ihutton

Exactly so. There is no mention of thujone in those sources, only oil or essence of wormwood. As to how the misunderstanding arose, only Strang et al can answer that. Sadly you cannot buy any authentic absinthe over the counter in the US due to Federal regulations. However we have been shipping Un Emile 68 to private individuals the US by courier for over a year without any problems.

This is indeed the source. I don't have a copy of Duplais to hand at present but if you will accept a passage from Bedel's Trait complet de la fabrication des liqueurs et des vins liquoreux dits d'imitation Paris, 1899, (which many people think was largely a rehash of Duplais) I can email or fax it to you. I fear that I may try the forum's patience as well as my own typing accuracy if I copy out passages of 19th century French distillers handbooks! However, when Duplais wrote the original work in 1855 no one considered thujone an issue and there would have been no way of measuring it with any accuracy if anyone had had the inclination to do so. Duplais was interested in distillation and producing liqueurs and eaux de vie so he quoted figures for g/l of essence of wormwood but not concentrations of thujone. Mistakes such as this are not as uncommon as you might think and the fact that it has not been picked up sooner is partly an indictment of scientific and journalistic technique and partly due to the fact that Duplais's book is rather hard to come by. This is indeed possible and rigorous testing would be necessary to completely eliminate this possibility. On the weight of evidence I still believe that thujone is stable in alcoholic solution, however I do need to test more samples. Indeed, just as you don't seem to see many old vins ordinnaire at auction, bog standard absinthe is also unseen. I will certainly be looking at the other topics on the forum.

My analyses were performed at a certified UK standards laboratory using the official GLC set up for thujone analysis in beverages. As well as for thujone they were tested for anethole (a major compound from the anise) and other marker componds which gave us clues as to what other plants had been used in the distillation.

Greetings. As this is my first post I will introduce myself and make clear my affiliations right away so that you can take what I say cum grano salis if so desired. I am the author of the 'Myth Reality and Absinthe' article on absinthe and thujone cited a few posts earlier, I am also an analytical chemist and a director of Absinthe Online who are the sole suppliers of Un Emile 68 premium French absinthe. One of the main points of argument in my article is that 'vintage' absinthe did not contain the high concentrations of thujone claimed in various literature references and that this makes it unlikely that it is solely responsible for the secondary effects of absinthe. I deduced this because Arnold, the most widely quoted source for information on thujone concentrations in 19th century absinthe, seems to have misread the original French reference book by Duplais and has probably confused thujone with oil of wormwood when extrapolating the figures. The figure of 200+ mg/l of thujone has simply been requoted over and over because the original source material was not checked. I also believe that thujone is stable under the conditions found in absinthe and that modern GC is measuring what was present when the absinthe was made as no degradation products are visible on the output trace. Finally it would not be possible to extract the high concentrations of thujone using distillation of plants (although it would be possible using essential oil extracts such as were (and are) used to make inferior absinthes). I will shortly be repeating my earlier GC analyses with a greater and more diverse collection of vintage absinthes. Absinthe should be enjoyed purely for its taste, and a correctly crafted absinthe is one of the World's finest spirits. There are a few good examples commercially available, but most modern absinthe has been created from a mixture of oils and colouring with no reference to the original product and is marketed on the basis of hype or claims that it contains more thujone than other brands.