he history of absinthe begins in the Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland, where a doctor named Pierre Ordinaire is said to have created the original recipe in the late 18th century as a medicinal elixir. The spirit spread rapidly across the French border, became enormously popular in 19th-century Paris — the preferred drink of Toulouse-Lautrec, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Van Gogh — and was eventually banned throughout Europe and the United States in the early 20th century following a moral panic largely manufactured by the wine industry, which saw absinthe as a competitor.

The key ingredient in authentic absinthe is Artemisia absinthium — grand wormwood — which contains the compound thujone, falsely believed to cause hallucinations. Modern scientific analysis has established that the thujone content of historical absinthe was far too low to produce any such effect, and that the notoriety of absinthe drinkers was far more simply explained by the fact that they were drinking a spirit of 65–75% alcohol at alarming rates in impoverished conditions.

Real absinthe is distilled from a base spirit infused with the three "holy trinity" botanicals: grande wormwood, green anise, and Florence fennel. The finest expressions then undergo a second maceration of botanicals to produce the characteristic green colour. The resulting spirit is extraordinarily aromatic — anise-forward but layered with herbs, flowers, and a wormwood bitterness that gives the spirit its characteristic finish.

The traditional service — cold water dripped over a sugar cube into a glass of neat absinthe — produces the 'louche': the same beautiful clouding effect seen in raki and ouzo as the anise oils separate from the alcohol. Free shipping on orders over $300.