Speaker 1: they the key ingredient gen So you could make an
Speaker 1: argument that, yeah, this is maybe a precursor to a martini.
Speaker 1: Very certainly, almost certainly would not have tasted like a martini.
Speaker 1: Here's another one. According to Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist,
Speaker 1: an eighteenth century concoction called for boiling snails with milk,
Speaker 1: brandy figs, and spices to create to treat consumption. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine you're you're already dealing with consumption and
Speaker 1: then somebody who really cares about you comes at you
Speaker 1: with a cup of this. Yeah, what's in it? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, some brandy figs, spices, milk, Oh, sounds good,
Speaker 1: and some boiled snails. That's that's how they get you
Speaker 1: the final ingredient. Now, if we go back all the
Speaker 1: way to a thirty BC. Virgil, the of course, the
Speaker 1: poet who write notably guided Dante into the underworld and
Speaker 1: the divine comedy. Uh he he wrote of of citron
Speaker 1: is a remedy against poison. So citroning, you know, citrus fruit,
Speaker 1: the peel was added to wine as a vomit inducing remedy.
Speaker 1: So citron is one of the earliest species of citrus.
Speaker 1: It's a parent of various citrus species that we've we
Speaker 1: prized today and use in in concoctions, and you know,
Speaker 1: an all manner of recipes. Um. So it has a
Speaker 1: thick peel. It's a sour fruit. It is a quote
Speaker 1: dinosaur of the citrus world. Uh kinda again, too many
Speaker 1: fruit fruits that we cherish in our cocktails and more
Speaker 1: closely related to the Boodhoo's hand citron. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen this. It's a really beautiful fruit
Speaker 1: that has this kind of don't think of a straight
Speaker 1: up hand, but think of a very Eastern depiction of
Speaker 1: a curly fingered hand, and you have it. It looks
Speaker 1: very love crafty and I just looked it up. It does,
Speaker 1: it has, it has tentacles coming out of its head.
Speaker 1: I have actually have a post about it that I'll
Speaker 1: link to on the landing page for this episode because
Speaker 1: it photographs beautifully just a beautiful, beautiful fruit. Now I
Speaker 1: can't I can't recommend trying Virgil's recipe here, but it
Speaker 1: is worth a noting that in Barbados they originally made
Speaker 1: citron water in the eighteenth century and may have used
Speaker 1: it to flavor of vermouth so there is some connection
Speaker 1: there too, uh more or less modern drink culture. All right,
Speaker 1: So a minute ago we mentioned the juniper berry is
Speaker 1: one of the ingredients prescribed for this This pill combined
Speaker 1: with sweet wine to soothe an upset stomach in ancient Rome.
Speaker 1: But uh so, juniper actually did does, as we say,
Speaker 1: end up being the main ingredient in gin. Right, And
Speaker 1: it's a medicinal use goes way back as well, as
Speaker 1: used as early as twelve sixty six by Belgian theologian
Speaker 1: Thomas van Contemporary, and he recommended boiling juniper berries in
Speaker 1: rain water or wine to treat stomach paint paint. Now, this,
Speaker 1: it's important to note, would not have tasted like gin,
Speaker 1: no matter what you're what you know, bottom shelf variety
Speaker 1: of gin you might be thinking of. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: tasted better than a rain water juniper concoction. Bad gin
Speaker 1: is a bad idea, Yes, as I would. I would
Speaker 1: advise anyone who has turned off of gen to, you know,
Speaker 1: explore there's some there's some great gen's out there, uh
Speaker 1: that that aren't that don't taste of rainwater. Now, in
Speaker 1: the second sist century, Greek physician Galen recommended juniper berries,
Speaker 1: to quote, cleans the liver and kidneys and uh, and
Speaker 1: they evidently thin any thick and viscous juices, and for
Speaker 1: this reason they are mixed in health medicines unquote. So
Speaker 1: Stewart in her book writes that this suggests a mixture
Speaker 1: with alcohol, which again kind of sounds like jen. Probably
Speaker 1: would not have tasted anything like jen. Alright, moving on
Speaker 1: from proto gen uh, here's an eighteen fifties recipe for
Speaker 1: concoction to treat I was, which was some sort of
Speaker 1: bacterial infection that afflicted the skin and the joints. So
Speaker 1: Kentucky farmer John B. Clark listed the recipe as follows.
Speaker 1: This is listed in the Drunken Botanists as well. You
Speaker 1: would need to combine one pint of hog lard, one
Speaker 1: handful I think you said lard. Yes, lard, yes, hog lard, yes,
Speaker 1: straight up hog lard in the drink. Yes. Again, not
Speaker 1: that different from the bacon related drinks that would briefly
Speaker 1: become the fat. So okay, you get your pineahog lard,
Speaker 1: you got your handful of earthworms. That's what you're gonna
Speaker 1: You're gonna need that handful of tobacco four pods of
Speaker 1: red pepper, a spoonful of black pepper, a race of ginger,
Speaker 1: and you stew this together and mix with brandy. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds dangerous on one hand, because if you're using
Speaker 1: tobacco and it, that sounds like you could easily accidentally
Speaker 1: extract too much nicotine and poison yourself. Right. Well, this
Speaker 1: is a good good point as well. And this this
Speaker 1: will come up again as we discuss the weird connection
Speaker 1: between alcohol and tobacco. There and tobacco and fused alcohols.
Speaker 1: You can actually buy one today, but yeah, that would
Speaker 1: have been a potential threat here. Or maybe that's how
Speaker 1: it works. Maybe you're you're isolating the the true power
Speaker 1: of this folklorimity. Yeah, I mean, I guess when you
Speaker 1: think about it, the whole nature of of drinking ethanol
Speaker 1: based drinks is you're kind of slightly poisoning yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as we get into the some of the so
Speaker 1: called nefarious spirits that have been used in cocktails over time,
Speaker 1: it's worth stressing that alcohol is kind of the nefarious spirit.
Speaker 1: Very few of the substances that get mixed in with
Speaker 1: it are as potentially dangerous as the thing itself. Finally,
Speaker 1: I want to mention this is a little, a little
Speaker 1: far less of a cocktail, but certainly a mixture of spirits. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you look back at Homer's Odyssey, you find a
Speaker 1: mixture that is referred to as kai kion, and this
Speaker 1: would have been a mixture of beer, wine and meat
Speaker 1: that was given by Circe to um to Odysseus crew
Speaker 1: in the Odyssey. So a mixture of spirits and maybe
Speaker 1: a little magic in there as well. That doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a good combination, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: either it doled them out enough that she could turn
Speaker 1: them into pigs, or it had some role in turning
Speaker 1: them into pigs. Either way, not something you want out
Speaker 1: of your your your beverage. Bottom line, don't accept drinks
Speaker 1: from a witch, right, yeah, never except to drink from
Speaker 1: a witch. I think we should all we should all
Speaker 1: know that by that point, been fooled too many times.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get into these nefarious spirits. Touching uh,
Speaker 1: touching down once again on tobacco. So tobacco liqueur, what's
Speaker 1: the history here? Well, we don't know for certain on this,
Speaker 1: but Amy Stewart points out that people that the people
Speaker 1: of Columbia, Venezuela and Brazil had a long standing practice
Speaker 1: of soaking tobacco leaves and honey. And since honey can
Speaker 1: of course be fermented into mead and such drinks, such
Speaker 1: meat type drinks were known in South America. It's possible,
Speaker 1: but unproven, that some manner of nicotine mead may have emerged.
Speaker 1: So nicomede, nicomede, I guess, yeah, So it would have
Speaker 1: your your alcohol and nicotine buzz combined into a single experience.
Speaker 1: No need to drink and smoke, you just have one
Speaker 1: concoction that is. Yeah. But let's leave the ambiguous world
Speaker 1: of conjecture and consider actual, verified, and perfectly legal tobacco liqueurs.
Speaker 1: The best known of these is periq liqueur did tobacco.
Speaker 1: So this is a French tobacco liqueur, and pretty much
Speaker 1: it be tobacco liqueur. I gotta say, I'm surprised to
Speaker 1: I would not have expected anybody was actually making tobacco booze, yeah,
Speaker 1: or that it was like a refined thing and not
Speaker 1: some sort of weird, gimmicky somebody's dangerous backyard concoctions. Right
Speaker 1: the distillers here at the Combert facility, they claim that
Speaker 1: it has no nicotine in it though, and this is
Speaker 1: apparently quite likely since the high boiling point of nicotine
Speaker 1: is like four seventy five degrees fahrenheit, meaning that it
Speaker 1: probably doesn't rise through the still during the distillation process.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So that makes it seem like, given that fact,
Speaker 1: it's actually safer to have a tobacco based liquor or
Speaker 1: liqueur than it would be to do what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, and like soaked tobacco leaves in a
Speaker 1: wine that you're drinking or something where the essence could
Speaker 1: come out into the liquid, whereas in a still you're
Speaker 1: saying it would not evaporate correctly, right, And that's something
Speaker 1: she points out there, is that, especially in this age
Speaker 1: of nix nix, a logical enthusiasm and often home bitter
Speaker 1: making projects that some some might make a cigar bitters,
Speaker 1: for instance, at their house, but if you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're doing, uh, you might accidentally create this a
Speaker 1: supercharged nicotine concoction, and you could create a cocktail with
Speaker 1: an inappropriate dose of nicotine in it. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a very bad night. Now. Now some of you are
Speaker 1: probably wondering, well, what is that actual tobacco liqueur taste
Speaker 1: like well, Stewart describes it as quote sweet, aromatic and
Speaker 1: decidedly different, and that it quote tastes the way sweet
Speaker 1: damp pipe tobacco smells. So I know that smell, but
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that taste. Yeah. Yeah, so that's why.
Speaker 1: If anyone out there has any experience with this one
Speaker 1: and has a more detailed explanation or additional thoughts on
Speaker 1: it's a particular uh bouquet, then let us know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's nicotine, but how about how about cocaine? How
Speaker 1: about coca wines and tonics? Moving up the ladder of stimulants? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this so so this is another something. Hold on, when
Speaker 1: do we get to four loco then four local? What
Speaker 1: is in four loco? I'm not familiar with this one.
Speaker 1: Oh I just made a four loco joke, and I
Speaker 1: don't really know. I believe it is a or at
Speaker 1: least was a combined alcoholic beverage and energy drink. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it might not be anymore something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never had a four loco. I'm not advocating it, Okay, Well, mean,
Speaker 1: of course there are other drinks out there that combine
Speaker 1: alcohol and coffee, so or the much dreaded vodka and
Speaker 1: red bull, which David Wandridge does not cover in his book.
Speaker 1: But really it didn't make it into didn't make it in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not refined enough. Go figure. But but as far
Speaker 1: as the history of coca leaves, the prime ingredient in
Speaker 1: cocaine and alcohol, Uh, this this gets really interesting. So
Speaker 1: Peruvian has made use of the coca plant leaves as
Speaker 1: early as three thousand b C. So they would choose
Speaker 1: the leaves for energy. It provided mild stimulus and it
Speaker 1: would also help against altitude sickness. It could be brut
Speaker 1: and tease as well. Now did we mention the the
Speaker 1: idea that this was employed by the the runners in
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of the Incan's, the runners who would carry
Speaker 1: the not messages across the high altitude I believe we did. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been an example of usage there where
Speaker 1: you just needed a little more boost or a little
Speaker 1: a little better ability to uh, to really go at
Speaker 1: it in the U in the higher altitudes, they would
Speaker 1: have turned to the coca leaf. Now, when the Europeans
Speaker 1: came in, they figured out how to extract the cocaine alkaloid,
Speaker 1: and it was used as a pain reliever and antiseptic,
Speaker 1: digestive and various other medical uses. In fact, in the US,
Speaker 1: it remains a schedule to narcotic. That means it has
Speaker 1: quote currently accepted medical use and treatment in the United
Speaker 1: States or currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions. What
Speaker 1: what what use is cocaine today in the medical community? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean basically it comes down to some of the
Speaker 1: properties was originally used for, um, you know, such as,
Speaker 1: you know, alleviating pain. If anyone's ever seen the Wonderful
Speaker 1: Blue of Cinemax show the Nick, they do a wonderful
Speaker 1: job of exploring the use of cocaine medically at the time.
Speaker 1: Uh pre anesthesia. You know, you could you could inject
Speaker 1: cocaine and uh and and get the desired result for surgery.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Wow. But it is an interesting reality to
Speaker 1: to remind oneself that while marijuana is a Schedule one narcotic, uh,
Speaker 1: cocaine is a schedule too. Of course, today cocaine continues
Speaker 1: to power around with alcohol and illicit recreational usages, but
Speaker 1: it also made its way into coca leaf wines and tonics,
Speaker 1: So there was a French vin Mariani. This was a
Speaker 1: tonic and it was patent in patented in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: three by French chemist Angelo Mariani, and he also offered
Speaker 1: a coca wine called then Tonique Marianni, which was a
Speaker 1: combo of Bordeaux wine and coca leaves. Now none of
Speaker 1: that goes on, at least legally today, but coca flavoring
Speaker 1: is still used. And you can order yourself some d
Speaker 1: coconut cocaine eysed cocoa tea right off of Amazon. And
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty good. It's it's you've had I've had it. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've they've leached all of the cocaine out of it.
Speaker 1: So it's perfectly, perfectly legal, perfectly reasonable thing to have.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you should have it before a
Speaker 1: drug test from employment or anything, but it's certainly interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing that occurs to me is if coca cola
Speaker 1: originally was flavored with coca, wasn't it some kind of
Speaker 1: coca product? I believe it's not anymore. Right, Well, they
Speaker 1: have the whole secret recipe thing, right, and and certainly
Speaker 1: coca can be d cocaine eyst so so it could
Speaker 1: be d cocaine and so so, but you could think
Speaker 1: just flavor wise, perhaps if you're mixing coca cola with
Speaker 1: some kind of alcoholic beverage, you may be to some
Speaker 1: very tamed extent simulating this kind of mixture. Right, And
Speaker 1: there's apparently a liqueur called Agua sold in the US
Speaker 1: and European markets, and it's marketed as quote a premium
Speaker 1: herbal liqueur made from Bolivian coca leaves and an infusion
Speaker 1: of thirty six herbs and botanicals. So in this case
Speaker 1: we would be talking, uh, you know, the cocaine has
Speaker 1: been removed from it as well, and you're just getting
Speaker 1: the flavor profile with the leaf. And of course this
Speaker 1: the the the excitement of oh it's it's it's cocaine liqueur. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. I mean, as we talked about, it's
Speaker 1: not just the taste. There's an event going on, right,
Speaker 1: it's the showman show. Now from there, let's move on
Speaker 1: to another schedule to narcotic with a similar timeline of
Speaker 1: traditional use, medicinal use, refinement, and then outright abuse. We're
Speaker 1: talking of course about opium. Okay, so opium cocktails huh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is something I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: I guess I knew this, but I never really put
Speaker 1: one and two together. But the seeds of the opium plant,
Speaker 1: poppy seeds, they're sold legally since they're used in baked goods. Right.
Speaker 1: I remember the old Seinfeld bit about Elaine having poppy
Speaker 1: seed muffins and then flunking a drug test, But I
Speaker 1: somehow didn't put put it together that it was actually
Speaker 1: the same plant. I kind of, without thinking about it,
Speaker 1: assume that it was just, you know, something that's closely
Speaker 1: related to it and would trigger a false positive. Now,
Speaker 1: I imagine this does not mean that we have to
Speaker 1: worry about eating poppy seed muffins because they're gonna have
Speaker 1: opioid effects on us. No, yeah, not at all. Continue
Speaker 1: to eat your, your, your, your poppy seed muffins. Now.
Speaker 1: Stewart points out that the earliest possible description of an
Speaker 1: opium infused cocktail of sorts is again Homer's Odyssey Uh
Speaker 1: the elixir Nephanthy that Helen of Troy drank to alleviate
Speaker 1: her sorrows. It was mixed quote with an herb that
Speaker 1: banishes all care, sorrow, and ill humor, and this of
Speaker 1: course may have referred to opium. Or if you're a
Speaker 1: fan of Game of Thrones and I think this might
Speaker 1: be yeah, there you go. Now that, of course, the
Speaker 1: more direct comparison there would be if we go to
Speaker 1: Victorian times laudanum tonic, which was opium steeped in alcohol.
Speaker 1: The alkaloids and opium are for more soluble in alcohol
Speaker 1: rather than in water. There is so. I just recently
Speaker 1: read the novel True Grit Oh Yeah, by Charles Portis uh,
Speaker 1: and there is so. I've seen the movie before, but
Speaker 1: especially in the novel, there is a scene in which
Speaker 1: the main character, who is a girl who is very
Speaker 1: level headed and very all business like. She she sort
Speaker 1: of messes things up in a scene because she has
Speaker 1: been given laudanum to treat a cold. It was it
Speaker 1: was one of these things that was used to treat
Speaker 1: just about everything. And that's the thing about opium is
Speaker 1: that whatever ails you, at least in the short term,
Speaker 1: a little little bit of opium will probably make it better.
Speaker 1: It's the it's more the long term, not the problem,
Speaker 1: not make it better, but make you not care. As
Speaker 1: far as actual cocktails go, this is kind of interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: King George the Fifth like to consume a mixture of
Speaker 1: brandy and laud him to alleviate his gout. So there
Speaker 1: you go again. Not alleviate his gout, would alleviate his mind,
Speaker 1: alleviate his his experience of the gout, or his relationship
Speaker 1: to his experience of the count um and uh. And
Speaker 1: of course Bear the Drug Company sold an opium syrup
Speaker 1: in under the name Heroin, which was you know. Of
Speaker 1: course often it was often marketed at kids, four kids
Speaker 1: to help with your your cough or what whatever ails you.
Speaker 1: I've seen those ads. Yeah, y'all out there, you should
Speaker 1: look up these ads. Yeah, they're they the old printed
Speaker 1: ads for it. It's it's phenomenal. And again, if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of of all this, you want you want
Speaker 1: sort of a fictional treatment of it. Uh. Steven Soderberg's
Speaker 1: The Nick also explores uh, the early days of heroin
Speaker 1: rather nicely. All right, well, what else do we do
Speaker 1: we have here on the drink menu? If you will? Well,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about as long as we're going
Speaker 1: into strange and perhaps illicit ingredients may be less illicit
Speaker 1: than opium and cocaine. Uh. But do you remember the
Speaker 1: bacon craze of the late two thousand's early two thousand tens.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, how could I not. And of course coming
Speaker 1: out of that craze, there were lots of bacon cocktails,
Speaker 1: of course, you know. And not to say that that
Speaker 1: was the first time there was ever such a thing
Speaker 1: as like bacon infused alcohol, but it became very popular then,
Speaker 1: and during this time it was it was like when
Speaker 1: everybody thought it was hilarious to have an I Heart
Speaker 1: Bacon bumper sticker or T shirt and have bacon parties,
Speaker 1: and to have bacon on all your food, to make
Speaker 1: like bacon utensils to eat your food with. Not to
Speaker 1: disparage bacon itself, but I do think it's funny how
Speaker 1: all of us at the time, for some reason, didn't
Speaker 1: seem to realize that this was not just a spontaneous
Speaker 1: outpouring of ironic Internet love, but to some extent a
Speaker 1: result of market forces in the meat markets and a
Speaker 1: manipulation of public opinion by the pork industry. I was
Speaker 1: reading an article about that not too long ago, like,
Speaker 1: was it really just a coincidence that you knew a
Speaker 1: guy in college who started a hilarious bacon based garments
Speaker 1: blog right around the same time that Wendy's introduced the
Speaker 1: bacon eight er. Ah, that that's perfect and it again
Speaker 1: it it fits perfectly in the culture of cocktails because
Speaker 1: of that that marketing angle, and that's often a hidden
Speaker 1: marketing angle. Like it reminds me of the origins of
Speaker 1: the Moscow Mule, which of course is a is a
Speaker 1: nice beverage. It has vodka, ginger beer, what some lime.
Speaker 1: It's pretty in that copper cup. Yeah, that copper cup.
Speaker 1: It looks beautiful. And where did it come from? That's
Speaker 1: the thing you might think, Oh, well, this it's it's
Speaker 1: called a Moscow Mule. Must have been This must have
Speaker 1: been like a work working man's drink in Moscow, invented
Speaker 1: by the great bartender Ivan Mulevich. No, you you might
Speaker 1: think it might be something cool like that, but as
Speaker 1: it turns out, it just goes back to a vodka
Speaker 1: distributor who knew somebody. I think it was a girlfriend
Speaker 1: who had all these copper mugs that that she needed
Speaker 1: to sell. So just put one and two together and
Speaker 1: the Moscow meal was born. It was delicious, but the
Speaker 1: whole story, the fictional creation story behind it, just had
Speaker 1: no basis. In fact, that is incredibly deflating. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you drink half of one and then you feel better
Speaker 1: about it. Well anyway, you definitely remember though how this
Speaker 1: did happen, or it was around two thousand ten. I
Speaker 1: think that this was really peaking, that there was, you
Speaker 1: know a little bit after the years after that were
Speaker 1: suddenly these recipes for bacon infused bourbon and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We're just taking over the menus everywhere, and everybody thought
Speaker 1: it was great to give somebody bacon old fashions or
Speaker 1: for something like that for Christmas. And I think I
Speaker 1: still see drinks of this nature on the menu every
Speaker 1: now and then. Sometimes it's like a bacon like the
Speaker 1: the Glasses Room, not in salt. That's some sort of
Speaker 1: like bacon based not not straight up bacon bits, but
Speaker 1: the fancier version of bacon bits. I think the barbecue
Speaker 1: place here in town, Fox Brothers Barbecue in Atlanta, they
Speaker 1: have a Bloody Mary that's got a bunch of bacon,
Speaker 1: and that's of Bloody Mary's were not already pretty salty.
Speaker 1: Um I I can't. I can't match anything that is
Speaker 1: quite as meat centric as a bacon cocktail. But carnivorous
Speaker 1: plants have occasionally made their way into cocktails. So you
Speaker 1: have a plant by the name of an we call
Speaker 1: sun Do. We talked about the sun Do in our
Speaker 1: episode on carniverous Plants. Yeah, so you might remember it.
Speaker 1: It catches insects with the sticky nectar and digest them
Speaker 1: with his enzymes. And it was once popular in a
Speaker 1: cordial known as rosalio. And uh today rosalio entails of
Speaker 1: various liqueurs made from fruits and spices steeped in alcohol.
Speaker 1: But sun Do was once a prime ingredient, and you
Speaker 1: were advised to pick the dead insects out of the
Speaker 1: fruit first. No way, yeah, no way, you're knocking that out. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not making it the dead insects in your drink. No, no,
Speaker 1: you would take it out before you made the drink.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, so you'd strain it and then make
Speaker 1: your cocktail. Right. Yeah. That being said, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it that it would be that bad if they
Speaker 1: were bugs in the drink. Speaking of dead things in
Speaker 1: your drink and meaty flesh in your drink, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: converge these two, uh, these two lines of inquiry into
Speaker 1: a single cocktail, which is you may have heard about this,
Speaker 1: you may not have, But in the town of Dawson City,
Speaker 1: in the boreal yonder of the Yukon Territory, way up there,
Speaker 1: there is a hotel bar with an infamous local tradition
Speaker 1: of bibulation known as the sour toe cocktail. If you
Speaker 1: heard of this, Robert, I don't think I had. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm already I'm at this point, I'm already
Speaker 1: a little bit afraid because I'm I'm picturing Yukon Territory.
Speaker 1: I'm picturing very rugged individuals here. Uh huh yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of miners, hunters, barge operators, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering, sour toe cocktail, Okay, does it
Speaker 1: really contain a toe? And the answer is yes, what
Speaker 1: there's a real toe in it, a human toe. For
Speaker 1: it is a dark, shriveled, mummified piece of toe jerky
Speaker 1: and it goes in your drink for five dollars. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's that was the price in last time. I read
Speaker 1: a newspaper article about it, So the price may have
Speaker 1: been hiked up since then, who knows. But wait, was
Speaker 1: this an old thing or is the current thing does
Speaker 1: the current? You can do this now? Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: thought this was like an old uh you know, frontier beverage. No, no,
Speaker 1: I was willing to give them a little more license.
Speaker 1: Desperate times, uh, wilderness madness setting in, maybe you would
Speaker 1: throw a toe into a beverage for whatever reason. No,
Speaker 1: this is less like the frontier wine with a pound
Speaker 1: of pork lard and more like the ironic chipster bacon cocktail. Now,
Speaker 1: because this started in the nineteen seventies, so you have
Speaker 1: to pay a five dollar toe tag X to have
Speaker 1: this toe added to whatever alcohol you want, presumably whether
Speaker 1: it's four fingers of Yukon jack whiskey or a cranberry
Speaker 1: apple teeny or a glass of champagne. As you will see.
Speaker 1: And the toe goes in your glass of booze, and
Speaker 1: you drink the booze, and then the toe lives on. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: of course I was wondering where did this toe come from? Well,
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura has an excellent, very short, little history of
Speaker 1: the sour toe that you can look up, but basic
Speaker 1: story goes like this. In nineteen seventy three, a river
Speaker 1: barge pilot named Captain Dick Stevenson, he's cleaning out a
Speaker 1: cabin when he came across an amputated human toe in
Speaker 1: a jar of alcohol. So much is an appropriate place
Speaker 1: to keep it to preserve it? I guess right. So
Speaker 1: supposedly the toe had belonged to a minor named Louis Lichn,
Speaker 1: whose toe became frost bitten sometime in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: up in the Yukon, and he had to get it
Speaker 1: amputated and decided to preserve it in this jar of alcohol.
Speaker 1: So after Stevenson found the toe in the jar in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, he got this amazing idea to head
Speaker 1: down to the local saloon and start dropping it into
Speaker 1: people's drinks. And those who could bear to drink the
Speaker 1: booze with the toe knocking around in the glass became
Speaker 1: the original members of the Sour Toe Cocktail Club, which
Speaker 1: now more than forty years later, has more than fifty
Speaker 1: thousand members. So if you go up to the Yukon
Speaker 1: Territory and you go to this bar and you order
Speaker 1: the toe, you get a drink, pay the toe tax,
Speaker 1: and get the toe in your drink and you drink it,
Speaker 1: they will give you a certificate of membership that you
Speaker 1: are now in the Sour Toe Club. It's sort of
Speaker 1: local attraction. If you happen to end up in Dawson City,
Speaker 1: there you go. But I know what you're thinking. Has
Speaker 1: anyone ever swallowed the toe several times more than once? So?
Speaker 1: The first time was supposedly in July nineteen eighty, when
Speaker 1: a miner named Gary Younger had been working on his
Speaker 1: thirteen glass of quote Sour Toe champagne. According to the
Speaker 1: Sour Toe Cocktail Club account, this guy's chair tipped over
Speaker 1: backwards and he accidentally swallowed the toe. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I buy this story, because how do you
Speaker 1: accidentally swallow something as big as a toe from a
Speaker 1: champagne glass? I don't know. But because he's presumably drinking
Speaker 1: it out of the traditional champagne flute, right, so or
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe in the Yukon you get your
Speaker 1: champagne and a tin cup. I don't know. Of course,
Speaker 1: thirteen glasses in who knows what was going on? Probably yeah,
Speaker 1: probably not in total command of his faculties. So uh,
Speaker 1: this wasn't the only time somebody swallowed the toe. Toes
Speaker 1: keep disappearing, so new ones have to be supplied, and
Speaker 1: uh so. Over the years years a few more toes
Speaker 1: were donated by people who had to have amputations due
Speaker 1: to frost bite, diabetes, and a so called quote inoperable
Speaker 1: corn his drink he keeps getting less and less appetizing um.
Speaker 1: And one donation was apparently an anonymous donation that was
Speaker 1: later stolen from the bar, And in probably the most
Speaker 1: famous toe origin story, one arrived at the bar in
Speaker 1: a jar of alcohol with a note that said, quote,
Speaker 1: don't wear open toe sandals while mowing the lawn. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one way to live, for your toe to live
Speaker 1: on right after it's it's left your body. Yeah, but so.
Speaker 1: More recently, the Toronto Star reports that a man known
Speaker 1: only as quote Josh from New Orleans paid the toe
Speaker 1: tax to have the toe deposited in his glass of whiskey.
Speaker 1: And at the time there was a five hundred dollar
Speaker 1: fee for accidentally swallowing the toe, and Josh from New
Speaker 1: Orleans just popped the toe in his mouth and down
Speaker 1: it went, and he immediately paid the five hundred dollar
Speaker 1: fee in cash and walked out of the barn. And
Speaker 1: last last tidbit about this, apparently, when you order the
Speaker 1: toe the bartender recites a magical incantation to steal you
Speaker 1: for your journey of death and alcohol, and it goes.
Speaker 1: You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow,
Speaker 1: but your lips must touch the toe. I can see
Speaker 1: this is really good to you. Robert. Do you have
Speaker 1: a mummified toe thing? I don't know. It just seems
Speaker 1: it well, I mean, it seems rather unnecessary, but it
Speaker 1: just not particularly appetizing. I guess. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: just imagining this shriveled mummified toe just knocking against your
Speaker 1: lips as you're trying to down it, kind of like
Speaker 1: a like a like a like just any kind of
Speaker 1: a garnish and a drink that you're not ready to consume.
Speaker 1: Except it's the It's the worst possible Marischino Cherry. I
Speaker 1: have no evidence that they actually did this, but my
Speaker 1: idea is they should use it in place of an
Speaker 1: ice cube, so they should freeze it so it's always cold,
Speaker 1: and then when it gets plopped into your God, I
Speaker 1: just assumed it was frozen. I would I would hope
Speaker 1: it would be frozen. I don't know. I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of it, and it looks like it's room temperature, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell. It's well, it's like stored in salt.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen pictures of it in a jar
Speaker 1: of salt. I guess to keep it desiccated and mummified. Huh.
Speaker 1: I would love to to see or hear anyone describe
Speaker 1: how it affects the flavor profile. If it does it all,
Speaker 1: it could just be pure psychology of the thing, which
Speaker 1: is kind of right, because ultimately, like which is worse
Speaker 1: for your body, swallowing one dead human toe or drinking
Speaker 1: thirteen glasses of champagne in a row, I would argue
Speaker 1: that the champagne is actually worse for you, probably probably so.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it depends on what's in the toe.
Speaker 1: All right, we have just I certainly cannot top that
Speaker 1: at all. We have just a few more nefarious spirits
Speaker 1: to mention. One comes from uh cubab from piper cube eba,
Speaker 1: a member of the pepper family. It produces a fruit
Speaker 1: that wind dried resembles black pepper as a pungent, biting
Speaker 1: flavor that comes from high levels of lemoning, which is
Speaker 1: a flavor foundain citrus and herbs. And you'll find it
Speaker 1: as an ingredient in various gins these days as well,
Speaker 1: but it has a medicinal and even magical history. The
Speaker 1: Victorians had cubeb cigarettes that were supposed to help you
Speaker 1: with your asthma. Yeah, and most exciting of all, seventeenth
Speaker 1: century Italian priest and exorcist Ludovico Maria Sinistari employed a
Speaker 1: brandy tonic flavored with cubab, cardaman, nutmeg, birthwartz, aloe, and
Speaker 1: various other roots and spices. So if you're looking to
Speaker 1: banish demons with your cocktail, take note. All right, Another
Speaker 1: interesting concoction comes from, and this is another example from
Speaker 1: the drunken botanist, is uh uh Damiana, which is from
Speaker 1: the plant turned era diffusea. So this is a Mexican
Speaker 1: shrub produces yellow flowers and small fruits, and it's long
Speaker 1: been reputed to have afrodisiac properties. So now teenth century
Speaker 1: physicians prescribed it to female patients to promote orgasm, and
Speaker 1: a two thousand nine studies saw that it quotes sexually
Speaker 1: exhausted male rats. What does that mean? They just they
Speaker 1: just kept they made of them so eager to perform
Speaker 1: that it exhausted them. That's intense, so it seemed to
Speaker 1: have afro daz ac effects on the road. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight, the FEDS confiscated a shipment of so called
Speaker 1: Damiana gin and found that it contains strict nine. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be more a matter of like
Speaker 1: just illicit, just a poorly made and poisonous substance that
Speaker 1: was that someone was trying to sell. But there have
Speaker 1: been no human studies that that I'm aware of or
Speaker 1: the steward was aware of regarding it's it's human use.
Speaker 1: But it's a legal food additive. You can even find
Speaker 1: a Mexican herbal decur called Damiana and it's sold in
Speaker 1: like a fertility goddess kind of bottle. So if anyone
Speaker 1: out there has tried that one, we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you as well. Now, finally, before we take
Speaker 1: a break, I want to mention real quick, cannabis cocktails
Speaker 1: to move back to this schedule one narcotic Well, of
Speaker 1: course somebody has made that, yeah, but but is there, like,
Speaker 1: is there a i don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: a legitimately produced version somewhere out there. Well, unsurprisingly, there
Speaker 1: are a few cannabis liqueurs on the market. But the
Speaker 1: major example of these tend to be seemed to be
Speaker 1: flavor only, so they've captured the flavor profile of the cannabis,
Speaker 1: but but none of the actual th HC. Part of
Speaker 1: this probably is that in terms of making a th
Speaker 1: HC laden cocktail, it's super easy tip to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: So all you have to do is make a simple
Speaker 1: syrup from cannabis. Cannabis simple syrup heat activates the th
Speaker 1: HC kind of in the same way that people use
Speaker 1: th HC butter to make brownies. Really, this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you can find recipes for wherever you
Speaker 1: find your marijuana related recipes. Uh. In the syrup enables
Speaker 1: you to create a whole host of of drinks. For instance,
Speaker 1: I found a recipe for a Malibu Malibu mule, which
Speaker 1: is I think essentially you know a Moscow mule except
Speaker 1: using the syrup and you And also specialty shops, especially
Speaker 1: in California and Colorado, uh, they often sell th HC
Speaker 1: lemonades or juices. So there you go. If you if
Speaker 1: you desire that and it's a legally permitted avenue for you,
Speaker 1: then the means are out there. I wonder what it's
Speaker 1: like to work at one of the companies that produces
Speaker 1: these products. I don't know, you mean just in like
Speaker 1: th HC laden products or just the I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you reach a point where you feel
Speaker 1: like you've you've you've reached peak creativity for for marijuana
Speaker 1: based food products, Like, at what point do you realize, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just I just created a recipe for th HC
Speaker 1: lasagna and now I feel a little hollow inside. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder so if at some point, uh,
Speaker 1: cannabis becomes widely legal or just regulated in the same
Speaker 1: way that tobacco products are now or something like that,
Speaker 1: eventually does the appeal of this kind of stuff go away?
Speaker 1: Is this basically all just like novelty celebration and bacon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where this is recently legalized and that you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: maybe much more in the realm of cannabis inspired drinks,
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred years down the road than you
Speaker 1: have now this one tobacco liqueur made by what was
Speaker 1: it some company in France. Yeah. Well, it comes down
Speaker 1: to the fact, right that, uh, if something is illegal,
Speaker 1: if it's prohibited, that just makes it all the more alluring.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you find yourself craving a particular substance purely
Speaker 1: because it is forbidden, like it just enhances its mythology. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of the forbidden, I thought that we could not
Speaker 1: do an episode about the strange scientific avenues in drink making, mixology,
Speaker 1: cocktails and liquor without taking a look at the green ferry.
Speaker 1: So we should take a break and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will talk about absinthe. So absently you've had,
Speaker 1: You've had absence before, Yeah, yeah, I recently had the
Speaker 1: absinthe service at a local restaurant here in town in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: the kimble House restaurant. It is absolutely wonderful if you're
Speaker 1: if you're around Atlanta, especially in the Decatur area. Kimble
Speaker 1: House is amazing. But they have a sort of old
Speaker 1: timey bar that celebrates the traditions where they will do
Speaker 1: an absence service, where they will serve it up in
Speaker 1: the traditional way, which we can describe in a minute,
Speaker 1: I guess. But I would say maybe more than any
Speaker 1: other liquor, absinthe is a drink that is totally surrounded
Speaker 1: in myth I remember when I was in college, I
Speaker 1: was once at a party where some guys were talking
Speaker 1: about time a friend of theirs who had been in
Speaker 1: the military had brought a bottle of absinthe back from overseas,
Speaker 1: and this was at a time when absinthe was still
Speaker 1: banned in the United States, and they claimed that when
Speaker 1: they drank this, this green liquor, they entered a state
Speaker 1: of green hallucinations. I remember one of them mentioning swimming
Speaker 1: through green tunnels, and I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I believe that. But in the widespread version of
Speaker 1: this story that you just substitute a person for a place,
Speaker 1: and you can read about this everywhere. Absinthe allows one
Speaker 1: to visit her majesty, the green fairy. So is there
Speaker 1: anything to this, to this idea that absinthe is more
Speaker 1: than just another alcoholic beverage, that it has these advanced
Speaker 1: drug like properties causing hallucinations or or these also very
Speaker 1: common negative reported qualities like uh, causing seizures or convulsions
Speaker 1: or all this other stuff. Yeah, it really, it really
Speaker 1: had that reputation for the longest until it was it
Speaker 1: was finally legalized again in the US. Yeah, and so this, uh,
Speaker 1: this mythology is very much a part of what absence
Speaker 1: profile and character is. But we should take a look
Speaker 1: at the science behind it. So, so what is absinthe. Well,
Speaker 1: absinthe is a distilled liquor, usually a very strong one,
Speaker 1: made by combining alcohol with wormwood. And that's a type
Speaker 1: of plant green annis finnel like Florence finnel, and other
Speaker 1: herbs and flowers like hiss up and lemon balm. And
Speaker 1: the exact origins of absinthe as we know it now
Speaker 1: are unclear by most accounts. It was invented sometime the
Speaker 1: late seventeen DS, probably seventeen nineties, and the distiller per
Speaker 1: Node produced its first commercial absinthe in eighteen o five,
Speaker 1: which is when I think we should consider the birth
Speaker 1: of the absinthe era. But uh, let's take a look
Speaker 1: at those ingredients. So wormwood, that is an interesting name. Yes,
Speaker 1: it brings to mind the Book of Revelation. Right, it
Speaker 1: makes me think, doesn't C. S. Lewis have a novel
Speaker 1: has a wormwood character? And in the screw Tape letters,
Speaker 1: I believe he's writing to Wormwood, a lower subordinate demon,
Speaker 1: and advising him on corrupting of a mortal soul. Right,
Speaker 1: so wormwood is a good name for a for a demon,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, it already implies some sort of
Speaker 1: illicit magical quality. But wormwood is just a plant. It's
Speaker 1: the the Artemisia absinthium, and it's the famed central ingredient
Speaker 1: in absinthe and the one that would be later singled
Speaker 1: out in the supposed case against absinthe as more poison
Speaker 1: or more drug than than liquor. Now, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that vermouth is derived. The word vermouth is revived from vermut,
Speaker 1: the German word for wormwood, and the original Vermouth's would
Speaker 1: have contained this in some quantity. And going back to
Speaker 1: the ingredi and so you mentioned earlier, the taste of
Speaker 1: absinthe has far more to do with the annis in
Speaker 1: it as opposed to the wormwood itself. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: that wormwood itself has a more mental like taste and scent. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it's basically covered up for the most part
Speaker 1: by this, this liquorice taste. Now, the ancient Egyptians used
Speaker 1: wormwood in wines and spirits. The the Ebber's Papyrus from
Speaker 1: around fifteen hundred b C. And this might have been
Speaker 1: a copy of an earlier work, recommends wormwood spirits to
Speaker 1: treat round worm infections and digestive problems. Chinese medicinal wines
Speaker 1: of the same era also featured wormwood, and we know
Speaker 1: this from chemical analysis of drinking vessels that archaeologists have uncovered.
Speaker 1: And it's also worth pointing out you're talking about the
Speaker 1: timeline of absinthe in the Golden Age of absinthe. Uh one.
Speaker 1: Bridge points out that absence was sold in New Orleans
Speaker 1: by eighteen thirty seven, in New York by eighteen forty three,
Speaker 1: but it took a while to make its way into
Speaker 1: a true cocktail. It was something he merely dashed in
Speaker 1: a cocktail, kind of like how if anyone's had a
Speaker 1: proper Sasarak Chris Fame New Orleans drink, there's a there's
Speaker 1: an absent wash of the glass before the drink is poured,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's It was like a bitter You
Speaker 1: wouldn't you wouldn't just fill up a cocktail glass with it.
Speaker 1: You would just have a dash of it for flavoring.
Speaker 1: Right now, while it wasn't the central ingredient, and a
Speaker 1: lot of cocktails, there was of course a ton of
Speaker 1: just straight drinking of absinthe right rights with water and
Speaker 1: sugar in the traditional preparation. Yeah, now wonder which he
Speaker 1: says that by eight seventy though, that's when you saw
Speaker 1: absent cocktails as a thing. So the absent frope, which
Speaker 1: was absent shaken with a lot of ice and then
Speaker 1: strained into a glass. Now, Wondridge points out that according
Speaker 1: to a writer by the name of Clarence Louis Cullen,
Speaker 1: another member of the Sporting Fraternity, he thought that that
Speaker 1: the the absent frope was just the right drink to
Speaker 1: have a first thing in the morning when you've got quote,
Speaker 1: a head the size of a bird cage and a
Speaker 1: mouth that smelled like a motorman's glove. So it would
Speaker 1: have been the perfect hangover cure. I guess, uh, yeah
Speaker 1: that I don't know the idea. I mean, all of
Speaker 1: moralization on what people should and shouldn't drink aside, I
Speaker 1: think the idea of curing a hangover with more alcohol
Speaker 1: is just disgusting. I would agree that tends to be
Speaker 1: my read on the situation as well, that the hair
Speaker 1: of the dog and all that. But but hey, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, people consume them. The absent rope was popular.
Speaker 1: There were even songs about it. Yeah, I actually had
Speaker 1: to look up the the Absinthe Frappe, a song that
Speaker 1: was referenced in wond Rich's book, and I found the
Speaker 1: lyrics lyrics by Glenn McDonough. I think this was from
Speaker 1: a Broadway play. And so the song is about the
Speaker 1: Absinthe Frappe, and the lyrics go, it will free you
Speaker 1: first from the burning thirst that is born of a
Speaker 1: night of the bowl, like a sun twel rise through
Speaker 1: the inky skies that so heavily hang over your soul.
Speaker 1: At the first cool sip on your fevored lip, you
Speaker 1: determined to live through the day. Life's again worthwhile. As
Speaker 1: with a dawning smile, you imbibe your absinthe Frappe. I
Speaker 1: think that's given a little too much credit to the
Speaker 1: to the drink. I think so that feels a little
Speaker 1: bit a little bit like marketing. Yeah, but anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so you said absence was being adopted in the United States.
Speaker 1: Absence drinking was very popular, especially in France. In the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. It became very fashionable in Europe, especially France
Speaker 1: and Switzerland. Famous artists and intellectuals were notorious absence drinkers.
Speaker 1: For example, of French poets like Baudelaire and rambeau Verlaine.
Speaker 1: In an eighteen sixty pamphlet by Henri Ballesta called Absinthe
Speaker 1: at Absinthe Tours, he calls these types of people, quote
Speaker 1: the brilliant young men on the boulevard who were the
Speaker 1: absinthe drinkers. You know, these were the people who were
Speaker 1: out there making absinthe cool. And it was also reportedly
Speaker 1: popular with Oscar Wilde and continental artists like Van Gogh.
Speaker 1: Did I say I've always my whole life, said van
Speaker 1: Go And now I'm retraining to say van Gogh. Oh
Speaker 1: is that the preferred pronunciation? Is it? I thought I
Speaker 1: thought I heard you say it that way one time. No,
Speaker 1: maybe I coughed a little bit. I thought it was
Speaker 1: van Go. I've been saying van Go. I I grew
Speaker 1: up saying van Go. We have to let you know.
Speaker 1: We just looked it up and it's and it's. The
Speaker 1: Internet says it's Vincent van holl Okay, Well, I think
Speaker 1: I might just stick to van Go for simplicity. Set Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: according to Amy Stewart in The Drunken Botanist, well I
Speaker 1: thought this was really interesting. One explanation for the explosion
Speaker 1: of popularity of absinthe in Europe in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: can actually be traced to a plant parasite. Anytime there's
Speaker 1: a good parasite story, we gotta do it on stuff
Speaker 1: up your mind. So it is the Philoxera pest or
Speaker 1: Daktulos fira vitifolia, and so none other than Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: that Thomas Jefferson, not some other. Thomas Jefferson had tried
Speaker 1: to cultivate both native American and imported European grape varieties
Speaker 1: for making wine within the United States, and neither of
Speaker 1: them worked. The vineyards were just no good. And the
Speaker 1: reason for this, Stewart says, is that the American varieties
Speaker 1: failed because they just don't make good wine, and the
Speaker 1: European varieties failed because, unlike the sturdy, resistant American grape vines,
Speaker 1: the delicate European grape vines were susceptible to attacks from
Speaker 1: a tiny insect much like the apid that was only
Speaker 1: found in the Americas, and this is philox Era. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: before anybody knew about this, the Americans had made gifts
Speaker 1: of native American grape vines sent them to France, and
Speaker 1: much like a deadly spider hiding in a bag of bananas.
Speaker 1: The philox A repast was thus lee imported to Europe
Speaker 1: and they laid waste to a vast new landscape of
Speaker 1: maladapted grapes. And as a result, the French wine making
Speaker 1: industry was severely damaged and and production was limited throughout
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Well, so Frenchmen were deprived of their
Speaker 1: wine right. And this this mattered because wine was seen
Speaker 1: by them as as like a you know, a drink
Speaker 1: of rectitude. It's a family drink, it's a moral drink,
Speaker 1: it's an upstanding and civilized drink. These other drinks like absinthe,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much. But anyway, Suart claims that it's
Speaker 1: because of this severe shortage of wine due to the
Speaker 1: parasite infestation that absinthe became the drink of choice in
Speaker 1: cafes in France in the nineteenth century, feeding this surge
Speaker 1: in absence consumption that culminated in the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: in early nineteen hundreds. So the idea here's this kind
Speaker 1: of forced the birth of absent culture because people had
Speaker 1: to embrace it to a certain degree and then kind
Speaker 1: of stuck with it. Right, But absent, like I said,
Speaker 1: was not viewed as this, you know, family values kind
Speaker 1: of drink like wine was. And so there were plenty
Speaker 1: of people spreading a message of fear and suspicion about
Speaker 1: the Green Titania. And I want to read one quote
Speaker 1: because I think it's amazing from a New York Times
Speaker 1: article about absentthe They had an absent scare piece running
Speaker 1: in December eighteen eighty New York Times. Yeah, so here
Speaker 1: it goes. Quote. A French physician of eminence has recently
Speaker 1: declared that it is ten times more pernicious than ordinary intemperance,
Speaker 1: meaning ordinary alcohol, and that it very seldom happens that
Speaker 1: the habit, once fixed, can be unloosed. The same authority
Speaker 1: says that the increase of insanity is largely due to
Speaker 1: absentthe I didn't even know there was an increase in
Speaker 1: insanity around eighteen eighty, but can tinuing it exercises a
Speaker 1: deadly fascination, the source of which scientists have vainly tried
Speaker 1: to discover, although they have no trouble ascertaining it's terrible effects.
Speaker 1: It's a moderate use speedily acts on the entire nervous
Speaker 1: system in general, and the brain, in particular, in which
Speaker 1: it induces organic changes with accompanying derangement of all the
Speaker 1: mental powers. The habitual drinker becomes at first dull, languid,
Speaker 1: is soon completely brutalized, and then goes raving mad. He
Speaker 1: has at last holy or partially paralyzed, unless, as often happens,
Speaker 1: disordered liver and stomach brings a quicker end. Was this
Speaker 1: your experience at kimble House? No, though, I though to
Speaker 1: be fair, I I am not a frequenter of absinthe cafes,
Speaker 1: and I guess this is referring to chronic use. These
Speaker 1: would be the absent themes which I would admit. Chronic
Speaker 1: use of absinthe. You know, drinking a lot of absence
Speaker 1: regularly probably does produce some very bad effects in people.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's not the absinthe. Uh, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: the absinthe in particular. We can look at the details
Speaker 1: of this. So fear of this condition called quote absinthe
Speaker 1: is um believed to be separate from and worse than
Speaker 1: regular alcoholism, spread throughout these temperance minded circles in Europe,
Speaker 1: and at the time there also seemed to be scientific
Speaker 1: evidence backing this up. For example, the work of the
Speaker 1: French physician Valentine Magnon. According to one two nine review
Speaker 1: of Magnon's work, he found that this alcohol soluble component
Speaker 1: that existed in wormwood did cause a lot of bad things,
Speaker 1: including lapses of consciousness, myoclonic jerks, and tonic clonic convulsions
Speaker 1: in animals. So what was that component? While it was
Speaker 1: the natural plant essence found in wormwood known as thusion.
Speaker 1: More on that compound in a bit. But in addition
Speaker 1: looking at what caused this anti absinthe attitude, there were
Speaker 1: the called absinthe murders. Now there are multiple versions of
Speaker 1: this story reporting slightly different details, and the one I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna use comes from an article in Distillations magazine,
Speaker 1: which is published by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. But according
Speaker 1: to this version, in August nineteen o five, in the
Speaker 1: village of Communie, Switzerland, a French born laborer named Jean
Speaker 1: Lamfrey was getting ready for a day of hard work
Speaker 1: at a local vineyard and around daybreak he had a
Speaker 1: couple of shots of absinthe before heading off to work.
Speaker 1: But Launfrey wasn't done, he was just getting started. At lunch,
Speaker 1: he had six classes of wine. Then he had another
Speaker 1: glass of wine before heading home. On the way home,
Speaker 1: he snagged a black coffee with brandy. Then when he
Speaker 1: got home, he had another leader of wine. Then Launfrey
Speaker 1: got into an argument with his what with his wife,
Speaker 1: and tragically he became enraged and he shot her with
Speaker 1: a rifle, and then he shot his two daughters. Now
Speaker 1: it's a horrible crime. The tale gets significantly less funny
Speaker 1: the right there and right, But the lesson a lot
Speaker 1: of people apparently took away from it was that absinthe
Speaker 1: that must have messed him up. Obviously, if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll regard this as a kind of absurd conclusion,
Speaker 1: Like it seems like there is at least one other
Speaker 1: major factor at play, maybe alcohol um. But so these
Speaker 1: forces combined, like the research on the effects of absinthe
Speaker 1: done by people like Magnon, and these stories of these crimes.
Speaker 1: There were some other crimes I think that were attributed
Speaker 1: to absent There was some kind of axe or hatchet
Speaker 1: murderer I think that was referred to as an absinthe murder.
Speaker 1: And they combined into this whirlwind of anti absinthe public
Speaker 1: sentiment that eventually led to the banning of absinthe in
Speaker 1: the United States and much of Europe starting around nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: and that lasted for nearly a century. So what is
Speaker 1: all the fuss about, Like, what what's actually going on
Speaker 1: in absinthe and in the wormwood plant? And wasn't justifying
Speaker 1: all of this backlash? So we mentioned though jone the
Speaker 1: compound though jone is an organic compound found in wormwood,
Speaker 1: but also found in herbs like sage, So if you
Speaker 1: ever made sage stuffing there, you might be getting some
Speaker 1: through jane there. Uh. And the modern scientific consensus affirms
Speaker 1: that it can be toxic at large doses, primarily acting
Speaker 1: as a convulsant and also being associated with kidney failure,
Speaker 1: so it can cause convulsions. Uh. And this might be
Speaker 1: related to the fact that it was, you know, accused
Speaker 1: of being a cause of epilepsy. At great enough concentrations,
Speaker 1: it could also lead to death. There are a couple isomers.
Speaker 1: There's alpha though jone and beta though Jane without the
Speaker 1: alpha isomer being the more toxic of the two. And
Speaker 1: the primary method of action in the body is that
Speaker 1: attacks the nervous system by inhibiting the activation of GABBA receptors.
Speaker 1: But is through Jane really to blame for the so
Speaker 1: called effects of absynthei is um and all of these
Speaker 1: mythological accusations that absence could cause hallucinations and other stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I think the mythology of it is
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind at all times. Kind of getting
Speaker 1: back to the whole marketing of the cocktail. To what
Speaker 1: extent does I mean you're already drinking, but then if
Speaker 1: there's this mystical quality involved, does it give you license
Speaker 1: to engage and maybe a little more um inappropriate behavior
Speaker 1: than normal. There's a there's a quote that I run
Speaker 1: across before that I always got to kick out of
Speaker 1: from Ernest Hemingway. He said, got tight last night on
Speaker 1: absentthe and did knife tricks, great success, shooting the knife
Speaker 1: into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat
Speaker 1: hell out of all furniture. And you can always claim
Speaker 1: the woodworms did it. There you go. You can always
Speaker 1: claim the woodworms did it. You can always say, hey,
Speaker 1: it's the wormwood, it's the it's the absinthe that's responsible.
Speaker 1: I think tight is a euphemism that we should bring
Speaker 1: back for for drunkenness. Yeah, I think so too. I
Speaker 1: can I can just easily imagin gen the the violent
Speaker 1: tightness of the the absent drinkers psyche. I remember tight
Speaker 1: also being the drunkenness euphemism used in some classic memo.
Speaker 1: Or remember reading about Winston Churchill or his his generals
Speaker 1: in World War two or something. We're talking about how
Speaker 1: Winston was quite tight last night when it was giving
Speaker 1: us our strategy. So myths aside, modern research shows that wormwood,
Speaker 1: you know, isn't really quite that bad. So yes, the
Speaker 1: jone can be dangerous compound at high levels. It can
Speaker 1: cast seizure and death at high doses, but there's actually
Speaker 1: very little of it in absinthe and other liqueurs. Most
Speaker 1: of the tales of absinthe fuel madness probably come from
Speaker 1: the fact that there's just a high alcohol content in
Speaker 1: absence is compared to other, um, other other alcohols out there.
Speaker 1: It was traditionally bottled at a b V, so that's
Speaker 1: twice as alcoholic as your common gen So you the
Speaker 1: scare piece of New York Times, I think it said
Speaker 1: that it was ten times as dangerous as normal alcohol.
Speaker 1: Now you can without quibbling on how you you factor
Speaker 1: the numbers here, I think you could say it's at
Speaker 1: least twice as dangerous as normal alcohol, because it's twice
Speaker 1: as strong as most alcohols that would have been up
Speaker 1: there on the bar for your perusal. But then again,
Speaker 1: the traditional preparation about of absinthe as it served in
Speaker 1: the French cafes was to dilute it, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so if you're diluting it, I wouldn't even say it goes.
Speaker 1: It goes as far as the alcohol concentration, and it
Speaker 1: would would lead you to believe, because so the traditional
Speaker 1: UH production is you get this glass, it's got specially
Speaker 1: shaped glass back to these special glasses and making an
Speaker 1: event out of it. It's got this kind of bulge
Speaker 1: in the bottom, and your absence goes down in the
Speaker 1: bulge at the bottom, and then you put a slotted
Speaker 1: spoon on the top of the glass with a sugar
Speaker 1: cube on it, and then they would dribble cold ice
Speaker 1: cold water over the sugar cube and the spoon into
Speaker 1: the drink, and when the water hit the drink, it
Speaker 1: do this very interesting thing where the clear green absence
Speaker 1: would suddenly froth up and become this uh. It's often
Speaker 1: described as a pale green, milky type appearance. And I've
Speaker 1: seen to do that. It does quite look like that,
Speaker 1: like a cloud emerging in the depths of a crystal ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's referred to as the lush, and it's very interesting
Speaker 1: because because you're like, wow, what's going on there? Chemically?
Speaker 1: What's going on is that the the water is is
Speaker 1: breaking up this the way that the oils from the
Speaker 1: plants are held in suspension in the liquor, and when
Speaker 1: the water enters it, it creates this emulsion essentially, like
Speaker 1: you know, you'd create an emulsion if you're making a
Speaker 1: vinaigrette and the salad dressing or something like that. The
Speaker 1: oils and the water get emulsified and so it clouds
Speaker 1: up and becomes rather beautiful. It's kind of nice it's
Speaker 1: this production. But it also does lead to the fact
Speaker 1: that you're deluding the drink with water, bringing it down
Speaker 1: probably closer to or even lower than the level of
Speaker 1: if you were dreating drinking a straight liquor of some
Speaker 1: other kind. And I believe in this space it's been
Speaker 1: a years since I had straight up absentthe in this scenario,
Speaker 1: it was at a place in New Orleans called Pravda.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still around. But it was
Speaker 1: a like a Soviet theme, like the word for truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that, and also with the Soviet publication, and they
Speaker 1: did the whole ceremony. As I recall, they also had
Speaker 1: a version that involved fire, like a small amount of fire.
Speaker 1: Nothing flashy, no blueblazers here. But if of course fire
Speaker 1: is involved, you have the potential to burn off some
Speaker 1: of the alcohol as well, which would thus, uh make
Speaker 1: its alcoholic punch a little less. Yeah. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: you've had absence in in this case, I've had absence.
Speaker 1: It seems to be clear that modern absinthe is, you know,
Speaker 1: not any more dangerous than any other alcoholic drink, with
Speaker 1: all of the things that we should understand about the
Speaker 1: dangerous regular alcoholic drinks. Um, but there there, it doesn't
Speaker 1: carry this special drug like or poor isn't like property.
Speaker 1: So what was going on with all those experiments in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds showing absence to be a poisonous horror. Well,
Speaker 1: recently people have gone back and reviewed this research, and
Speaker 1: generally the problem appears to be that they were testing
Speaker 1: the effects of not absinthe itself, but of ridiculously high
Speaker 1: concentrations of thusion in the form of extracts and pure
Speaker 1: wormwood essence oil essential oils UH. And so the thing
Speaker 1: we know about doses is the dose makes the poison. Right,
Speaker 1: pretty much all of the food and drink we consume
Speaker 1: on a regular basis contains compounds that can be toxic
Speaker 1: and extremely large doses. So the question is, if you
Speaker 1: go out and get a bottle of absinthe, does it
Speaker 1: actually contain enough thujone to hurt you? Well, if you're
Speaker 1: getting it from a reputable distiller, the answer is no.
Speaker 1: So modern absinthe really doesn't have enough through jone uh
Speaker 1: to cause any of the effects in absence drinkers concentrations
Speaker 1: are small enough, the alcohol content is high enough that
Speaker 1: you would encounter toxicity due to alcohol way before you
Speaker 1: would ingest enough through jone to hurt you. But there's
Speaker 1: another question, what about the pre band absinthe, because maybe
Speaker 1: what's going on is that absinthe is safer now and
Speaker 1: safety standards were much lower back then. Well, there's actually
Speaker 1: been research on this as well. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight there was a paper published by Dirk Lachenmeyer
Speaker 1: and at All called a Chemical Composition of vintage Preban
Speaker 1: absinthe with special reference to through Joan, finn shone, pinot, camphone, menthal, copper,
Speaker 1: and antimony concentration. So this is looking at old old
Speaker 1: bottles of absinthe from before the absinthe ban to say, okay,
Speaker 1: did they have something really poisonous going on in them?
Speaker 1: It looked at thirteen samples of vintage absinthe bottles dating
Speaker 1: back to before nineteen fifteen, and they were analyzed for
Speaker 1: toxicity including naturally occurring herbal lessences like through Joan all
Speaker 1: the ones I mentioned before, and then mental higher alcohols, copper,
Speaker 1: and antimony, and then they used gas chromatography and mass
Speaker 1: spectrometry analysis to reveal that quote. The total through jone
Speaker 1: content of Preban absinthe was found to range between about
Speaker 1: zero point five and about forty eight point three milligrams
Speaker 1: per leader of absinthe, with an average concentration of about
Speaker 1: twenty five milligrams per leader and a median concentration of
Speaker 1: thirty three milligrams per leader. How much is that? Turns
Speaker 1: out not that much. This shows that vintage absinthe from
Speaker 1: the pre Ban era is pretty much comparable to post
Speaker 1: ban and modern commercial absinthe in terms of toxic content. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they concluded, quote all things considered, nothing besides ethanol
Speaker 1: was found in the absence that was able to explain
Speaker 1: the syndrome absinthe is um. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: that's a good note to end on the absinthe discussion with,
Speaker 1: because from my perspective, I think the reasonable conclusion is
Speaker 1: that absinthe is um was in fact alcoholism by another name,
Speaker 1: rebranded alcoholism if you will. And this is a good reminder,
Speaker 1: I guess not to end on a down note, but
Speaker 1: but that we should always be careful when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about about alcoholic drinks, because, as we pointed out, I mean,
Speaker 1: ethanol is in some sense a poison. It is in
Speaker 1: some sense a thing that is impairing our bodies. Now, generally,
Speaker 1: responsible adults can learn to manage their ingestion of ethanol
Speaker 1: in a way that's not too harmful in the long
Speaker 1: term to themselves or others. But it's it's something we
Speaker 1: have to be careful with. It's a it's a dragon
Speaker 1: in a cage. Yeah, I mean, if you, if you
Speaker 1: really tease it apart, what is any cocktail but a
Speaker 1: balance of poisons that you then drink uh, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's there's certainly a danger in consuming too much,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, and certain people are going to
Speaker 1: be more susceptible to problems than others. So certainly use
Speaker 1: use caution, uh, employer better judgment when choosing witch cocktails
Speaker 1: and how many to consume or if to consume at all.
Speaker 1: And again, to come back to mocktails, I will say
Speaker 1: there are some fabulous mocktail recipes out there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So for our listeners who are underage or who are teetotallers, Robert,
Speaker 1: what what's a great mocktail for that you would recommend? Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a recent New York Times article that came out
Speaker 1: because when they're not when they're not shaming absinthe in
Speaker 1: previous times, they're putting out mocktail articles in our modern times.
Speaker 1: But there's a mocktail article that came out recently, and
Speaker 1: they included a recipe for something called a Mombai mule,
Speaker 1: which you can serve in the copper uh containers if
Speaker 1: you like. But it's a wonderful concoction that has uh
Speaker 1: believe it was a coconut cream or coconut milk. A
Speaker 1: few different spices, some citrus, and it has all the
Speaker 1: complexities because I guess one of the things that you
Speaker 1: instantly think, what if you take the liquor and the
Speaker 1: liqueurs out of a cocktail, what are you left with
Speaker 1: but some juices? Well, this drink, uh, I think is
Speaker 1: a nice answer to that, because you get this this
Speaker 1: balance of different flavor notes uh in the ingredients without
Speaker 1: actually having to engage alcohol. So look around. You know
Speaker 1: there's some definitely some lesser mocktails out there, but but
Speaker 1: there are some very finely crafted concoctions that don't involve
Speaker 1: alcohol but do give you this appreciation for the process
Speaker 1: and and and also in appreciation for just the rich
Speaker 1: flavor profile. Though my one criticism is that they too,
Speaker 1: they do tend to go down a bit fast without
Speaker 1: the alcohol in them. Yeah. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: told you this. When I was a kid, I was
Speaker 1: a big fan of virgin bloody Mary's. Oh but bloody
Speaker 1: Mary with no alcohol in it? Uh. Though it wasn't
Speaker 1: even I wasn't even preparing what would be recognized by
Speaker 1: a bartender as a proper bloody Mary mix. What I
Speaker 1: was drinking was like a can of vate with a
Speaker 1: lot of tabasco sauce and celery salts in it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the rob Roys and the Shirley Temples.
Speaker 1: Like I remember going out to dinner and and my
Speaker 1: dad got a cocktail and I got to get a
Speaker 1: rob Roy And you know, that's just what it's. It's
Speaker 1: it's not the most finely balanced of a of a mocktail.
Speaker 1: It's just like ginger rail and uh and in my experience,
Speaker 1: like the bad Maraschino cherry is not the real Maraschino chair.
Speaker 1: Um Maraschino Cherry is, by the way, a fabulous story
Speaker 1: just about those and I believe that shows up in
Speaker 1: The Drunken Botanists. So another reason to pick up that book. Well,
Speaker 1: if we ever come back to doing more episodes on
Speaker 1: food and drink, maybe we should explore cherry science. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much. I mean, we've touched on cherry science
Speaker 1: a little bit in our most recent Dangerous Foods episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't grind up those pits, yeah, because that would be
Speaker 1: that would make for pretty nefarious cocktail right there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so hey, if you want to explore some of the
Speaker 1: links we talked about here, check out the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode is have to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find podcast videos, blog post links out
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Speaker 1: Who knows what they'll be in the future will probably
Speaker 1: be on those two. We will probably active and if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, as always,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.