Rebel appeal

No cocktail ingredient has been more controversial than absinthe (aka, la fée verte or the green fairy). Its popularity boomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably during the La Belle Époque era in Paris when personal liberty, the quest for free expression, decadence and the bohemian lifestyle coalesced in an unprecedented cultural revolution that set about challenging long-established social norms. Produced from common wormwood, green anise, sweet fennel, and other herbs, it contains a high level of alcohol. It became the firm favourite of: Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde; Irish novelist, James Joyce; French poet, Charles Baudelaire; English author, Lewis Carroll; American writers, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway; French painter, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Dutch artist, Vincent Van Gogh, and French writer, Guy de Maupassant (See blog, Paternity claims.). The drink’s rebellious anti-establishment appeal was heightened in 1914 when its sale and consumption was banned in France and prohibited in the US and most of Continental Europe the following year. This stemmed from absinthe’s alleged addictive, psychoactive, and hallucinogenic properties. However, all that disappeared in the late 1990s with the introduction of new EU beverage rules which resulted in the approved distillation and sale of more than 200 brands across Europe by the early 2000s. Interestingly, one of those countries now licensing absinthe’s revival, was France.