TorchwoodLabs said:No offence, but you couldn't be further from the truth.
As I said in my post directly above yours, the 'PERNOD' branded Absinthe that is available today is 100% true to the original recipe and content that started the whole absinthe ball rolling.
Not one of the earlier (Pre-Ban Era) absinthes had more than an 8% increase of Thujone of what is available today & there were only two brands that claimed this, both brands were a cheap and nasty 'rip-off' of the better, more popular absinthes of the time.
As I mentined above, I have had many absinthes over a great many years both legal, illegal & most certainly paid theorugh the nose for original pre-ban era un-opened bottles of variuos brands.
The highest content of Thujone being in a bottle from Prague (named above) which was more like listerine than absinthe, it doesn't even 'Louche' and the addition of the massive amount of thjone did nothing to improve any buzz at all.
To be honest, I found only two out of several dozen brands in the Czech Republic (not just Prague) that could even be deemed as being absinthe even though the others contained thjone.
To add a little credence to my posts in this thread, I have visited over a dozen distileries producing absinthe (between 4 dif' countries) since 1975 and have been invited to vistit the Kubler & Pernod distileries (Switzerland & France respectivly) during 2009.
I have attended over a dozen absinthe conventions worldwide & countless tastings too.
I don't claim to be any sort of world authority on absinthe, but I do know my stuff & very much the history from day one (first btl produced) up to now.
I had also been using absinthe as a form of medication for quite a few years until 14 moths ago, so research on all levels of all brands past & present has been essential.
Sorry, your previously mentioned credentials didn't give me much reason to think you an expert on the absinthe that Van Gogh (for example) drank. My bad, I am by no means an expert.