The Green Fairy

During our travels, Jen and I happened to procure a bottle of authentic absinthe. It is an alcoholic beverage well-known in artistic circles for its distinctive greenish color as well as its hallucinatory properties. It is very difficult to purchase absinthe in the United States because of it complicated ingredients (the FDA has been all over it for about a century).

An Absinthe Fountain… Ready to Go

Since we found a real bottle of the controversial liquor here in Europe, we decided to take it out for a spin to see what happened (more on that later). During my research into the creation and popularity of absinthe, I discovered a very interesting story that begins with wine.

Just as the ancient Romans brought wine into Europe as they expanded north and west, the European settlers brought their wine across the ‘pond’ to the ‘new world’. However, the grapes couldn’t thrive in North American soil. Over the course of the next century or two, French farmers toyed around with American grape varieties without producing the same quality wines they had become accustomed to in their homelands.

Eventually, the Americans grafted European grapes with American grapes and shipped their yields back across the Atlantic to grow on European soil. Unfortunately, grapes weren’t the only things they brought back. A species of insect called the Phylloxera came along for the ride and caused irreparable damage to the French vineyards.

Political Cartoon Depicting an Inebriated Insect, Gorging on French Wine

The Great French Wine Blight started in 1868 and within 40 years, wiped out almost all of the vines. What scientists eventually discovered was that the bugs preferred munching on the leaves of the imported American vines as well as the roots of the local French vines. No grapes were safe.

By the early 20th century, grape growers were using a combination of pesticides and hybrid, phylloxera-resistant, vines of American and French grafting to reconstitute the supply of wine on the continent. Even today, wine has been forever changed due to the Blight (few people living has ever tasted the robust flavors of French wines that existed prior to 1868). However, another effect of the drop in wine production was the rise of absinthe consumption.

Absinthe is a spirit, without any added sugar, that tastes like anise (so don’t eat it with pizzelles). Originating from Switzerland, production of this beverage expanded in France in the late 19th century – 100 years after it was invented. It rose to great popularity directly because of the lack of wine available during the time period (in France alone over 2 million liters were consumed per year during and after the Blight), particularly with artists and writers, who wanted to “see beyond”. Hemingway even created his own use for the spirit by mixing it with champagne (he named it Death in the Afternoon, but more on the American author in another entry).

The Green Fairy by Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa

In literature, films, and music (up to this day), absinthe has been vilified as a dangerous, addictive, and psychoactive drug due to the ingredient thujone, which is present in the plant known as wormwood (Artemisia absinthium). In spite of this inaccurate portrayal, nobody has been able to demonstrate the spirit to be more dangerous than any other alcoholic beverage produced in the world. Too bad, it’s still very difficult to find in the United States (some domestic liquor stores sell versions without wormwood).

Originally, wormwood was utilized as a plant with medicinal purposes from the ancient Egyptians through 18th century European doctors. They thought it had powerful healing effects and would prescribe it to patients with arthritis, fever, menstrual pain, tapeworm, to aid digestion, and even as an antiseptic. As it turns out, it was only a drug, and not a miracle cure (the story parallels that of cocaine use in Coke over a century ago, prior to the drug’s illegality and exclusion from the now popularly consumed carbonated soft-drink).

One of the most fascinating aspects of the spirit is how it’s prepared.

First, fill the bubble at the bottom of your Pontarlier (or another type of long, slender, or conical) glass with pure absinthe from the bottle (if you don’t have a Pontarlier, then fill the bottom 25% of the glass instead).

Set Fire to the Sugar Cube for the Czech Method

Next, place a traditional absinthe spoon across the mouth of the glass (this spoon has holes or slits and looks a lot like a fancy cake serving utensil), but if you don’t have that spoon, a fork or another slotted device will work just as well.

Then, set a sugar cube on the spoon and slowly pour ice cold water over the cube and spoon until the sugar dissolves in the water and flows into the glass, mixing with the absinthe (the goal is 4 parts water to 1 part absinthe plus sugar).

At this point, you will notice that while the water and sugar dilutes the absinthe, the mixture also changes the color and consistency of the beverage (the clear green will fade into a cloudy greenish that loses its opaque quality).

Finally, sip and enjoy! Maybe…

Jen and I spent an evening trying out the drink. First of all, it tastes like ass run over twice… unless you’re a fan of licorice. The predominant (and I mean predominant) flavor ingredient is anise. Personally, I hate anise so that was already one strike against absinthe. Choking down the beverage all night didn’t provide the hallucinatory experiences the Bohemian artists of yesteryear claimed it did. What it did give me was a massive stomach ache with a touch of a foggy head (I couldn’t hear correctly for most of the night, as if I were underwater).

Our Bottle of Absinthe – from Andorra

Do I recommend absinthe? Nah. It’s not worth the aggravation to create. It’s too strong to consume without diluting it. And if you simply want to get drunk or buzzed, there are plenty of other tastier ways to do it. I believe these are the reasons that absinthe has fallen out of favor with the general population over the past century.

Why drink nasty licorice flavors when you can have vanilla vodka or coconut rum and mix these with Coke or Sprite?

Hasta la Proxima…

-Justin

Resistance is Feudal

The Best Shot I took of most of the Castle

For Halloween, I was given the gift of an overnight stay in an authentic, medieval, European castle! The small town of Olite is home to one of the top 10 castle-turned-hotels in all of Europe. It would have only been better if it were haunted. However, being in an honest to goodness feudal town got me thinking about what life must have been life over 1,000 years ago, and how it compares to life now.

The Middle Ages were, for a long time, also known as the Dark Ages. Primarily because the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance were void of social, scientific, economic, and cultural advances (and a lack of written records during this period). The Catholic Church controlled much of the known world at the time, and kingdoms fought bloody wars that ravaged the countryside and the people who lived there.

A Feudal Flowchart

The predominant type of government during this period was known as Feudalism, which was a way of structuring ownership of property (including land, goods, livestock, and servants) based upon the relationship between the owner and the user. Typically, a lord or a king would grand a temporary lease on his land or property, known as a fief, to a vassal. In return, the vassal would swear fealty or allegiance to the lord and pledge himself and his followers to join any fighting force if a war broke out.

One of the major aspects of Feudalism that allowed the practice to thrive between the 6th and 14th centuries was the serf. Serfdom was the condition of bondage or servitude that many peasants held while living on the fief lands leased to a vassal but ultimately controlled by the lord. Each serf or family of serfs occupied a plot of land and were required to work for the vassal who became the “lord of the manor“. They were granted protection and the ability to engage in subsistence farming for themselves. This manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and serfs were the lowest of the lowly classes.

Olite town square, where Bullfights and Jousts used to be held

According to Wikipedia, “the serf ‘worked for all’ while the knight ‘fought for all’ and a churchman ‘prayed for all’.” And while serfs couldn’t be bought and sold they way slaves were prior to the U.S. Civil War, the land they lived and worked on could. So if a new lord came to own the land, that serf had no choice but to remain on said land, continuing to work for his new “master”.

The disparity of wealth between lords and serfs during this period was unconscionable. But relearning about the Middle Ages (I had done a lot of it in primary school) really got me comparing what the serfs went through to what the vast majority of people in the 21st century are going through. For all intents and purposes, the serfs were the medieval 99% (Occupy Europe?).

Through massive policy shifts that began in the 1970s under the Nixon Administration, including global privatization, multinational corporations, and free trade agreements, a new theory suggests humanity has entered into a modern era of feudalism. Neofeudalism is the belief that those who control the top 1% of wealth have positioned themselves as the new lords of the manors. They likewise, lease certain aspects of their holdings to vassals (CEOs, politicians, and bankers to name a few), who are then able to control the rest of us… aka serfs.

Feudalism: Then & Now

Essentially economic and commercial, Neofeudalism has been fueled by private interest groups, lobbying the governments of the world on all levels to scale back their involvement (and regulatory bodies) in a variety of industries. This widens the wealth gap and creates a larger population of poor and/or marginalized people, excluded from receiving basic needs as promised by their governments such as: healthcare, infrastructure, education, and civil services.

The 21st century is an age of Corporate Feudalism. The system of government and the ways in which these corporations evade regulations has prevented the 99% from fighting back in any way. Modern day serfs working three part time jobs, making barely enough money to live on, have no means to standing up to the corporate CEOs who control everything.

The people cannot risk losing what little they have already. And what do they truly want? Most ask for nothing more than the means to provide for their families – food, clothing, and shelter – yet aren’t even given a way to accomplish the simplest of these very easily. Look at escalating inflation for groceries and rent while the minimum wage has remained basically the same over the past 20 years!

The View from Our Hotel Room Window

Corporations are hardly new ideas. The original concept stemmed from the medieval guilds that attempted to restrain knowledge, power, and wealth to members only (remember those corny jackets in the 80s that tried to make a fashion comeback a few years ago?). The main guild goal was to maintain the interests of the existing power structure.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s exactly what corporations have been doing for decades when they throw money and influence at political campaigns, backing candidates who will vote with the corporations’ best interests (profit) in mind, and little care for anything else, specifically the modern day serfs.

In the United States, the words “federalism” and “feudalism” can be almost interchangeable when you look at the way our own Constitution was arranged. Most aspects of the employer-employee relationship was regulated by a common law that enforced principles of hierarchy derived from the feudal society of the late Middle Ages. The system of workplace regulation, the law of master and servant, permitted an employer to beat his worker until the courts ruled it unconstitutional in 1843!

The Sitting Room

Thus, corporations themselves were created to protect the employer interests during decades of cheap labor and plentiful fossil fuels. Our founding fathers probably hoped the vestiges of the feudal system would wither away with their shunning of corporations, however, their 20th century replacements – from Nixon onward – have undone a lot of the work that was done to make our nation a land of the free.

The development of our contemporary capitalistic Neofeudal system also makes one consider the implications of the “fight” against communism during the Cold War. And as my father used to say: every war that has ever been fought has been fought about money. Economics rules. If you have it, you win. And if you don’t you lose. That’s what the serfs had to deal with in the Dark Ages, and that’s what the 99% have to deal with today. Maybe that castle did have a few scary ghosts.

Our Hotel Room

Hasta la Proxima…

-Justin