The still
The still is at the origin of brandies and liqueurs. Impressive with its gleaming copper walls, it is also impressive by the diversity of its shapes throughout the regions and time. Among the acquisitions of the museum you will find a secretly made home-made device that was seized and pierced by the administration.
What is the origin of the still?
Some caves have a ceiling so low that people have to be laying on their back to notice, aside from the cave paintings, surfaces smoothed by the repeated passing of tongues licking condensation steams which raised above reserves of fruits or roots: the first natural still!
Later, vases which could contain 35L were retrieved by archeologists and they are considered to be stills. They were found in the North of Iraq and date back to 3500 years.
Some linguistic origins:
Alambic (still) : comes from the Spanish "alambico", which comes from Arabic "al inbiq" = vase to distill, which comes from Greek "ambix"
Elixir: from the Arabic "al iksir"= the philosopher's stone and the medicine, borrowed from Greek "kseron" = medicine
Eau de vie (brandy) : 14th century, translation from Latin "aqua vitae"
The home-distiller
The home-distiller was a farmer with an orchard, he had the right to distill his own fruits and he benefited from a tax exemption of 10L of pure alcohol on which he didn't pay taxes: it was "the privilege of the distiller". The tax exemption was blocked in 1954, it meant that those who benefited from it kept it as a granted right, but the heirs or the new distillers don't have this tax exemption anymore. They can distill but they must pay the taxes on alcohol.
Generally, distillers had their production distilled by a traveling distiller or in a public workshop. Here, in Lapoutroie, the home-distillers were allowed to have their stills at home, in their farm. There are still around 80 stills in the village today.
Before being a beverage, the absinth is a perennial plant of Artemisia vulgaris family: the wormwood. Its foliage is characterized by very jagged silver leaves. During the summer, little flowers appear. It is during this period that we harvest it. There are different types of wormwood (called WERMUT in German, hence the Vermouth) : Artemisia Absinthum (the most common), Artemisia Pontica, Artemisia Camphorata, etc…
History of the absinth:
Before becoming a very coveted aperitif, the absinth was used in therapeutics. It is in Couvet, little Swiss village that everything started… Then progressively, in Switzerland and in France, in Pontarlier and Fougerolles in France, the distilleries multiplied.
That’s how the years of glory of the “Green fairy” began. First known as the beverage which gave inspiration to painters and poets (Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Verlaine, Rimbaud…) it became a very popular drink, particularly at a time when wine was rare because of an epidemic of Phylloxera in France. The consumption in the colonies was also important.
But the success of the absinth caused its downfall and the Green fairy became the “Green peril”. The absinth disturbed because it was associated to alcoholism, qualified by the medical academy of “absinthism”. It was said that the Green fairy drove people mad. It was banned in 1915 in France and in most other countries.
In 1922, the aniseed beverages with a low percentage of alcohol were authorized, then in 1951, the degree of commercialization was definitively set to 45% Vol.
In 1998, a European regulation authorized the absinth again, following some very precise limits (thujon…)
Taking back our old recipe books that were displayed in the museum, we took the fabrication up again and created our absinth that we baptized: “Libertine”. We planted young plants of wormwood and they are now harvested every summer, before the drying and the distillation.
