![]() ![]() It is often stated, incorrectly, that absinthe was first concocted around 1792 by Pierre Ordinaire, a French emigrant to the village of Couvet in Western Switzerland, close to the French border. Both α- and β-pinene ( 11, 12) exist as two enantiomers with 1S,5S-(-)- α-pinene ( 11a) in European pines and 1R,5R-(+)- α-pinene ( 11b) in North America. So the fennel plant makes d(+)-fenchone ( 2), the camphor tree d(+)-camphor ( 4), and lavender and laurel both make R-(-)-linalool ( 10). When plants synthesise terpenes and terpenoids, they usually make just the one isomer. Examples of terpenoids are menthol, camphor, thujone and geraniol. Oxidation of terpenes leads to alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, collectively known as terpenoids which also occur widely in nature (though occasionally, for convenience, they are referred to as terpenes too). He was awarded the 1910 Nobel prize for chemistry, for devising the isoprene rule amongst other things. The great German organic chemist Otto Wallach was one of the pioneers of terpene chemistry. Their molecular formula is (C 5H 8) n and they can be regarded as oligomers of isoprene, 2-methyl-1,3-butadiene, CH 2=C(CH 3)CH=CH 2. Familiar examples are pinene and limonene. Terpenes are hydrocarbons produced mainly by plants and some insects. The drink would go cloudy, with a yellow opalescence, known as the louche effect.Ībsinthe contains terpene and terpenoid molecules with large hydrophobic rings and chains these are soluble in ethanol-rich absinthe, but insoluble in the more polar water-absinthe mixtures. Ice-cold water was dripped onto the cube, the sugar dissolved, and the solution dripped into the absinthe. Sugar offset the bitter taste of the wormwood in the neat absinthe. 1 First a shot of the liqueur was added to a glass and a slotted absinthe spoon was placed on top of the glass, with a sugar cube on top of that. Known as l a fée verte (the green fairy), absinthe gave rise to l'heure verte, the time (5 pm) when drinkers of all sorts went to a café for their absinthe, what we would now call a 'Happy Hour'.ĭrinking absinthe was a stylised activity. Writers such as Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe and Verlaine relied upon it, and a whole range of artists are associated with it, often for including it in their paintings, such as Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and of course Van Gogh. Ice-cold water is dripped onto the sugar cube and the drink goes cloudy, known as the louche effect Fashionable among the artistic community, it became cheap enough to be the drink of choice among the poor. It became a national drink in France in the late 19th century. But was absinthe really to blame? The green fairyĪbsinthe, a green liquid with an anise smell, is made by distilling a mixture of alcohol, herbs (notably wormwood) and water. Traditionally Van Gogh's instability and suicide have been blamed on the liqueur-like drink absinthe, the fashionable French beverage in the half century up to the first world war. Just look at his paintings such as La Nuit Etoilée in a gallery like the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and you do not have to be a chemist to wonder about the source of the swirls, spirals and other strange effects. Working as a painter for only the last 10 years of his life, much of his best-known output occurred in the last two years, after he encountered impressionism.īefore committing suicide, he spent a long period in 1889-90 in a clinic because of his mental instability. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a pioneer expressionist artist. The genius of Van Gogh, shown in Starry Night Source: Museum of Modern Art, New York, US ![]()
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