Drinks in the 1600s
Posted on July 3, 2009
Filed Under Jonathan Forester | 4 Comments
Jonathan Forester is a brewer and distiller in Maine. He writes about spirits and cocktails at Drinking the World.
Drinks in the 1600s? I saw this seminar title on the list for Tales of the Cocktail 2009 and said to myself, what the heck were they drinking back then? It sure wasn’t whiskey, when was gin invented? Rum? Brandy? More probably wine or beer was the drink of choice because this was centuries before cocktails came about. Modern stills hadn’t been invented yet and liquor was more likely medicine or tonics… than libations. Spirits were hard to make, hard to get your hands on, and much was unknown about them.
I had to know more so I got in touch with the presenter, Darcy O’Neil and asked. He said he would will talk about how, back in the 1600’s, herbal liqueurs and cordials, tonics and bitters, were being created to help cure ailments and diseases. Plague Waters were the early forms of Absinthe, and these and other tonics and waters were distilled with wormwood, anise, hyssop and fennel. Some of the ingredients have real, medicinal uses, like the above mentioned, (and the last three are still used effectively in homeopathic cough medicines today.) But most were useless for medical purposes. One of the passages Darcy came across in some early pharmacopoeia books was “that early doctors thought they could distill the essence out of something and give it to people as a cure. If they could catch it, they’d try to distill it. Things like spices, herbs, flowers, storks (yes the bird), frogs, dirt, mummies and even human brain were distilled.” (Gag! Sounds like a scene from a movie. Brainsss, give me brains.)
So this seminar will be looking back to the 1600s and how they were the beginning of the age of distilling, where spirits were becoming more than a way to make medicine, instead they became a way to make one feel better. But wait, isn’t that what medicine is all about? When I asked Darcy about that he told me, “the core of the session is about how alcohol transitioned through the 1600’s from medicine to hedonistic intoxicant.” Medicine to hedonistic intoxicant? Sounds interesting to me, especially the “hedonistic intoxicant part.”
The focus is on early distillation, mixed drinks like the Syllabub, and liqueurs. Many of these old tonics and waters developed through the years into cordials and liqueurs. Trappist monks created sweetened, herbal tonics which developed into Benedictine and Trappistine, of which some are still made today. Of course now they are drunk straight, as an aperitif or digestif, or as an ingredient in a fine cocktail. (One of the cocktails at the seminar is based on a recipe for Trappistine liqueur.)
So, if you’re as curious as I to find out how medicines developed into fine libations, which ones made the cut and which did not, how they came into popular use as “hedonistic intoxicants” and why, and about the development of drinks leading to cocktails; join us at Drink’s in the 1600’s at Tales of the Cocktail 2009.
“Plague Waters were the early forms of Absinthe”
Then why does Couvet claim to be the birthplace? I tend to agree that absinthe was not invented by the Swiss.
I hope someone does a write up on this session it will be more interesting than the usual absinthe “history” which often refers to fiction.
Definitely, they weren’t.
For the information of the author, there are several recipes for plague waters and they do not look like absinthe at all:
“To make Plague-water.
Take a pound of Rue, of Rosemary, Sage, Sorrel, Celandine, Mugwort, of the tops of red Brambles, of Pimpernel, Wild-draggons, Arimony, Balm, Angelica, of each a pound. Put these Compounds in a pot, fill it with White-wine above the herbs, so let it stand four days. Then still it for your use in a Limbeck.”
or here, in a hand-written form:
http://www.eatmedaily.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/plague-water.jpg
Some of the recipes call for infusion in wine only, some call for distillation, nevertheless none of these recipes one can find easily has a herb bill that would resemble even the earliest extrait d’absinthe.
>Definitely, they weren’t.
There are countless examples of “waters” that are in fact the absinthe that some falsely claim was born in the Val de Travers. These waters were prescribed during The Plague as well.
Of course wormwood was also used in another more effective context during The Plague. One curative recipe in the canon of Plague quackery even calls for the consumption of the patient’s own water, did you ever try this?
Please also note that the author uses the term “Plague waters” which seems not to be a specific reference to aqua epidemica, but rather the curative waters (distillations) sold during this time. His aasertion that ““Plague Waters were the early forms of Absinthe” is historically accurate and I think that absintist has misread Jonathan Forester’s words