What the hell is Absinthe ?
On October 08, 2007 in Back to basic
Absinthe is the French word for wormwood. It’s pronounced ab´- sant. Wormwood is a plant, or to be more precise, a number of plants classified within the genus Artemisia.
Liquid preparations made from the Artemisias have been used as medicines and tonics for as long as human history has been recorded. Once such medicine, based upon the plant Artemisia absinthium (known to the French as grande absinthe, literally, “tall wormwood”, but usually given in English as Common Wormwood) came to be so greatly appreciated in France and Switzerland in the 18th and 19th centuries that people took to drinking it for pleasure. That elixir, a distillate of wormwood and other herbs in alcohol, was called “extrait d’absinthe” (wormwood extract), or, less formally, absinthe. An ever-growing demand for this medicine turned aperitif as the 19th century rolled into the 20th engendered an enormous absinthe industry in Switzerland and France. Absinthe became an emblem of Belle Epoque France, and was intimately associated with the explosion of literary and artistic activity that characterized the era. The industry and the era ended with the prohibition of absinthe manufacture and sale in Switzerland and France, in 1910 and 1915 respectively.