I wil "Close the deal"!

true absinthe is a product of wormwood - it's illegal everywhere. while licorice flavored liqueurs may imitate the flavor, it not only toxic, but a narcotic. it killed poe and is not legally produced anywhere ... with the possible exception of backward, 3d world countries.

my mistake, that wouldn't exclude france after all, would it?

Salut/Hi Mike Stanton,

le/on Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:43:25 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

Sigh, another little "dig"? How about explaining to me how I can legally get some wine to my many American friends from anywhere in Europe? Or is the 3rd world only to be defined in American terms?

From what I have read, real Absinthe that contains the herb wormwood has been banned for sale in most of Europe, including France, and the US for a very long time. Although wormwood can have toxic effects if used in excess, the old Absinthe sold in Europe had an extremely high alcohol content, so just how much the wormworm and excessive alcohol each contributed to the toxic effects noticed for chronic large users of Absinthe is open to debate. Wormwood was used at one time to rid people of worms, but long ago was replaced by much more effective and less toxic medication. Although illegal to sell in most places, you can make your own Absinthe fairly easily. It only involves soaking a mixture of seeds, spices and herbs in pure grain alcohol that can be bought in many parts of the US and probably elsewhere. After a time the spirit is filtered and perhaps diluted a bit with water. Too much dilution makes oils start to separate. The main flavor is that of anise and star anise. The wormwood itself can be bought in the US at stores that sell herbs including some health food stores. Both untreated wormwood and wormwood that has been extracted to remove the active ingredients are available. True Absinthe is quite bitter because of the wormwood, and not a taste that many would enjoy at first, if ever. There are substtutes for it made all over the world including Pernod in France. New Orleans once made Herbsaint and may still do. Anise flavored drinks are popular over much of the world, and most countries have one or two of their own. They can range from a near syrup to dry, and from weak to extremely high in alcohol.

In the late 1800s, wine containing coca leaf extract was freely sold both in Europe and the US. It was sold to help increase your energy, which it may well have done, because coca leaves are the source of cocaine. Even the Sear's catalog in the US sold coca wine all over the US. One might speculate how much coca wine was used to increase energy and how much was used for purposes that nice Victorian ladies would not even mention. Of course coca wines were banned in most places in the early 1900s.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

"Mike Stanton" in message news:1mm4d.12875$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.texas.rr.com...

If anyone is really interested in absinthe, check

or Baggott's synopsis of the pharmacological literature at the UCSF medical school (on and off line for several years), or Marie-Claude Delahaye's "L'absinthe : histoire de la fee verte," or the excellent and popular book in English (inspired, some argue, by Delahaye), Barnaby Conrad III 's "Absinthe: History in a Bottle," or even the notes on Conrad's book that I posted on amazon.com in 2001. I have experience with various absinthe products from various countries in various eras (many, not all, current products are pretty hokey, one has been described as expensive "Scope mouthwash," another as having a "Uranium-green" color -- they are rarely judged very interesting except to wide-eyed young Americans, and they are uniformly expensive). I might humbly suggest instead artisanal Bourbons like Woodford Reserve, or good single malts, they taste infinitely better, and are much cheaper also. (The last bit is repeated from rec.food.drink, where I first answered an absinthe query in 1987 and last answered one on March 29, and where technically this topic belongs. Absinthe is the Principal Perennial Posting topic on that forum.)

True absinthe is not illegal everywhere (many countries never banned it because it was never a problem); it has been used customarily in some European locations even where illegal (example in amazon.com notes on another Conrad book, "The Martini"); the dominant principle in the Wormwood plant (Artemisia absinthium), a terpenoid ketone called thujone, was identified in 1963 as the same component found in sage, which is Generally Regarded As Safe (acc. to sources I cited above); feeverte.net, I think, has an explanation for the actual, observed special psychoactivity of true absinthe liquor, a synergism of several herbs not individually psychoactive (I cannot vouch for this explanation as I have not yet read it); the international bans on absinthe liquor starting in the early 1900s, a vanguard of the Prohibition movement, could hardly have benefited Pernod, a firm founded solely to make absinthe and the firm that in fact popularized this product (see Conrad etc.); part of the great notoriety in the 19th century may have been due not to the herbal content of absinthe at all, but to the use of poorly distilled spirits by the cheap imitators of Pernod, cases of methanol poisoning were reported, and moreover, even "good" absinthe runs 70% alcohol (140 "proof"); absinthe might have intoxicated Poe but it was a fight that killed him, or so his biographers have reported for many years, of course they could be wrong; and finally, absinthe figures in many interesting, quotable stories, including the following, which I'll present here in the version published by a popular expatriate US food writer in 1958:

-------- The eccentricities of the Jura streams are vertical as well as horizontal. They have a disconcerting habit of suddenly disappearing into sinkholes ... and at last, when the ground drops away, of gushing forth again from the side of a cliff in what is known as a resurgence... This phenomenon was dramatized in 1901 when dwellers near the "source" of the Loue were delighted to discover that it seemed to have turned to absinthe -- weak in flavor, but nevertheless quite palatable. Two days before, the Pernod factory at Pontarlier, where absinthe was made, had burned down, and some 200,000 gallons of it had poured into the Doubs. It was therefore deduced that the Loue was a resurgence of part of the waters of the Doubs. -- Waverly Root

Your health! -- Max

I am growing increasingly tired of this. Veeeery tired.

This is a discussion forum about wine, and anything else is OT.

I would be willing to accept some intelligent political discussion about wine countries, but the above is not political at all, it is just plain stupidity, and I am tired of asinine comments. If you have some kind of deep seated neuronal unbalance that cannot be cured, that is your problem, please keep it for yourself to enjoy. Why advertise it?

I happen to spend a lot of time in the US and thankfully I have only met intelligent articulate individuals, so I don't believe that making stupid gratuitous comments about 60 million people is acceptable there. I happen to live with those 60 million people, as a foreigner, and have never met one with the kind of mind challenge that is manifest in this repetitive harrassment.

So why would it be OK on this forum?

I enjoy this place because of the intelligence of most of the posters, their humour and their knowledge about wine. Wine is a subject where buffoons and pompous idiots are easily unmasked, a subject requiring one to be subtle and sensitive, so I don't see why we should admit idiotic comments of the kind above, alas more and more frequent.

I propose that we start taking a firmer stance against abusive ignorant arrogant generalizations of the kind above.

Don't pollute this great newsgroup with your stupid bullyish uncultured crass drivel.

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

From recent courtesy reminder:

7) Personally, I find it less than helpful to make generalizations about people based on where they live, what they do outside wine, etc. People who invoke offensive offtopic subjects on a regular basis deserve to be killfiled, period. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Sorrry Mike, what happened to the food in alt.food.wine?

Salut/Hi Chuck,

le/on Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:54:52 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

This is a common mistake, Chuck. By the same token one could say "what happened to the "ALT"? The hierarchical structure means that each subsequent level is increasingly restrictive.

So alt.food may not exist as a newsgroup, but if it did it would allow for anything to do with food in the broadest meaning.

alt.food.european = general discussion of non european food would be excluded, but discussion of french, italian, german etc would be fine

alt.food.european.french would further refine discussion to french food. By implication, if just these three groups existed (unlikely) then discussion of all american, asian, african fusion etc food would take place in alt.food

all european food _other_ than french would be discussed in alt.food.european

and only french food could be discussed in the third one.

So in our case,

alt.food.wine is there to discuss wine, and not beer, cider, gin, or other beverages, nor food generally.

However, given the people here, and the fact that many of us are interested in good food, one or two of the less disciplined amongst us (me in particular) feel it's ok to talk about the matching of food and wine (with the occasional excursion into other drinks) and the occasional recipe. But it is in the knowledge that strictly speaking it's off topic and I do it under sufferance.

I certainly wouldn't use the newsgroup to make snide little sniping remarks at American, British, Irish or ANYONE'S eating habits or food.

Hi Chuck,

I'm not Mike, but will answer. The alt hierarchy is similar to folders in a computer- it gets more specific. This isn't alt.foodandwine. Within alt.food there are groups such as alt.food.hamburger, alt.food.icecream, alt.food.coffee, etc. Each of them is supposed to be specifically about the last in the group name.

Virtually everyone here is into food, and no one minds an occasional detour into recipes, etc. (or if they do mind, they must be pretty quiet about it). But as Mike says, this is a wine newsgroup. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

"Chuck Reid" wrote in news:10l5klufcnjema7 @corp.supernews.com:

It's "alt.food.wine" as opposed to "alt.emulators.wine"? Which doesn't seem to turn up in Googlegroups, but does on one of my servers ;)

d:D

Why discuss F____ at all? I refuse even to acknowledge its existence, to pronounce it publicly, or to spell it out. This practice of mine dates back quite a number of years, long before the recent fall-out between this great nation and that formerly great one.

Remember, Chauvin was F_____.

Why any Italian would live in that cess-pool is beyond my comprehension.

Exactly Ian, Earlier this year, my wife and I showed the mother of one of a.f.w's regular contributors, the delights of Auckland city.

In return, I was dispatched (ex Chicago, via FedEx) a couple of bottles of a more notable Zin, as a thank you gift.

This wine arrived, delivered to my office desk 14,000km away, in less than

72 hours, perfectly legally, customs cleared, no duty or taxes payable.

However, I cannot reciprocate, lest I go on the "most wanted" list, subject to possible arrest and internment in Guantanamo Bay!!! when I next enter the US - and the product confiscated when it arrived in the US.

Our friend understands that he will have to return to New Zealand to collect; a thought which is not unappealing !!!

Tell me, which country has third world standards, those with enlightened laws, or that country with some of the most archaic, backward "double-standards" around.

So, Mike Stanton, judge not, lest you be judged :-)))))

You guys really don't have a clue...

See I can buy a gun and have it shipped to my house but not a bottle of wine.

I think the real reason is the US Post office has workers from France and New Zealand there and they know you will drink the wine before it gets to me.:-)

Hey, we are not perfect...but we have lots of good guns.

Dick

Salut/Hi Chuck Reid,

le/on Thu, 23 Sep 2004 15:51:35 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

Sorry!

Ah... we so often fall for the siren songs of good food, don't we!

But Mike T is right, of course. When I post a recipe for something yummy here, I do it knowing that it's off topic and hoping that people will be indulgent (and also perhaps hoping that the group will recognise that I only really ever post something of real merit).

Not really, IMO. BUT one has to read Mike's comment in the context of the thread, I feel.

Agreed. But if I were to start using my love of - and knowledge of - french food to needle American (or New Zealand, or British) readers, then I would expect to be brought to heel pretty quickly for being off topic. So MY interpretation of the rules of on/off topic are that if it is entirely non-contentious and non aggressive, talking about slightly wider subjects which seem to interest many of us is ok (though admittedly off topic), within limits. I'd be the first to admit that this is an entirely personal view, and one which is NOT endorsed by any kind of charter or FAQ.

Attention Mark Lipton

I am sorry I cannot reciprocate by sending you a couple bottles of Central Otago Pinot Noir.

Can I send you an M16 instead?

Sure...you can send wine here. Here is the secret...pay the duty on your end and the recipients name is also the sender. In most states you can send to yourself.

Importing is an issue however but if you send to yourself and declare it works. Has for me anyway. dick

Well, in my experience, aperitifs have always been dry. But YMMV, and it did...

Vilco

No, finishing the beer fast, having a piece of bread & butter (hopefully arrived by this moment) to clean the palate, and then having my glass of champagne.

The derouting happened though this kind of order they probably never had before.

M.