Absinthe is a grain spirit flavoured with the oil of wormwood bark and various herbs and spices. The exact combination of herbs and spices differs between producers; however the most common are lemon balm, mint, fennel, and hyssop.

In the late 1800’s a Frenchman, Dr Ordinaire, emigrated to Switzerland and began creating a new drink using local ingredients – wormwood bark, fennel, liquorice, hyssop and coriander. He called it Absinthe after Artemisia Absinthium, the latin name for wormwood. On his death, he left the recipe for Absinthe together with a large sum of money to his housekeeper who set up a bar to sell his drink. The bar attracted the attention of another Frenchman, Henri-Louis Pernod, who bought the bar and the drink, returned to France and produced the first commercially available Absinthe. It soon became incredibly fashionable with artists and intellectuals in Paris.

Absinthe quickly became popular throughout Europe and much to the dislike of many governments, consumption rose dramatically. It was eventually banned in many countries around the 1850’s under the belief that it made people insane. It is now believed that most of the insanity at the time was largely due to syphilis!

Absinthe was never actually banned in the UK but supplies dried up when France stopped production and it was eventually forgotten about until it’s re-introduction to the market in the 1990’s.