Origin
The precise origin of absinthe is unclear. The medical use of wormwood dates back to ancient Egypt and is mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus, circa 1550 BC. Wormwood extracts and wine-soaked wormwood leaves were used as remedies by the ancient Greeks. Moreover, there is evidence of the existence of a wormwood-flavored wine, absinthites oinos, in ancient Greece.
The first clear evidence of absinthe in the modern sense of a distilled spirit containing green anise and fennel, however, dates to the 18th century. According to legend, absinthe began as an all-purpose patent remedy created by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor living in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792 (the exact date varies by account). Ordinaire’s recipe was passed on to the Henriod sisters of Couvet, who sold absinthe as a medicinal elixir. By other accounts, the Henriod sisters may have been making the elixir before Ordinaire’s arrival. In either case, a certain Major Dubied acquired the formula from the sisters and in 1797, with his son Marcellin and son-in-law Henry-Louis Pernod, opened the first absinthe distillery, Dubied Père et Fils, in Couvet. In 1805 they built a second distillery in Pontarlier, France, under the new company name Maison Pernod Fils. Pernod Fils remained one of the most popular brand of absinthe up until the ban of the drink in France in 1915.
Rapid growth of French consumption
Absinthe’s popularity grew steadily through the 1840s, when absinthe was given to French troops as a malaria treatment. [20] When the troops returned home, they brought their taste for absinthe with them. It became so popular in bars, bistros, cafés, and cabarets that, by the 1860s, the hour of 5 p.m. was called l’heure verte (“the green hour”). Absinthe was favored by all social classes, from the wealthy bourgeoisie to poor artists and ordinary working-class people.
By the 1880s, mass production had caused the price of absinthe to drop sharply. This, combined with a wine shortage in France during the 1880s and 1890s, caused absinthe to become France’s drink of choice. By 1910, the French were drinking 36 million litres of absinthe per year, a quantity that was greater than their consumption of wine.
The Banning of Absinthe
Spurred by the temperance movement and the winemakers’ associations, absinthe was publicly associated with violent crimes and social disorder.
In 1905, it was reported that Jean Lanfray murdered his family and attempted to kill himself after drinking absinthe. The fact that Lanfray was an alcoholic who had drunk considerably more than his two glasses of absinthe in the morning, was overlooked; the murders were blamed solely on absinthe. Lanfray’s murders were the last straw, and a petition to ban absinthe in Switzerland was signed by over 82,000 people.
In 1906, Belgium and Brazil banned the sale and distribution of absinthe, although they were not the first. Absinthe was banned as early as 1898 in the colony of the Congo Free State. In Switzerland, the prohibition of absinthe was even written into the constitution in 1907, following a popular initiative. The Netherlands banned absinthe in 1909; the United States banned it in 1912, and France in 1915.
The prohibition of absinthe in France led to the growing popularity of pastis and ouzo, anise-flavored liqueurs that do not contain any wormwood. The Pernod distillery moved its absinthe production to Catalonia, Spain, where absinthe was still legal, but slow sales in the 1960s eventually caused them to shut it down.
In Switzerland, the ban drove absinthe underground. Clandestine (illegal) home distillers produced absinthe after the ban, focusing on La Bleue, which was easier to conceal from the authorities.
Many countries never banned absinthe, notably Britain, where absinthe had not been as popular as in continental Europe.