Green, white and pink: absinthe country by country

In 2014 a Swiss federal court was asked who owns three words: "Absinthe," "Fée verte" and "La Bleue." The distillers of the Val-de-Travers, the valley where absinthe began, said the names were theirs. The government had agreed with them in 2010 and registered all three as Swiss geographical indications. Twelve producers and sellers appealed, among them Pernod and the French firms Combier and Paul Devoille.

The court looked at a survey of 1,904 people in Switzerland. Sixty five percent had heard of absinthe. Only 18 percent had ever heard of La Bleue, and of those, barely a third connected it with the Val-de-Travers. On August 8, 2014 the court ruled that all three names are generic. So anyone can make absinthe and call it that.

Five years later the town across the border got what the valley could not. On August 12, 2019 the European Union registered "Absinthe de Pontarlier" as a geographical indication, with a rulebook on how it must be made. That makes Pontarlier the one place where the law spells out how absinthe has to be made. Everywhere else, the differences are in old recipe books, labels and posters. The last section is one number from Pontarlier, then and now.

Switzerland: the valley, the vote and the blanche

The story of a French doctor named Pierre Ordinaire inventing absinthe at Couvet is told everywhere. The best scientific history of the drink calls the attribution "supposed," and Swiss reporting calls it legend. What is on the record is that Henri-Louis Pernod began making absinthe commercially in the Val-de-Travers in 1797, and that production moved across the border to Pontarlier in 1805, beginning with one still of 16 liters a day.

Switzerland voted to ban absinthe on July 5, 1908, by 241,078 to 138,669. The ban took force on October 7, 1910. The valley did not stop. Swiss reporters counted sixty to eighty secret distilleries working in the Val-de-Travers through the ban years, with the local authorities mostly looking away. Absinthe became legal again on March 1, 2005.

The Val-de-Travers is known today for clear absinthe, the blanche, and "La Bleue" is a common name for it. Neither the court ruling nor any other source found explains why the bootleggers favored it. What the record does show is that clear absinthe was not invented by bootleggers. Duplais printed a recipe for "White Absinthe," distilled and not coloured, in 1871.

France: four classes and a cheap green

In 1855 Pierre Duplais, a Paris distiller, published the trade's standard handbook. On page 348 he sorts absinthe into four classes: ordinaires, demi-fines, fines and suisses. The last class, he says, divides again into the absinthes of Pontarlier, Montpellier and Lyon.

The ordinaires, Duplais writes, "are hardly known except in Paris and a few big cities." They were made by liquor shops, not distillers. His recipe shows why they were cheap. Wormwood, hyssop, lemon balm and anise go into 15 liters of alcohol, which are distilled. Then 40 liters of plain alcohol and 45 of water are added, to make 100 liters at 46 degrees. Most of the bottle never touched a plant. The green version was coloured, in his words, with "blue prepared from woollen cloth, with saffron and caramel."

A better absinthe had its colour from herbs steeped in the finished spirit. Duplais's 1871 English edition gives the "Swiss absinthe" recipes of five French towns, and the colouring herbs are where they part:

Coriander turns up at Montpellier and Besançon, and a modern review of absinthe's chemistry calls it a mark of French absinthe. Star anise, the cheaper Chinese spice, is in Duplais's Paris grades but not in his Swiss ones. The Pontarlier rules of 2013 ban it outright, "formellement interdite." They also ban plant extracts, fertilizer and weed killer on the wormwood fields, and require at least 45 percent alcohol and at least 20 milligrams of thujone per liter. The wormwood must be grown and dried in twenty villages around the town.

France banned absinthe in 1915. Production quietly came back in 1988, under strict rules, but the word itself stayed off French labels until a law of May 17, 2011. Only then could Pontarlier apply for its own name.

Bohemia: no anise

The one style that breaks the French rule is Czech. A 2006 review of absinthe's history by Stephan Padosch, Dirk Lachenmeier and Lars Kröner puts it in one line: "in the Czech Republic, peppermint was added, but neither anise nor fennel." Duplais names anise as the plant that turns absinthe white when water goes in. A Czech absinthe made without it gives up the louche, the milky cloud every French recipe was built around.

Prague drank absinthe all the same. In 1901 Viktor Oliva painted a man alone at a café table with his glass, and a green woman sitting on the table beside him. The painting hangs in Prague's Café Slavia.

Spain and Britain: never banned

The same 2006 review lists Spain and the United Kingdom among the places absinthe was never banned. The record found says no more than that. Claims about a distinct Spanish style, sweeter or with citrus, come from sources that do not cite anything. They are left out until a period recipe turns up.

The United States: imported, then banned

New Orleans had the Old Absinthe House. The Agriculture Department shut imports and interstate sale with Food Inspection Decision 147, effective October 1, 1912, and the Treasury allowed "thujone-free" absinthe back on October 16, 2007. The full story is in Wormwood on trial.

Pink

Rosinette was pink. The Paris printer Camis made a poster for Rosinette, "absinthe rose oxygénée." No source found says what turned it pink. What is known is that colour was cheap and often fake before the bans. The 2006 review says that before 1912 absinthe was "most frequently colored by artificial agents," and Duplais shows dye in the cheapest grade in 1855.

Pontarlier, 1914 and 2018

The Pontarlier rulebook opens with the town's history. In 1907, it says, absinthe employed more than 3,000 people in the district. In 1914 the town's distilleries made 66,000 liters a day.

In 2018, the year before the European Union protected the name, the French government counted five wormwood growers, one distiller and 10,000 liters sold. Pontarlier now makes in a year less than a sixth of what it once made in a single day.

Absinthe by country, year by year

Where the sources disagree

Who moved to Pontarlier. The 2006 review says Henri-Louis Pernod moved production there in 1805. The Pontarlier rulebook says a Major Dubied moved it, on February 14, 1805. Both put the move in the same year.

The inventor. Pierre Ordinaire is named in nearly every history. The scientific review hedges it and Swiss reporting calls it legend. No document was found that ties him to the first recipe.

Why the Swiss made it clear. The usual answer, that clear spirit was easier to hide, is repeated everywhere and sourced nowhere. Clear absinthe existed by 1871, long before the ban.

A Spanish style. Said to exist, not documented in any source found.