C'est si bon, c'est l'apéro parfait!

On pastis

For me, Pastis is inextricably linked to sultry summers in the south of France. Nowhere does a cold Pastis taste better than at a terrace in Provence, and yet, I can’t resist buying a bottle of Ricard every spring, as soon as the weather starts to hint of sun and summer. Throughout the season, I serve the golden-yellow beverage in vintage Pastis glasses (I even have a real Pastis water jug), and apparently that works wonders because after just one sip, I can almost hear the cigales singing!

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The French drink approximately four hundred liters of Pastis annually. It is said to stimulate the appetite and aid digestion. You should never drink it neat; it should be mixed with five parts water, which makes the drink cloudy (‘louche’ in French) and gives it a milky color. You can add ice, but only after adding water.

There are various hip and trendy Pastis cocktails, too: the perroquet (with mint syrup) the tomate (with grenadine syrup), the violet (with lavender syrup), the rourou (with strawberry syrup) and the goudron (with coke), just to give you a few examples.

The history of ‘le p’tit jaune’, as Pastis is called in its hometown Marseille, goes back to the 1920s when a clever young man named Paul Ricard came up with the idea of creating an anise liqueur after the ban on liquor was lifted.

But first a little about absinthe, Pastis’ infamous green-hued cousin. Absinthe was first marketed by Henri-Louis Pernod in 1805 in the town of Pontarlier in Jura, not far from the Swiss border. It became especially popular after the second-half of the 19th century, when the phylloxera plague had wiped out a large part of the French vineyards. Artists and writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Guy de Maupassant and Ernest Hemingway were huge fans of the ‘Green Fairy’. Oscar Wilde once wrote: “After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world. I mean disassociated. Take a top hat. You think you see it as it really is. But you don’t because you associate it with other things and ideas. If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you’d be frightened, or you’d laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad. Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clear-headed and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust. The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies and roses, sprang up, and made a garden in the café. ‘Don’t you see them?’ I said to him. ‘Mais non, monsieur, il n’y a rien.’”

The Absinthe Drinker, Viktor Oliva (1901)

The waiter must have thought Wilde was mad and replied there was nothing to see. No wonder French prohibitionists claimed that “L’absinthe rend fou!” (Absinthe makes you crazy.) And, the winemakers, who wanted everyone to start drinking wine again, nodded in agreement. Thujone, a substance found in absinthe’s main ingredient, artemisia absinthium (wormwood), was said to have a hallucinogenic effect and even lead to madness. No one ever fathomed it could have something to do with too much drinking of absinthe, coupled with a considerably high (up to seventy percent) alcohol content. Ultimately, absinthe was banned in 1915. 

As a replacement for the popular drink, the company Pernod Fils created an aniseed drink with the name Pernod, without wormwood and with a lower alcohol content of forty percent. Much like absinthe, Pernod was to be mixed with water. Sugar was added to the drink, making the ritual of pouring water into the glass over a sugar cube on a perforated spoon no longer necessary.

After endless experimentation, Paul Ricard also developed his own anise drink, “le vrai Pastis de Marseille,” (the real Pastis from Marseille) made from star anise, licorice and other aromatic herbs. He marketed his Pastis (the name is derived from the Provencal word ‘pastisson’, meaning ‘mixture’) in 1932. Six years later, he was allowed to increase the alcohol percentage to forty-five percent. It wasn’t long before everyone got a taste for Pastis, which became the beloved apéritif of France.

When Pernod Fils smelled competition, however, they launched their own Pastis in 1951 with an alcohol content of forty-five percent, calling it Pastis 51. In 1975, the two companies merged, and Pernod Ricard became the world’s third-largest beverage company and ‘l'Empire du Pastis’. As the amusing 1948 chanson by Darcelys goes, “Un Pastis bien frais, C’est si bon, c’est l'apéro parfait!” (A well-chilled Pastis, it’s so good, it’s the perfect apéritif!) I can’t help but agree, especially with a bowl of Nyons olives or some salted almonds.

PS: I love this drink so much that I named my beautiful dachshund Pastis. He would have been 12 next week. I will forever miss him. (2011-2018)