Eric Smith, ca. 2038.
In 1769, the Henriod sisters from Switzerland created a recipe for a medicinal herbal remedy that they called Bon Extrait d’Absinthe, made from alcohol, aniseed, lemon balm and the mysterious artemisia absinthium, or wormwood. In the early 1800s the recipe was sold to H.L. Pernod in France who had deftly recognized a market for absinthe among former French soldiers who had developed a taste for it during the Algiers War. The drink achieved widespread popularity across France in the end of the 1800s largely due to the highly publicized absinthe fueled fancy-pantsery of Baudelaire, Voltaire, Gauguin, and legions of mimes forever struggling in vain against invisible boxes and wind. Oscar Wilde famously said of the drink, “What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?” before falling down. By the turn of the century, the French were consuming 36 million liters of absinthe a year, and mimes were responsible for a scary 12 percent of that.
Continue reading: Les Absintheurs By Eric Smith.
Filed under: Francophone bullshit, booze
