![]() ![]() Brands seem less likely than with gentian, cinchona, and rhubarb to publicly declare wormwood among their ingredients, as the wormwood’s bad reputation persists to this day. Like absinthe, the flavor of wormwood does not dominate vermouth but just provides a subtle structure to the wine.īeyond absinthe and vermouth, wormwood is also included in bitter liqueurs like Gran Classico and other Campari-type red aperitivos, Ramazzotti, Zucca, and a whole lot of other amari that don’t disclose their ingredients. Vermouth is a fortified wine usually infused with some species of wormwood (it is not legally required in the United States) and other botanicals. Roman wormwood is often used in vermouth, and in fact the word “vermouth” comes from the German word wermut for wormwood. Then nearly a hundred years later and with modern scientific testing, absinthe was again allowed to be sold legally as long as the thujone content from the grand wormwood was kept at a low level. This huge jump in potency of beverages (even though absinthe is designed to be diluted with water at serving time) impacted the behavior of the people unused to drinking it.įurther, many unscrupulous manufacturers flavored and colored their absinthe with unsafe chemicals to take advantage of the absinthe “craze.” Between the social impacts of alcoholism and poisoning from imitation absinthe, the liquor gained a reputation as being dangerous and was blamed for causing homicidal insanity.Ībsinthe was banned in several countries in the early years of the 1900s. Obviously, spirits have a higher concentration of alcohol than wine, but absinthe is bottled at up to 70 percent ABV compared with 40 percent for most spirits. This pushed many people toward drinking spirits instead, as these could be made from a base of grains rather than grapes. In Europe near the middle of the 1800s, the phylloxera pest destroyed the vineyards of France and other countries, and thus greatly decreased the availability of wine. Grand wormwood contains a larger amount of it than other wormwoods, but not enough to earn its reputation as a plant that drives people to suffer hallucinations and go insane. Wormwood plants contain the compound thujone, which is toxic at high doses. The extreme bitterness of grand wormwood also helps stimulate digestion (in small quantities) and that is why it has made its way into so many aperitif and digestif beverages. Intensely bitter Artemisia absinthium has been used since ancient times in medicines, specifically as a botanical that helps expel intestinal parasites but for other conditions as well. When absinthe was suspected of causing all sorts of health issues around the turn of the nineteenth century, the French switched to pastis – an anise-flavored liqueur minus the grand wormwood. The flavor of nearly all absinthes is that of anise, which is imparted by actual anise, star anise, and/or fennel. The type included in absinthe is grand wormwood, Artemisia absinthium, but surprisingly, the herb that gives absinthe its name isn’t the herb that dominates its flavor. In fact, wormwood isn’t just one plant, but a term used for many plants in the Artemisia species. Wormwood is more than that one plant in absinthe that led to it being banned for nearly 100 years. ![]()
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