If you've ever had a Death in the Afternoon cocktail or even heard of it, you might have wondered why it has such a morbid ...

Absinthe beguiled Van Gogh, Degas, Picasso, Wilde—and a modern-day swindler who tricked fellow devotees of the drink.

It’s true. Cincinnati had its devotees of “La Fee Verte,” the “Green Fairy” so beloved of habitués of the Parisian demi-monde. According to the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [4 February 1894]: ...

The first part of the answer is that absinthe is a distillation of alcohol with botanicals, such as anise, fennel and wormwood. However, the distillation can include any number of herbs and spices ...

The drinker would die of alcohol poisoning first ... 1890s and had it shipped from overseas. To make the absinthe, he needed anise, wormwood, and fennel, and he sourced the wormwood from Poland.