55 Fun Facts About Absinthe

Grand wormwood, absinthe's signature herb and a cousin of the chrysanthemum, belongs to which plant family?

The daisy family, Asteraceae, takes in wormwood's genus Artemisia along with tarragon; long before absinthe, Hippocrates prescribed the herb for menstrual pain and rheumatism.

What is absinthe's famous French nickname?

La fée verte, 'the green fairy', was hailed by her devotees as a muse who freed the imagination, and Belle Époque poets and painters dedicated works to her.

Pre-ban absinthe, a famously strong spirit, was sold in grades topped by Suisse that were set chiefly by what?

Alcohol content set the grades, from about 45% ABV at the bottom to about 70% for Suisse, a name that promised the top grade, not a Swiss origin.

Absinthe was created in the late 18th century in which Swiss canton?

Neuchâtel is the canton containing Couvet and the Val-de-Travers, where the drink emerged around 1792 as a bitter medicinal elixir before crossing into neighbouring France.

In which Shakespeare play does a nurse recall weaning a child by rubbing wormwood on her breast?

Romeo and Juliet: the Nurse recalls that she 'laid wormwood to my dug' to wean Juliet, who tasted it and fell out with the breast, a weaning trick mothers really used.

In which French town did one of absinthe's first distillers set up a new distillery in 1805?

Pontarlier, just across the border in the Doubs, got the 1805 distillery so its founder could serve the French market directly, and the town grew into the capital of absinthe production.

Absinthe surged in the 1840s after French troops in which colony got it as a malaria preventive?

Algeria: troops there took wormwood against fever and dysentery, and on returning home they kept asking cafés for the drink, which made absinthe fashionable well beyond the army.

By the 1860s, absinthe was so popular that 5 pm in French cafés acquired what nickname?

L'heure verte, 'the green hour', was named for the colour of the absinthe that filled café tables at the end of the working day, in grand boulevards and working-class bars alike.

Absinthe boomed in France after which insect laid waste to the country's vineyards?

Phylloxera, an aphid carried over from North America, wrecked French vineyards in the later 19th century; as their usual drink ran short, people turned to cheap absinthe, downing about 36 million litres a year by 1910.

Which US city is credited as the birthplace of the Sazerac, perhaps the earliest absinthe cocktail?

New Orleans gave the world the Sazerac, stirred in a glass rinsed with absinthe; after the US ban of 1912 its bartenders switched to Herbsaint, a local substitute launched in 1934.

What did the labourer Jean Lanfray do in Switzerland in 1905 that tipped the argument for banning absinthe?

Murdered his family: Lanfray shot his pregnant wife and two daughters after a day of heavy drinking, mostly of other things, yet blame fell on his two glasses of absinthe, and 82,000 people signed a petition for a ban.

How was the 1908 Swiss prohibition of absinthe enacted?

By referendum, written into the constitution: 63.5% of voters backed a popular initiative in July 1908, and the ban stayed in the constitution until a new one took force in 2000.

Which territory banned absinthe as early as 1898, before any European country?

The Congo Free State, then the private domain of Belgium's King Leopold II, banned absinthe in 1898, and within a decade Belgium itself became the first European country to follow.

Which US government department banned absinthe in 1912 under the pure-food law it enforced?

The Department of Agriculture, which then policed food purity, banned absinthe in July 1912, eight years before Prohibition; the ban outlived Prohibition and stood until 2007.

The French ban on absinthe led directly to the popularity of which anise-flavoured substitute?

Pastis kept absinthe's anise flavour but left out the banned wormwood, so it could be sold legally once France eased its rules, and Paul Ricard launched his brand in 1932.

Which two neighbouring countries never banned absinthe, so their distilleries never stopped making it?

Spain and Portugal never outlawed the drink, so Iberian distilleries kept working through the ban years, and one famous French brand moved its production to Spain between the wars.

What did clandestine Swiss distillers call the colourless absinthe they made to hide it from authorities?

La Bleue, said to be named for the bluish tinge the clear spirit shows as water is added, was distilled in secret in the Val-de-Travers, and the name now covers Swiss-style clear absinthe generally.

Hill's Absinth, imported by BBH Spirits in the 1990s to spark the modern revival, came from where?

The Czech Republic: Hill's made the absinth, spelled without the final e, whose exports in the 1990s revived the drink's fame and drew dozens of copycat brands in their wake.

Which brand in 2007 became the first genuine absinthe approved for US import since the ban?

Lucid, made in France for an American firm, won approval in March 2007 once its makers showed that traditionally distilled absinthe carries only a trace of the feared wormwood compound.

France banned absinthe during which war, amid fears that the drink was weakening its army?

The First World War had just begun when France moved against absinthe, and a law of March 1915 banned it outright; that law stayed on the books until 2011.

Switzerland's national absinthe museum, the Maison de l'Absinthe in Môtiers, occupies what kind of former building?

A courthouse: the museum, opened in 2014, sits in the very building where clandestine distillers were once prosecuted for making the banned spirit.

Chemists name the sudden clouding of absinthe in water after which Greek spirit?

Ouzo clouds the same way, so chemists call it the ouzo effect: the drink's essential oils dissolve in strong alcohol but not in water, and adding water forces them out as countless tiny droplets.

Traditional absinthe gets its green colour from what?

Chlorophyll from a second herb maceration: after distillation the clear spirit is steeped with a fresh charge of green herbs, whose chlorophyll lends the classic green, which is why traditional bottles were kept away from light.

Unscrupulous 19th-century makers tinted cheap absinthe green with what toxic substance?

Copper salts gave cheap absinthe an artificial green, and some makers added antimony trichloride to thicken the cloud that forms when water is added, which may explain much of the drink's toxic reputation.

What is the milky opalescence that forms when water is added to absinthe called?

The louche is the cloudy opalescence produced as water drops the alcohol strength and the essential oils of the botanicals, insoluble in weak alcohol, come out of solution.

In the traditional French way of serving absinthe, what sits on the slotted spoon over the glass?

A sugar cube rests on the perforated spoon while iced water drips through it, sweetening the drink and dissolving into the glass as it clouds; the ritual developed in 19th-century cafés.

Three to five parts of iced water bring a 68% ABV absinthe down to about the strength of which drink?

Wine: four parts of water take a 68% absinthe to under 14% ABV, so the notorious spirit was actually sipped at roughly the strength of a table wine.

The modern 'Bohemian method' of serving absinthe adds what to the ritual?

A flame: the drink is set alight before the water goes in, a ritual unknown in the Belle Époque that producers devised in the 1990s to make their brands more eye-catching.

What was an absinthe fountain?

An iced-water jar with spigots for several drinks let a whole table drip water into their glasses at once, with no need for the steady hand that pouring from a carafe demanded.

Ernest Hemingway's absinthe cocktail 'Death in the Afternoon' tops a jigger of absinthe with what?

Iced Champagne is poured over a jigger of absinthe until, in Hemingway's 1935 recipe, it 'attains the proper opalescent milkiness'; his instructions add: 'Drink three to five of these slowly.'

What is an absinthe bottled straight after distillation called?

A blanche, French for 'white', skips the colouring step that gives the usual style its green; during the ban, Swiss bootleggers favoured the clear style because it was easier to conceal.

What was naturally coloured absinthe that had oxidised to brown historically called?

Feuille morte (dead leaf) described the amber-brown that a naturally coloured absinthe turned as its plant pigment oxidised, which is why century-old sealed bottles often pour amber today.

Which chemical in wormwood was long blamed for absinthe's supposed hallucinogenic effects?

Thujone, a GABA-A receptor antagonist that can cause muscle spasms in large doses, was blamed for absinthe's reputation, but there is no evidence it causes hallucinations at the levels found in the drink.

A 1970s paper revived absinthe's mind-altering reputation by likening wormwood's key compound to what?

THC, the active chemical in cannabis, was proposed in a 1975 Nature paper as a molecular cousin of the wormwood compound; the theory was later discredited, and a drinker would die of alcohol poisoning first.

Wormwood's most feared compound, capped by EU law in absinthe, also occurs naturally in which kitchen herb?

Sage contains the same compound, and sage oil is rich in it; in wormwood drinks the EU caps it at 35 mg/kg, a ceiling that sealed pre-ban absinthes tested in 2008 met on average.

Psychiatrist Valentin Magnan blamed absinthe for seizures after which animal convulsed in wormwood fumes?

A guinea pig breathing wormwood-oil vapour went into convulsions while one given alcohol fumes merely got drunk; The Lancet objected that inhaled wormwood oil proves little about a diluted drink.

Which writer, drunk on absinthe, felt phantom tulips brushing his legs on leaving a bar?

Oscar Wilde told of leaving a bar at dawn feeling tulips brushing his shins, although the waiter saw nothing; the anecdote is among the most quoted of absinthe's supposed visions.

Whose 1876 painting L'Absinthe, showing a sodden café drinker, hangs in the Musée d'Orsay?

Edgar Degas posed the actress Ellen Andrée and the etcher Marcellin Desboutin for it and called it simply In a Café; the title L'Absinthe was attached for an 1893 London showing.

Whose first major painting, The Absinthe Drinker, was rejected by the Paris Salon in 1859?

Édouard Manet's The Absinthe Drinker, a full-length portrait of a Paris rag-picker, was refused by the 1859 Salon, and his former teacher Thomas Couture sneered that Manet himself was the absinthe drinker.

Which aperitif takes its name from the German word for wormwood, long its signature flavouring?

Vermouth is the French form of Wermut, German for wormwood, because the herb flavoured the German drinks of that name long before Antonio Carpano sold his sweet version in Turin in 1786.

Wormwood's use as medicine is recorded as far back as which Egyptian document of around 1550 BC?

The Ebers Papyrus, a 20-metre scroll of remedies that the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers bought at Luxor in the 1870s and gave his name to, lists wormwood among its cures.

Bohemian-style 'absinth' differs from traditional absinthe chiefly in lacking what?

Anise and fennel, the two botanicals that give true absinthe its flavour and its cloud with water, are largely absent, leaving a wormwood bitters that stays clear when diluted.

Which artist's 1903 portrait of a fellow painter, known as The Absinthe Drinker, sold for £34.7 million in 2010?

Pablo Picasso painted Angel Fernández de Soto, who had shared his studio; Andrew Lloyd Webber's foundation sold the portrait for charity once a Nazi-era ownership claim that had halted a 2006 sale was settled.

In Revelation, what does the falling star Wormwood do?

Turns a third of the waters bitter: in Revelation 8:10-11 the star called Wormwood falls on rivers and springs, 'and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter'.

Paul Ricard founded his anise-drink company in 1932 in which French city?

Marseille was where Paul Ricard launched his aniseed aperitif in 1932, selling it as the true drink of his home city; in 1975 his firm merged with its great rival, a former absinthe maker.

Which French physician is credited with creating absinthe in Couvet, Switzerland, around 1792?

Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor who had settled in Couvet, is traditionally credited with the recipe, though some accounts say local distillers were making the elixir before he arrived.

Under what company name did the second absinthe distillery, opened in France in 1805, operate?

Maison Pernod Fils was the name of the 1805 works, which stayed among the most popular brands until the French ban and later revived production for a time abroad.

In which 2001 film musical does Kylie Minogue appear as an absinthe hallucination?

Moulin Rouge! has its bohemian heroes drink absinthe and promptly hallucinate Kylie Minogue, with Ozzy Osbourne also credited as her character's voice.

The 1990s absinthe revival began in which country, where the drink had never been banned?

Britain never banned absinthe because it had never caught on there, so in the 1990s importers could legally ship in bottles from central Europe and restart the craze.

Belgium lifted its absinthe ban in 2005 because the old law clashed with what?

EU single-market rules already governed wormwood drinks, so Belgium dropped its ban on 1 January 2005 without waiting for a lawsuit, months after a Dutch court had struck down the Netherlands' restrictions.

Which US agency effectively lifted the American absinthe ban in 2007?

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the first absinthe labels in March 2007, treating products with only trace levels of the wormwood compound as free of it, which ended a 95-year ban.

Which trade body petitioned to repeal the century-old French absinthe ban?

The Fédération Française des Spiritueux pressed for repeal after distillers in Switzerland's Val-de-Travers sought sole rights to the drink's name; Parliament voted the old law down and it lapsed in May 2011.

When France let absinthe-style spirits return in 1988, what did the law still forbid their makers to do?

Label it absinthe: a 1988 decree kept that one word banned, so French bottles had to describe a spirit made with absinthe plants until the old prohibition was finally repealed in 2011.

Which painter of Montmartre nightlife is credited with the Earthquake, a mix of absinthe and cognac?

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec drank as hard as he worked: in 1899 his family had him confined to a sanatorium, where he went on drawing circus scenes, and he died two years later aged 36.

Which French poet, a notorious absinthe drinker, shot Arthur Rimbaud in Brussels in 1873?

Paul Verlaine fired twice in a Brussels hotel room in July 1873, hitting Rimbaud in the wrist; sentenced to two years, he served about 18 months at Mons and turned to Catholicism in his cell.