But, the Green Fairy’s effects were being felt in society, much as cannabis is today. High in alcohol, cheap, seductive, reputedly hallucinogenic, it was blamed for epilepsy, tuberculosis, crime and madness. Public morality was outraged, bans followed: Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Switzerland in the early 1900s, the U.S. in 1912, and France, unequivocal epicentre of absinthe culture, in 1915.
Two World Wars followed, the Green Fairy was dead and forgotten. Or was she?
Please welcome a Brit. Yes! A British entre-preneur by the name of George Rowley who, from his base in Prague, became interested in the legal validity of the ban. He teamed up with cellular biologist Marie-Claude Delahaye, herself fascinated by the legend after buying an absinthe spoon in a flea-market in 1981. Together they challenged the 80 year-old ban through the European court, won, and, in 2000, launched the first traditionally distilled absinthe commercially produced in France since 1915 called La Fée Parisienne.
Time for a taste. Where better than Pontarlier’s annual Festival of Absinthe. As I boarded the Eurostar from St Pancras I reflected how Oscar Wilde had fled to Paris after his trial, taking refuge in absinthe. He took the boat train, I the tunnel. My journey and my ruminations continued. Reading more about the social history I began to recognise similarities with the banning of gin (‘Mother’s Ruin’) in London in the mid-18th century due to widespread drunkenness and the consequent moral outrage.
Pontarlier sits in the foothills of the Jura, with its absinthe twin-town Couvet, just across the border up the Val de Travers, an ancient, and, I was soon to discover, very active smuggling route. More of this later.
The Festival comprises film-shows, museum exhibitions, discussions, a collector’s market, but most importantly, tastings. All my research had made me both eager and slightly wary of what it might do to me.