Its invention has been popularly credited to French Doctor Pierre Ordinaire in 1792. Dr. Ordinaire, were he of English descent, would have been Dr. Ordinary. His invention was anything but.
Dr. Ordinaire, said to have fled the French Revolution to settle in the village of Couvet in Switzerland, wanted to find a way to make the healing herb wormwood, or Artemisia absinthium, more palatable to his patients. Wormwood is one of the bitterest substances known, but in its day it was one of the best available remedies for stomach upsets, parasitic infestations, and fever.
Dr. Ordinaire, having studied medicine in the 18th century, may have known that wormwood’s medicinal history dated back Hippocrates himself. Hippocrates prescribed a drink of wormwood leaves soaked in wine for rheumatism and jaundice. The “absinthium” of Artemisia absinthium, in fact, is derived from the Greek word “apsinthos”, meaning bitter.
Where the ancient Greeks went, the ancient Romans were sure to follow, and the Roman historian Pliny mentioned that, following chariot races during the reign of Nero, the victorious charioteers were required to drink the Greek concoction of Artemisia leaves and wine. It was a reminder that a touch of bitterness accompanies even the sweetest victory. Pliny, however, in one of the ancient world’s medical paradoxes, also reported the use of bitter Artemisia as a cure for sour breath.
Enlightened with the accumulated wisdom of the ages, Dr. Ordinaire had a ready supply of free Artemisia growing wild along the hills of Val-de-Travers. In any event, he combined Artemisia with other herbs, which may have included anise, coriander, mint, parsley, hyssop, and veronica. The result was a pale green, 136-proof all-purpose medicine. Its color and potency as a feel-good tonic soon had it dubbed “La Fee Verte”, or “The Green Fairy”.
The absinthe story, unlike the drink, is rather hazy as to whether Dr. Ordinaire developed the recipe for his medicine, or borrowed it from the Henriod sisters of Couvet. Some versions say he borrowed it; others say that on his death the formula went to a Mademoiselle Grand-Pierre, who sold it to the sisters. What is known is that after his death the Henriod sisters grew the herbs for the elixir in their own garden, distilled it in small amounts in their kitchen, and sold it to neighboring apothecaries.
Appreciating the elixir’s potential as an alcoholic drink, in 1797, French Major Daniel Henri Dubied purchased the recipe from the Henriods and began a commercial distillery with his son Marcellin and son-in-law Henri-Louis Pernod. The original company was called Dubied Pere et Fils.
The Dubied/Pernod partnership lasted until 1805, when Henri-Louis split from his in-laws to found Pernod et Fils, and the absinthe craze had begun.
Henri-Louis was one of those very lucky businessmen who find themselves in the right place, with the right product, at the right time. His absinthe slowly gained popularity when consumers realized that its medicinal effects were accompanied by some very pleasant emotional ones. “The Green Fairy” Artemisia has an ingredient, thujone, which acts in the human body as a simultaneous depressant and stimulant.
Its drinkers were claiming a special effect for the absinthe, and while no scientific studies have been done to verify it, they might have been feeling a simultaneous, thujone-induced release of anxiety, and cardiovascular buzz.
The effects of Pernod’s absinthe had been discovered by French soldiers fighting in Algeria in the 1840’s, who brought it along for its anti-dysentery properties, and came back reporting that it had made life on the front lines much less nerve-wracking as well. Their return made absinthe a highly prized commodity on the Parisian bar scene. And a traditional “green hour’ developed between 5:00 and 7:00 PM, when Parisians would indulge in their spirit-lifting libation before heading home to dinner.
Pernod’s next aide-de-camps on its march to fortune came in the unlikely form of plant lice, an 1870’s infestation of which nearly devastated the French wine industry. With the higher price of wine, absinthe distillers began substituting cheaper, and stronger, grain alcohols for the wine alcohol in their formulas.
Wine became more expensive; absinthe became less expensive, and the spirits-loving masses of France began viewing the world through green-colored glasses.
Between the 1870s and 1915, absinthe was to the artistic set of Paris what mind-altering drugs were to the creative American spirits of the 1960’s. Absinthe drinkers included Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Edgar Degas, and writers Ernest Hemingway and Mary Shelley, who is said to have created Frankenstein during and absinthe-saturated weekend in Geneva at the age of nineteen.
But by the early 1900s, the sweet success of Absinthe was developing a taste as bitter as that of the Artemisia it contained. The inclusion, not only of grain alcohols, but of dyes and chemicals, to lower the cost of its production, had begun to produce toxic effects.
The situation was exploited by a Dr. Valentin Magnan, who exposed animals to lethal does of wormwood oil, already known to be extremely poisonous. Dr. Mangan failed to report actual absinthe contains very little wormwood, and non-toxic amounts of thujone.
And in 1905, when a Swiss alcoholic Jean Lafray murdered his family, supposedly in an absinthe frenzy, no one bothered to learn if he had been imbibing in other spirits as well. Following the murders, Europe was awash in petitions to ban absinthe, while the recovered French wine industry was battling to take back its turf.
The French public, however, hung onto their absinthe until 1915, when the government banned it because, they said, it lessened the fighting resolve of the military personnel on the frontlines of World War I. So The Green Fairy returned to her home on the silvery-hued Artemisia-covered hillsides of Couvet.
Although absinthe was never outlawed in Spain and some other European countries, it has taken nearly a century for it to regain some of its reputation as a safe, but potent, alcoholic beverage which should be consumed as such.
France has never repealed its 1915 law banning absinthe, but in 1998 passed a law saying only beverages called “absinthe’ were illegal. Many French absinthe producers seized the day, and are now calling their product ”wormwood-based spirits”.
The Green Fairy, by any other name, it seems, still tastes as sweet.
