What we now refer to as “Happy Hour” was dubbed “l’heure verte” (“the green hour”) in the bars, cafes and cabarets of mid 19th-century Europe, a testament to the popularity of the emerald star of the bohemian-era drinking circuit. Absinthe was the beverage of choice for poets, authors and artists of the day – who touted the virtues of the Green Fairy and featured it prominently in their work, such as Degas’ L’Absinthe, and Manet’s The Absinthe Drinker. Many of Van Gogh’s paintings use the same hues one observes in the drink, often depicting the bar in which he consumed countless glasses along with Toulouse Lautrec – whose friend Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Absinthe has a wonderful color green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world.”

With a somewhat legendary origin involving a French doctor and two sisters in Switzerland, absinthe had entered apothecaries in the late 1700s as a stomach remedy, with its distinguishing ingredient, grande wormwood (Artemesia absinthium), used in medicines tracing back to ancient Egypt and Greece. Its other herbal components – anise and fennel seed – have remained traditional digestive aids as well as

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