If you are exploring Absinthe for pure enjoyment, then as the French pour goes, you are in for some jolly mental and physical effects. The experience can be described as a revelatory and calming one. The way you pour it is just the beginning of this enjoyable experience.

Simon and Schulter's "Guide to Herbs and Spices" tells us that Henri-Louis Pernod used aniseed, fennel, hyssop, and lemonbalm along with lesser amounts of angelica, star anise, dittany, juniper, nutmeg, and veronica. These ingredients were macerated together with wormwood plants. After leaving the mixture to sit, water was added and the mixture was distilled. Dried herbs, including more wormwood, were added to the distillate, which was then diluted with alcohol to give a concentration of about 75% alcohol by volume. Different absinthe manufacturers used slightly different ingredients, sometimes using calamus, which has been purported to have psychoactive effects. It is mostly recommended that Absinthe liquor shouldn’t be drunk in excess amounts because of the high alcohol content. This spirit is known to be among the most potent beverages available in the market - a bottle can normally consist of 70% or more alcohol volume. Absinthe was once popular among artists and writers and was drunk by Van Gogh, Baudelaire, and Verlaine, to name a few. It appears to have been believed to stimulate creativity. However, in the 1850's, there began to be concern about the results of chronic use. Chronic use of absinthe was believed to produce a syndrome, called absinthism, which was characterized by addiction, hyperexcitability, and hallucinations. However, the exceptionally high alcohol level of this drink was one of the reasons it was eventually outlawed in several countries by the early 1900s.

But is it (real) absinthe?

Pastis is a similar liqueur to absinthe and was also originally made with wormwood. However, the dominant flavor in pastis is licorice (rather than the star anise of modern Pernod or HerbSainte). Pastis brands include Ricard, Duval, Jeannot, Casanis, and Henri Bardouin. Vermouth, chartreuse, and benedictine absinthe contain small amounts of thujone. In fact, vermouth, which is made using the flower heads from wormwood, takes its name from the German wermuth ("wormwood"). There are, of course, many other essential oil containing drinks, such as Ouzo and Jagermeister. Wormwood is popular as a flavoring for brannvin (an alcoholic drink made from potatoes) in Sweden. The rage that Degas's L'Absinthe caused in England was an expression of a pre-existing nervous fear that the decadent ways of the Continent might reach the shores of the British Isles, too. Two years previously, Marie Corelli, the English author of "Wormwood: A Drama of Paris", wrote: Absinthe enthusiasts know that it originated from Switzerland and the drink was extremely popular among French writers and artists around the 19th century. This is also when Absinthe was given the moniker of "the Green Fairy".

Originally, the absinthe drink was intended as an aperitif. The bars and cafes of fin de siecle Paris celebrated the “ Green Hour“, a late-afternoon period when Parisians downed their pre-dinner glass (or three) of the green liquor. The morbidness of the modern French mind is well-known and universally admitted ... the open atheism, heartlessness, flippancy, and flagrant immorality of the whole modern French school of thought is unquestioned."What a slut," declared George Moore, a British art critic, when, in 1893, he first set his eyes on Edgar Degas's painting L'Absinthe. The "slut" in the picture was not the Green Fairy, but a French actress portrayed drinking absinthe in a Parisian cafe. She was one Ellen Andree, the painter's friend, shown in a reflective moment in a cafe called La Nouvelle-Athenes.