Probably the most famous Absinthe company in history was Pernod Fils. The firm was established in 1805 in Pontarlier (France) by Henri-Louis Pernod. In the beginning, there were just two stills in the factory, producing not more than 16 liters of Absinthe per day. But this should change dramatically….
The early times of Pernod Fils Absinthe
Henri-Louis’s son Louis bought 36,000 square meters of land on the outskirts of Pontarlier alongside the Doubs river. An Absinthe factory was built with a daily production exceeding already 400 liters. But this was just the beginning of the Pernod success story. In 1850 the production capacity was already 20,000 liters per day. Absinthe consumption expanded even further when the French Army, which had been fighting in Algeria, returned home: During the war, French soldiers received a daily dose of Absinthe against stomach diseases. As they returned, they brought back their newly acquired taste for Absinthe and the demand for Absinthe skyrocketed. By 1896 the output was already 125,000 litres per day! This success story could only be stopped by Absinthe prohibition in 1914. But Pernod reacted and developed an Absinthe substitute, the drink Pastis. You can say Pastis is basically an Absinthe without wormwood and of course a lower alcohol degree. The ritual, drinking it with water and sugar, is derived from the Absinthe ritual.
Nowadays, you can once again find an Absinthe in the Pernod product portfolio. But as Absinthe is a substitute of their main product Pastis, Absinthe is just a tiny little niche product which never got big marketing budgets. In a way, you can say this is positive for the market, as it allowed small Absinthe distillers to revive the drink in an authentic way!
(Source: Absinthe Encyclopedia by D. Nathan-Maister)
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Since aroundabsinthe has been readily available in most better wine and liqour stores in Denmark. If nothing else, they often carry the Pernod absinthe. In the very beginning of the revival most stores only carried some of the worst brands possible though, such as Hapsburg, Neto Costa, Trenet etc. Among the slightly better ones at the time were the Spanish essence mixed absentas from Montana and Lasala. If you were lucky you could find an extremely expensive bottle of Segarra Absenta. Distilled and not bad, but very very pricey. It took several years before this would change and more traditional high quality distilled absinthes would enter the danish market.