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On Pastis

One of the typical scenes to be found throughout my neck of the woods, Provence, is of men gathered around the town square playing pétanque and drinking the aniseed flavored liquor, Pastis. Many afternoons I spent playing this game in my youth, with the object of winning a couple of apéritifs!

In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a tradition for wine makers and bartenders to create their own Pastis liquors by combining 45% alcohol distilled from grapes and other fruits with sugar, caramel and combinations of plants, herbs and spices to be sold “under the counter”. Some of the recipes were supposed to contain as many as 72 different ingredients, including Mint, Birch leaves, Maize, Vervain, Sapwood, Licorice, Chamomile, Blackcurrant leaves, Poppy seeds, Thyme, Coriander, Parsley, Cinnamon, Star anise, Fennel, Summer savory, Cumin, Licorice and Aniseed.

The notorious liquor Absinthe also called “The Green Fairy” due to it’s greenish hue was the favorite tipple of writers and painters like Monet, Oscar Wilde and Vincent Van Gogh. Sadly it was responsible for severe problems as it contained the herb wormwood which is in fact toxic to the nervous system. As a result Absinthe and all other liquors containing anise such as Pastis were banned by about 1920. For fun, go here and you will see the Absinthe Museum, well worth visiting.

Anise, a distinctively flavored aromatic seed, gained popularity during the 18th century as a substitute for absinthe. Absinthe, discovered some years earlier by a Swiss doctor, was mixed with wormwood and other herbs and used as a medical elixir. The drink became popular, and in 1797 an aspiring businessman named Pernod purchased the recipe. However, absinthe was later determined to cause nerve damage and was banned from France, Switzerland, and the United States. Pernod altered the recipe by substituting anise or pastis for absinthe, and thereby created two new beverages which were found to stimulate the palate.

Pernod founded a company in 1805, and though it was the first to produce anise-flavored aperitifs, it remained small. Nevertheless, the company produced introduced a variety of brands, including Pernod, Pastis 51, Byrrh, and Cinzano, as inexpensive alternatives to wine aperitifs. After over 100 years as a modest family-run company, Pernod acquired the Suze company, a firm which made bitters from the distilled roots of the gentian plant.

The expansion of Pernod encouraged imitators to establish competing firms in the early 1930s. Once such imitator, Paul Ricard, introduced his own aniseed aperitif in 1932.Pastis is the perfect apéritif; every time you sit down for a meal in France there is the inevitable question, “un apéritif?”. So next time order a Pastis which will come in a short glass with a jug of chilled water. The Pastis is a slighly viscous, pale straw colored liquid which as you add water turns a milky white due to the oil of mint crystalizing out.

Pastis for me is “Provence in a bottle” and it is clear that sitting in the shade of a linden tree on a hot summer’s day sipping a cool glass of Pastis either watching the world go by or contemplating the heavy responsibility of the menu selections is what “savoir vivre” is all about. We have four basic ways of drinking this: straight with water; with grenadine added, it’s called a “tomate”, with mint, a “perroquet” (parrot) and with barley syrup, it has the evocative name of “Mauresque”. I know what I’ll have at around 5pm, alas, I’ll be at work and won’t be able to play a game of pétanque with my girls!