Hardly any other drink has been outlawed and banned as often over the centuries as absinthe, the bitter brew from the Jura. In Germany it has only been allowed to be consumed legally again since 1998, and in its country of origin, Switzerland, only since 2005. In it, evil manifests itself, it drives the drinker crazy and incites him to murder and manslaughter. In addition, no other drink has such connotations of the rejected and spoiled as the schnapps distilled from wormwood, fennel and anise.
The absinthe brand Cabaret Bizarre praises its product as an “expression of sexual freedom” and has “created a dark dreamland in which the most amazing adventures are possible”. No wonder, since absinthe has always been called “The Green Fairy”, which has been dragging men to their downfall ever since Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud stylized her as a seductress. Today we still know that when someone sings about “absinthe-colored eyes,” they are singing about a femme fatale.
Between 1850 and the beginning of the First World War, absinthe was the bohemian drug par excellence. Not just for the French – Oscar Wilde, van Gogh, Picasso, everyone indulged in the intoxication caused by the neurotoxin thujone in combination with alcohol.
From the Parisian bohemian movement, the wave spread to Berlin during the Weimar Republic, where the young Brecht in particular struggled not only to get drunk, but also to make literary capital out of it. In his early work “Baal” he has his protagonist cross “absinthe seas” in the murder ballad “Of the Adventurers” in search of redemption. Which was exactly to David Bowie’s taste, who recorded the adventurer song for his “Baal” EP.
Suddenly everyone wanted absinthe
A first 1920s renaissance swept through pop culture in East Berlin in the 1980s
after turning into a real absinthe craze. Countless absinthe bars, initially illegal, sprung up. Hordes of pop stars, from Elvis Costello to Limp Bizkit to Garbage, gave themselves a veneer of wickedness with absinthe. The most artistically valuable appropriation was undoubtedly the Lou Reed-Metallica co-production “Lulu” in 2011, in which the protagonist gets drunk on absinthe and tries to get herself down with opium.
From today’s perspective, the low point was the collaboration of a Swiss smart guy and distillery heir who created the Mansinthe brand (alcohol content: 66.6%) with Marilyn Manson, for which the scandalous rocker contributed a watercolor that adorned the label.
Which, on the other hand, isn’t entirely surprising – after all, absinthe is an original Swiss invention, or more precisely, a French-speaking Swiss invention. The otherwise well-behaved mountain dwellers on both sides of the border quickly discovered the hidden powers of the drink, which was first distilled by the healer Madame Henriod around 1770 in the village of Couvet. And when governments banned their favorite liquor at the beginning of the 20th century, they mutated into rebellious moonshiners. The farmer’s wife Berthe “La Malote” (“the badass”) Zurbuchen particularly stood out, who distilled two hundred liters of absinthe per week for half a century and even had her house painted green, to the scorn of the police and customs officers. However, she was rarely prosecuted – her customers included public prosecutors and federal councilors.
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And today? The absinthe hype has died down. Nevertheless, there are still dozens of small distilleries, especially in the Jura, which, as Tania Brasseur reports in her absinthe primer “Journey to the Land of the Green Fairy”, tease out an astonishing variety of flavors from the aroma spectrum between wormwood and aniseed. This, in turn, is increasingly attracting international chefs who use the schnapps to refine their creations.
Confected trout with absinthe vin aigrette, for example, or shrimp flambéed with absinthe and babas soaked in absinthe syrup (1 l water, 400 g sugar, 150 ml absinthe) with woodruff cream. By the way, this also works great with brownies instead of the French-Swiss national pastry.