Foot-pounded figs on a path, pine resin drifting from the forest margins, wild thyme scuffed into pungency: all evoke the Mediterranean, but none of these aromas is quite as culturally evocative of life around the sea’s rim as is the aerial sweetness of aniseed. Sit down by the soft waves anywhere from Perpignan east to Tripoli and Beirut, and it tends to be milky emulsions based on this spice which accompany the falling of the hours. The name may change (pastis, ouzo, raki, arak); the flavour note is constant.
In France, pastis was a twentieth century creation; the term (a Provençal word meaning ‘mixture’) first appeared in 1932. Absinthe was its much-demonised nineteenth-century progenitor. This was a strong, unsweetened liquor of Swiss Alpine origins based on the wormwood family (especially Artemisia absinthum), especially the original eighteenth-century recipe of Dr Pierre Ordinaire, later popularised with colossal commercial success by Henri-Louis Pernod. Worwood is bitter, so most absinthe recipes included Florentine fennel and green aniseed as well as other plant extracts to counterbalance this. The physical sweetening was provided by the drinker, who dripped icy water through a sugar cube placed on an absinthe spoon into the green liqueur below.
The late nineteenth-century was a time of far greater alcoholic excess in Europe than our own; after the phylloxera epidemic, cheap absinthe became more widely consumed than wine in France. As a result, it became the target of temperance movements, who claimed that the thujone contained in wormwood provoked hallucinations and insanity. Cause célèbres such as la crime du Lanfray -- the murder by a French agricultural labourer living in Switzerland of his wife and children in August 1905 -- were cited as evidence, though Lanfray drank up to four litres of wine a day which he merely garnished with the occasional absinthe. France eventually followed Belgium and Switzerland in banning it, in 1915.
Manufacturers turned to pastis, though it only became legal to produce thujone-free, aniseed-flavoured drinks of 40% alcohol by volume from 1922. Low-thujone versions of absinthe are now once again on sale, but they seem unlikely to dent the popularity of ready-sweetened pastis, which remains by some margin the most widely consumed spirit in France (where it outsells whisky, gin and vodka combined).
Two ingredients characterise pastis, and both are massively evident in France’s biggest-selling brand, Ricard: aniseed and liquorice. There are other flavourings in Ricard, but it’s hard to discern them. The aniseed flavour comes from star anise and fennel rather than the more expensive aniseed itself; anethole is the key compound surrendered by all three. In addition to its intrinsic flavour, anethole is perceived by humans as thirteen times sweeter than sugar. One of the appeals of the drink is that it appears to be sweeter than it actually is – and hence doesn’t cloy. One follows another, with treacherous ease.
By this strict, two-ingredient definition, Pernod isn’t a pastis at all but a boisson anisée, since it contains no liquorice; instead, its aniseed flavour is complemented by plants such as mint, coriander, angelica, tarragon (a relative of wormwood) and charmomile, and it is more highly sweetened than Ricard. Pastis 51 was originally a Pernod variant which did contain liquorice in contrast to the original, which bore the number 45. Other smaller marques include Casanis and Duval (both produced in the same factory in Marseilles by the Burgundy-based Boisset group) and the colourless Berger Blanc (now owned by the Franco-Polish group Belvédère).
There are, too, artisanal alternatives such as Eyguebelle, Jean Boyer and Henri Bardouin. The last of these is the most widely distributed of the three, and claims ‘grand cru’ status – though the notion of the cru or ‘growth’ is hard to sustain for a spirit whose main single ingredient is alcohol derived from sugarbeet. The difference between Henri Bardoin and its mass-market alternatives are that the recipe is notably more complex, containing (according to the company’s PDG, Alain Robert) some 65 different varieties of herbs and spices. “Pastis is usually a drink you have two or three of before a meal,” says one pastis-drinking friend of mine from southwest France, “but with Bardoin, I only have one, and I sip it slowly.” Admiration was perfectly mixed with reproof. Like many southerners, he says he ‘hates’ Pernod, which is regarded as unforgivably Parisian; Marseille and Provence are the home turf of pastis.
Even those who merely gaze at others consuming pastis will know that the clear spirit turns milky when water is added. This process is called louching, and is due to some of the ingredients becoming insoluble at a strength lower than that at which the spirit is bottled. Absinthe does the same. The water is important: pastis should always be cut by at least five parts water to one of spirit, and nine to one is perfectly acceptable, according to Alain Robert. “The origins of the drink were something you added just a little of to water to give it a nice taste, and it was meant to refresh you when it was hot, or windy, or when you were thirsty.” If you dislike pastis, it may be because you have only ever tried it neat. Serving pastis on the rocks is, Alain Robert says, a doubly bad idea: not only will it be overly strong and fail to refresh, but adding ice before water causes it to become scummy. Water first; ice after.
And sunshine always. I love the drink, but the idea of consuming it in winter is deeply unattractive. A sip of pastis seems not only to summarise an entire sea, but its emblematic season, too.
Taste contrasts -- and UK stockists in August 2008
A comparison between Henri Bardoin (Waitrose £17.29, www.thedrinkshop.com, £21.29) and Jean Boyer Emeraude (www.lebonvin.co.uk £25) is instructive. Bardoin is a subtler, more harmonious spirit, louching to a pale, more milky emulsion; Boyer is more forceful and extrovert, with a hint of green to its louche. Aniseed is a relatively discreet note in both, and liquorice still more so; Bardoin (whose flavourings include mugwort, thyme and rosemary) is floral and creamy, with great charm, whereas Boyer (which contains saffron, nutmeg and coriander) is darker and spicier,with a dryer, earthier finish. Henri Bardoin also produces two varieties of absinthe: the super-high-strength, sugar-free Grande Absente, bottled at 69% abv (available in the USA through www.crillonimporters.com; to be launched in the UK this autumn via www.thedrinkshop.com), and the ready-sugared Absente, bottled at ‘only’ 55% (www.lebonvin.co.uk £28; www.thedrinkshop.com £33.49). The liquor itself is green by comparison with the yellow of pastis and louches less opaquely; its scent of herbs and plants is leaf-fresh and complex, lifted by floral notes evocative of lemon verbena and meadowsweet. Aniseed lurks among its plant flavours, but we have left the Mediterranean for the mountains; this is the hip cousin of Chartreuse. There are a number of outstanding websites devoted to absinthe, including www.oxygenee.com and www.feeverte.net. For the full absinthe story, see The Dedalus Book of Absinthe by Phil Baker.