Which drink was banned in france in 1915

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July 6, June 26, Share Tweet Email Print. Weekly Digest. Have a correction or comment about this article? Please contact us. Absinthe was first made, not in France, but just across the border in the Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland.

And a Swiss judge recently approved a request to give the region exclusive rights to produce it. For the moment, this ruling applies only in Switzerland, which is not a member of the European Union - and so has limited impact.

But because of Switzerland's close ties with the EU, it is possible that the Swiss could seek to extend the ruling across the block. Producers say that this is what has galvanised the French government to lift the ban now. France would be the biggest loser if such a ruling were to be extended, but with the drink still technically illegal at home, it would have found it virtually impossible to contest. Absinthe drinker Clement Arnoux hopes that many more bars and shops will start to sell absinthe now.

But most of all, he wants France to reclaim what he sees as part of its heritage. Switzerland 'to lift absinthe ban'. Drink me. He adapted a local herbal folk remedy to cure patients, and, on his death-bed, passed on the secret recipe. Fast forward five years and we find Henri-Louis Pernod, father of the brand still in existence today, opening a distillery in Couvet, then, in , to dodge the excise-men, a bigger one over the border in Pontarlier, France.

Before long there were 22 distilleries utilising the locally-harvested plant — Artemisia absinthium — which, with the addition of imported Spanish aniseed, gave the drink its emerald-green hue. Mass-production cut prices, and a disastrous wine harvest propelled absinthe to the top of the French drinks charts.

Named for the swirling emerald opalescence triggered by the addition of iced water to the neat liquid, both the working class and wealthy bourgeoisie consumed 36 million litres a year. A stroll through Montmartre at 5. A single absinthe was tolerated by the waiters. Drinkers solved that problem by moving to another, and another and another…. His artistic life ended as abruptly as his relationship with Verlaine, who in a fit of drunken madness, shot the young Rimbaud.

Symbolist Alfred Jarry rode his bicycle with his face painted green in celebration of the joys of absinthe. She told him to make her. He took his loaded rifle from the wall and shot her through the forehead. When his daughter Rose came to investigate, he shot her too. Then he went into the next room, walked to the crib of his other daughter, Blanche, and shot her. From this domestic tragedy the people of Commugny drew one inescapable conclusion: the absinthe made him do it.

Anti-absinthe sentiment had been bubbling throughout Europe, and in Switzerland it boiled over. Prohibitionists could not have imagined a more potent metaphor for social decay. The lawyers called to the stand Albert Mahaim, a leading Swiss psychiatrist.

The trial lasted a single day. Found guilty on four counts of murder—his wife, an examination revealed, had been pregnant with a son—Lanfray hanged himself in prison three days later.

The murders energized prohibitionists—the drink became a Swiss national concern. In Switzerland declared absinthe illegal. Belgium had banned it in and the Netherlands in In the U. While temperance movements had blossomed worldwide in the late s and early s, never before had an individual alcoholic drink been targeted.

Published in the satirical journal Don Quichotte. Absinthe was not always the devil in a bottle. The French name derives from the Greek absinthion , which the Greeks used not as an intoxicant but as a medicine. Typically made by soaking wormwood leaves Artemisia absinthium in wine or spirits, this ancient absinthe supposedly aided childbirth.

Hippocrates, often considered the first physician, prescribed it for menstrual pain, jaundice, anemia, and rheumatism. Roman scholar Pliny the Elder describes chariot-race champions drinking absinthium , its taste reminding them that glory has its bitter side—a sentiment wholeheartedly embraced by later enthusiasts. Throughout the centuries wormwood remained a folk medicine.

Galen, a physician during the second century CE, suggested it for stomach relaxation and as a remedy for swooning. When the bubonic plague returned to England in the 17th and 18th centuries, many people burned wormwood to fumigate infected houses.

For centuries wormwood drinks remained primarily medicinal. Then in France conquered Algeria, beginning its expansion into North Africa. As local resistance grew, the French army sent reinforcements, amounting to , soldiers by The heat and bad water took their toll, with fever tearing through the ranks.

The men received wormwood to quell fevers, prevent dysentery, and ward off insects. They took to spiking their wine with it, which cut the bitterness and provided an alcoholic punch. At first absinthe remained a middle- and upper-class indulgence. But it had an exotic appeal; legends grew about its long history and supposedly hallucinogenic effects. Savvy customers realized that with its high proof, absinthe delivered more force for the franc.