combat normality

 

ABSINTHE

When I first drank pastis, the very smell made me nauseous.

Pastis was created in the twentieth century; the term (an Occitanian word meaning ‘mixture’, related to the 'pistou' or pesto of Provence, and also used to describe the original plum pudding from Guyenne) first appeared, with reference to the drink, in 1932.

It was a substitute for its much-demonised nineteenth-century progenitor: Absinthe. This was a strong, unsweetened spirit of Alpine origin based on the Wormwood family (mainly Artemisia absinthum), especially the original eighteenth-century recipe of Dr Pierre Ordinaire, later popularised with huge commercial success by Henri-Louis Pernod. Wormwood is a bitter, 'cleansing' herb, and thus is very good for the stomach and gut. As its name implies, it could shock a tapeworm into letting go. In If you feel queasy or liverish, or have drunk too much, to chew a leaf or two of absinthe can work wonders. It was thus a staple plant in medieval and monastic gardens.

But by the 19th century, sweetness especially in the form of sugar had polluted and, along with a psychopathic obsession with meat-eating, seriously damaged western diet. Sugar's accompanying ills included diverticulitis and rampant dental caries so serious that the extremely poor, who lived on dark breads and rough vegetables, could survive for a while by selling their teeth to the rich.

The absinthe leaf, together with other bitter herbs, was considered inedible, and was no longer used, except by travelling healers, who were victims of police oppression in France, because, like all itinerants, they were thought to transmit sedition against the corrupt rule of Napoleon III.

But the tradition of its beneficent properties lingered, and it was added to alcohol partly in order to counteract some of alcohol's more deleterious side-effects.

Sweetened, hence syrupy, alcohols (like crème-de-menthe) appeal only to the most degraded palates, so absinthe was mixed with sugar and water after it left the bottle. Most absinthe recipes included Florence fennel and green aniseed as well as other plant extracts (such as hyssop) to add colour and depth to the taste. The final sweetening was provided by the drinker, who dripped icy water through a sugar cube placed on an absinthe spoon into the green liqueur below. Absinthe spoons can still be found in antique shops in France, and sugar cubes remain popular.

The most famous absinthe-drinker is, perhaps Paul Verlaine, who was celebrated for his poetry despite his lack of hygiene, his violent affair with Rimbaud, and his addiction to absinthe.

The highest-quality absinthes were not wormwood-extract plus industrially-produced alcohol, but grape alcohol, or a basic marc to which were added actual distillates of the two kinds of wormwood, with hyssop, fennel etc. To this high-alcohol liquor a maceration of more native European plants (such as Veronica officinalis) in grape spirits was added, in order to hold its natural green colour. Such a high-quality product was complex and intense, and louched beautifully i.e. turned a lovely shade of pale green when water was added. Van Gogh of course never drank the good stuff, but a cheap and probably nasty product which turned out more yellow (like pastis) than green.

Above: Still life with Absinthe, by van Gogh
Below: van Gogh with Absinthe glass, by Toulouse-Lautrec

The late nineteenth-century was a time of far greater alcoholic excess in Europe than now; after the phylloxera epidemic, cheap absinthe became more widely consumed than wine in France. (Whereas in beery Britain, laudanum remained the drug of choice.) As a result, absinthe became the target of 'temperance' movements, who claimed that the thujone contained in wormwood provoked hallucinations and insanity. It can indeed provoke hallucinations - in quantity, and smoked - and hence absinthe leaves can be combined with cannabis buds or leaves in a pipe. But, since absinthe-drinkers were often syphilitic (as well as tubercular) the symptoms of tertiary syphilis were ascribed to the Green Fairy, as the 'spirit' of absinthe was dubbed.

Here, the Green Fairy sits on the table of a Paris brasserie,
haunting or encouraging the drinker.
It was painted by a true and handsome bohemian from Bohemia, Viktor Oliva (below),
and still hangs in a Prague café-bar.

Famous crimes, such as the crime Lanfray - the murder by a French agricultural labourer (living in Switzerland) of his wife and children in August 1905 - were attributed to the almost mystical, maddening powers of absinthe - even though the murderer drank up to four litres of wine a day which he merely garnished with the occasional absinthe. France eventually followed Belgium and Switzerland in banning the drink, in 1915.

French manufacturers then turned to Pastis, though it only became legal to produce thujone-free, aniseed-flavoured drinks of 40% alcohol by volume after 1921. Low-thujone versions of absinthe are now again on sale, but they seem unlikely to dent the popularity of semi-sweet pastis, which remains by some margin the most widely consumed spirit in France - where it outsells whisky, gin and vodka combined.

This product played on a coincidence (?) of name.

Absinthe was never banned in Spain. Pernod Fils (who, before the ban, made the best and most well known of absinthes) then moved their production to Tarragona, where they continued producing until the early 1960s. Other versions of it continue to be on sale, especially close to the French border. Some were nothing other than swindles, but others, like the one illustrated below, were 50% by volume (87.5° proof). The labels imitated the original Pernod labels. This bottle suggests that it comes from Perpignan, but very small print at the bottom of the label admits that it is a Spanish product.

Two ingredients characterise pastis, and both are massively evident in France’s biggest-selling brand, Ricard: aniseed and liquorice. There are other flavourings in Ricard, but it’s hard to discern them. The aniseed flavour comes from star anise and fennel rather than the more expensive aniseed itself. Anethole is the key compound surrendered by all three. In addition to its intrinsic flavour, anethole is perceived by humans as thirteen times sweeter than sugar. One of the appeals of the drink is that it appears to be sweeter than it actually is – and hence doesn’t cloy.

By this strict, two-ingredient definition, Pernod isn’t a pastis at all but a boisson anisée, since it contains no liquorice; instead, its aniseed flavour is complemented by plants such as mint, coriander, angelica, tarragon (a relative of wormwood) and chamomile, and it is more highly sweetened than Ricard. Pastis 51 was originally a Pernod variant which did contain liquorice in contrast to the original, which bore the number 45. Other smaller brands include Sol-Anis, Casanis and Duval (both the latter produced in the same factory in Marseille) and the colourless Berger Blanc (now owned by the Franco-Polish group Belvédère).

There are, too, artisanal alternatives such as Eyguebelle, Jean Boyer and Henri Bardouin. The last of these is the most widely distributed of the three, and claims ‘grand cru’ status – though the notion of the cru or ‘growth’ is hard to sustain for a spirit whose main single ingredient is alcohol now derived from sugar-beet. The difference between Bardouin and its supermarket alternatives is in the complex recipe, containing (according to the company) some 65 different varieties of herbs and spice!. As a result, its taste somehow manages to be both complex and bland, and cloys the palate. In the south of France, Pernod is regarded as unforgiveably foreign and Parisian; Marseille, Provence and Languedoc (expecially Perpignan) are the 'home' of pastis.

But to make your own, modern Absinthe Surrogate is very easy. Simply buy a bottle of Casanis or Duval (which cost less than 12 euros a litre) and stuff a good sprig of Artemisia absinthum leaves or flowers into it, and leave for a week or so before you start drinking the wonderfully bitter ratafia which will result, and which you can strain and then mix like pastis with ice and water up to 5 times its volume - or just twice its volume if you like the taste of wormwood, as I do. Or drink it sec (neat) as a digestif.

It will not be noticeably green. I leave it to your imagination and ingenuity to find an herbal ingredient which will make a pleasing pale green colour. On no account buy the expensive confections now sold in fancy bottles with devil-strewn labels as 'real' absinthe. At best, these are complex flavourings - excellent for ice cream. At worst, they are sickly parodies, crude and cloying to the palate.