Absinthe: The bad boy of liquors

Were you to line up famous scapegoats, along with the biblical Eve, hapless Cubs fan Steve Bartman and Mrs. O'Leary's arsonist cow, you'd have to give a nod to absinthe, the bitter, anise-and-fennel-flavoured liquor. It's the most excoriated alcohol in history. While gin was once known as Mother's Ruin, only absinthe has been tried — if only in the court of public opinion — for actual murders.

The bibulous may know the story: when a labourer in Switzerland killed his wife and daughters in 1905 after drinking absinthe, the outcry was enormous. Suspicions about absinthe and its connection to an artsy, dissolute bohemian set had swirled for years. That the man in question was a notorious alcoholic who had imbibed a Sea World tank's worth of other booze leading up to the crime made no nevermind: A petition was circulated, and absinthe was outlawed in Switzerland. Similar interdictions followed in multiple European countries; in the United States, a ban on absinthe preceded full nationwide Prohibition by eight years.

Absinthe's long-controversial ingredient (the scape-herb, if you will) is Artemisia absinthium — grand wormwood — which contains thujone, a component related to menthol. Thujone in massive quantities can cause convulsions, but legal absinthe contains less than 10 parts per million. "You'll get more thujone from the sage in your Thanksgiving stuffing" than from absinthe, Robinson says.

Peter Ahlf, Mt. Defiance's distiller, had a similar story when I later visited the distillery. "I have a hard time imagining how someone could screw up the distillation process badly enough" to even come close to the legal thujone limit, he said.