Taste
Plant Parts Used
Therapeutic Properties
Ayurvedic Character
Cooling
Current Uses
Depending on the species you find, this unassuming plant will present beautiful purplish-blue or butter-yellow flowers. It’s unlikely that you will find gentian growing on an American continent, though small cultivated clusters do exist. The plant, no matter the species, is harvested for its particularly bitter root. If you’re drinking anything with a pronounced and persistent bitter aftertaste, there is a high chance that it contains gentian.
Gentian root has been used as medicine for thousands of years. It has become a staple ingredient in herbal liqueurs, giving them their pronounced bitter taste. This little root packs a serious bitter punch—it’s more bitter than any other plant!
This plant has been used since antiquity. In some areas, like the Alps, it’s been over-harvested, so it’s now protected. It’s used in the hundreds of different amari (plural of amaro) in Italy to give an undeniable bitter finish to the drink. Because it’s protected, it is now illegal to harvest in the wild and must be cultivated. It does grow in the Americas, but because it is not as in demand, it is virtually unknown.
Gentian has been used in TCM and Ayurveda for thousands of years.
The flowers are emblazoned on family crests and appreciated in Asia as well.
The gentiana lutea species has the most beautiful blue flowers annually in the late summer and fall as the air in the Alps begins to cool. This plant has been sought and harvested from this region for many centuries.
The demand for the most popular species, indigenous to this cooler region of Europe, has grown significant in recent years, as it’s now a staple ingredient in many herbal liqueurs. It is now painstakingly cultivated and protected by EU regulations.
In North America, many other species of gentian grow in the wild. There are a few cultivars. Christopher Hobbs has made extracts with these less popular species to great success. They still offer bitter qualities, but perhaps not as intense as the lutea.
There are many popular products that use gentian root as a bittering agent:
Urban Moonshine medicinal bitters
Moxie soda – the first mass marketed soda in the U.S.
Angostura
Many brands of Cocktail bitters
Suze, Salers, Avèze, Campari, Aperol
Top Note’s Gentiana, Bartender’s Release – newest gentian product?
1. Gentian – Perhaps the most ubiquitous herb found in bitter liqueurs, gentian has been a prized digestive stimulant for centuries. It was revered in antiquity by the Greeks on up through the Middle Ages, where it was sourced by monks in the Alpine mountain ranges, then even into Victorian times where the likes of Emily Dickinson wrote of it. Only recently has this important herb fallen out of favor, due mostly to the intolerance by most of the bitter taste, which it is known for. But the bitter taste is what makes it so valuable, so much so that it is now a protected plant in Italy and can only be foraged in small amounts due to its being over collected. Most spirits manufacturers now use a cultivated gentian that still delivers that quintessential bitter flavoring that is the base for most amari.
The flavor: Very bitter. In fact, the most widely used plant that yields the most prominent bitter taste. But, that’s what we’re after!
The action: Due to gentian’s bitter flavor, it’s been used in traditional medicine systems for centuries as a digestive stimulant—meaning, it prepares the tongue for food as well as primes the stomach and intestines for the acts of breaking down food more thoroughly. Since the bitter taste is very cooling, it is widely recognized as having anti-inflammatory properties.
Gentian is a purple dye that stains the skin tissues, but is very effective at treating various fungal and yeast infections: https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/will-your-toes-be-fungus-free-and-purple
Gentian by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman https://americanliterature.com/author/mary-e-wilkins-freeman/short-story/gentian
Good general info!: http://gentian.rutgers.edu/kids.htm
Wild-growing gentian has been over-harvested on the mountain sides of Italy. It is now considered an endangered plant?
The Pressed Gentian by John Greenleaf Whittier https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pressed_Gentian
To the Fringed Gentian by William Cullen Bryant https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/To_the_Fringed_Gentian
Reader’s Digest, Magic and Medicine of Plants. P. 291 (Sampson’t snakeroot)
The genus is named for Gentius, a king of Illyria, on the Adriatic Sea, during the second century B.C. According to the first-century A.D. Greek physician Dioscorides and his Roman contemporaries the naturalist Pliny, Gentius discovered the power of these plants. But in actual fact the use of gentians in medicine is recorded on a papyrus found in an Egyptian tomb at Thebes and dating from about a thousand years before Gentius’ time.
Enzien – a spirit distilled from gentian roots in Germany and Switzerland
The first one to seriously consider is gentian. Found written in the hieroglyphs of a tomb in ancient Egypt and written in the Ebers Papyrus discovered in 18__, gentian has long been revered as an effective digestive aid. Its inclusion as such in many digestifs of Italian origin is undeniable and to this day is used extensively in cocktail bitters as well as modern interpretations of traditional amari or herbal liqueurs.
The problem with gentian? It has a bracing, dry bitter taste that makes it nearly unpalatable to modern Americans—and this is problem.
It is also now a protected herb that in recent years has become cultivated due to over foraging in its original environs, like the mountainsides of the Alps.
It’s availability is limited and only certain species are grown for their concentrated bitterness.
Learning about Gentian, for evcample, an herb that looks innocent enough, but has an impressively harsh bitterness and astringency that it is used in very small quantities, makes the medicinal qualities of these liqueurs undeniable. Gentian is used often in Ayurvedic formulas and has traditional medicinal uses to lower the heat in the body. It stimulates digestion is a well-known digestive. It blends very well with soft, less harsh botanicals, and its intensity can be offset by an number of less-bitter plants.
Most bitters will include one or more of the genus Gentian, which is a reliably bitter ingredient in most every Ay. Herbal formula. IN order to make the formula balanced in itself, gentian or something similar will be added to balance out the hotter, heat-causing ingredients. The German bitter Underberg lists gentian as a primary flavoring ingredient, but most bitter liqueurs are not obligated to list it even if it is used.
CHobbs, mentioned above, says that during the time of the early American settlements, herbalists/botanists/doctors of the time had little to offer on a heavy hitting herb such as gentian; it was the French and German authors who offered the most insight on it. I am trying to unravel the mystery of how bitter dropped off the map once settlers arrived here. Sure, there was much exploration to be done of the New World, but why ignore such an important herb like gentian? There had to be more to this story.
Gentian grows locally, but it’s not harvested. It’s protected in Europe. Hobbs says many species of gentian have similar beneficial bittering effects.
Insert a deep dive into the phytochemical components that lend each plant its definitive flavor and taste (check the spreadsheet, then find articles to reference in JSTOR & PubMed). The active compounds that provide gentian its bitterness, for example, and the corresponding literature that illuminates the efficacy of those compounds. In this way, you will provide modern support for your case. Try your best to illustrate how these compounds are effective, to the extent that we can do this with the studies that have been conducted. But also don’t fail to mention that thousands of years of documented efficacy in practice as through traditional medicines is not insignificant.
History
Used medicinally for thousands of years, this innocent looking flower’s roots contain one of the most concentrated bitter flavors known. Prized for its bitter compounds, it has been over-harvested in Europe where it is considered indispensable in many traditional drinks. It is now protected in many areas where it was once wild-harvested. Gentian is known for its bright blue or yellow flowers, depending on the species, of which there are many.