INTOXICATING

THE DEVIL’S BARTENDER

The plant kingdom furnishes an astonishing array of intoxicating ingredients. A well-stocked bar owes its provisions to everyday crops like grapes, potatoes, corn, barley, and rye. But alcoholic beverages used to include far more interesting plant ingredients. Vin Mariani was a potent brew of coca leaves and red wine that was popular in the nineteenth century. Laudanum, a medicine made from alcohol and opium, was not only prescribed by doctors until the early twentieth century but also tipped into brandy for an addictive cocktail. (King George IV favored this drink.) The ancient Greeks wrote about a fermented barley drink called kykeon that would cause psychoactive episodes. Scholars speculate that it was brewed from ergot-infected rye, making it a sort of ancient precursor to LSD.

Consider some of the wicked plants lurking behind the bar today:

The flavor—and bad reputation—come from Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood. This low-growing, silvery perennial has a bitter, pungent fragrance. Wormwood is one of the many herbs used to flavor absinthe, that pale green, highly alcoholic drink from the nineteenth century that was believed to cause hallucinations and madness. “The Green Fairy” became an essential part of bohemian café life in Paris. Oscar Wilde, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were all notorious absinthe swillers. The drink was banned throughout Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century as part of the prohibition movement.

What makes absinthe so wicked? Wormwood contains a potent ingredient called thujone that at high concentrations can cause seizures and death. Recently, however, mass spectrometer analysis has demonstrated that the level of thujone in absinthe is minuscule, and that the beverage’s intoxicating effects can only be blamed on the fact that it is a 130-proof spirit, almost twice as alcoholic as gin or vodka.

Absinthe is now legal in the European Union, as long as the level of thujone is below a specific threshold. In the United States any product containing thujone is strictly banned, but new, thujone-free absinthes are permitted.

Made from the flowers of the agave plant, whose sharp thorns and highly irritating sap are so forbidding that jailers planted them around Alcatraz to discourage escape attempts. The blue agave, Agave tequilana, goes into the popular spirit that bears its name, but Americans are probably more familiar with the century plant, A. americana. In spite of their prickly thorns and preference for dry, desert climates, these plants are actually not cacti. They are in the Agavaceae family and are more closely related to hostas, yuccas, and the popular houseplant Chlorophytum comosum, or spider plant. The worm in mezcal is the larvae of a moth or weevil that feeds on the plant.

A traditional Polish vodka flavored with a blade of bison grass (Hiero-chloe odorata), also called sweet grass or holy grass. The grass is native to both Europe and North America, and Native Americans have used it for basketry, incense, and medicine. The plant is a natural source of the blood thinner coumarin, which is not permitted as a food additive in the United States, so zubrowka has been banned since 1978. New technology allows the vodka to be distilled without any coumarin so that it can be imported, and the grass still lends a faint vanilla or coconut flavor. In Poland the unadulterated version is often mixed with apple juice for a sweet, cold drink.

A popular German drink made from steeping leaves of the ground cover sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum syn. Asperula odorata) in white wine, giving it a sweet, grassy flavor. Ingesting the plant at high doses could bring on dizziness, paralysis, and even coma and death; recipes for home-made May wine recommend picking young leaves in spring before the plant blooms, and using them sparingly. In the United States the plant is not considered a safe food additive except as a flavoring in alcoholic beverages.

A new liquor with a green, herbal flavor made with an extract of coca leaf (Erythroxylum coca). The drink contains no cocaine, however—the alkaloid is removed during the manufacturing process, much as it is believed to be for the soft drink Coca-Cola. The liquor contains other herbal stimulants, including ginseng (Panax spp.) and the extract of the guarana fruit (Paullinia cupana).

A hempseed-infused vodka made in the Czech Republic. A handful of Cannabis sativa seeds float in the bottom of the bottle, but the manufacturers assure drinkers that it contains nothing but alcohol to get you high—and it doesn’t taste like bong water.

An anise-flavored Italian liqueur made from elderberries (Sambucus spp.), which contain cyanide in their raw form. However, imbibers have nothing to fear but a hangover from the drink itself.

A nonalcoholic mixer made from the African kola nut (Cola spp.), another original ingredient in Coca-Cola’s formula. The nut contains caffeine and is chewed in West African countries as a mild stimulant. It also contains compounds that can cause miscarriage, and one study showed that extracts of the nut could bring on malaria-like symptoms, including weakness and dizziness. Kola nut is considered a safe food additive by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but cola tonic is rarely sold in the United States.

The bitter flavor comes from quinine, the extract from the bark of the cinchona tree in South America (Cinchona spp.). Quinine is the medication that saved the world from malaria, and its addition to tonic water gave rise to that classic summer drink, the gin and tonic. (This proved to be an easy way for British colonists in India to take a mild dose of their medicine.) The drug is still found in tonic water today, although at lower doses. In fact, the quinine content in tonic water is what gives the beverage its fluorescent glow under ultraviolet light. Quinine is also found in certain brands of vermouth and bitters. Although it is perfectly safe at low doses, an overdose can cause quinism, also known as cinchonism. Symptoms include dizziness, stomach problems, tinnitus, vision problems, and cardiac symptoms. Overdoses of quinine are so risky that the FDA has issued warnings about using the malaria drug for “off label” uses like the treatment of leg cramps. Pilots in the armed forces are advised not to consume tonic water for seventy-two hours before flying, and to avoid drinking more than thirty-six ounces of tonic water per day.