In 1879, Harper’s Weekly claimed that “many deaths are directly traceable to the excessive use of absinthe,” a story in The New York Times reported. and the rest of Europe, but was short lived. It became so common that there was a “green hour” in Paris that referred to when people sat outdoors and sipped the drink. Pernod’s operations moved to Pontarlier, France, in 1805, and the drink exploded in popularity among artists and the upper class over the next century. In 1798, a Swiss distiller named Henri Louis-Pernod created the first commercially produced absinthe that used wormwood as a major flavor component. When steeped in a liquid, it imparts a vibrant green color.
The leaves are silky and the plant has droopy yellow flower heads. In the late 1700s, a Swiss woman by the name of Madame Henriod used the plant as a bitter and herbaceous flavoring agent in her liquor. What’s too bitter and medicinal for some, however, is delicious to others. Shakespeare referenced wormwood in Romeo and Juliet by writing that Juliet’s wet nurse weaned her by using wormwood. In the book of Revelations in the Bible, wormwood is used to symbolize a fallen star that turns a third of the world’s water too bitter to drink. Ancient Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Hippocrates recommended wormwood to be used for everything from childbirth to rheumatism. The first written record of a medicinal use for wormwood can be found on Egyptian papyrus dating back to around 1552 B.C. Wormwood’s bitter reputation is thousands of years old.
The scientific name for common wormwood, Artemisia absinthium, gave birth to the spirit’s name. The plant is native to Europe, and its leaves are used for flavoring a range of things, but its most famous association is with absinthe. The reason for that reputation stems from a single ingredient in absinthe: wormwood. It’s not hallucinogenic, but that doesn’t stop associations with green fairies. Despite its resurgence in the modern cocktail movement through drinks like the Sazerac, there’s no getting around absinthe’s reputation as a hallucinogenic liquor.
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