Still Life with Hill’s Absinth

Europe, May 2001

Another great painting in the Modern Absinthe Art series. If you are interested in this absinth painting please let me know.

Absinth Returns

 

The modern day renaissance in asbinthe drinking in fact started in the Czech Republic, and the new worldwide popularity can be traced back to a gentleman called Ing. Boháče from Slavonice. One bottle was made for his Besídka Hotel by Radomil Hill, whose family had originally produced absinthe during the high times of The First Republic in the 1920s. The Green Fairy –Zelena Muza – in the absinthe bottle made her first reappearance on the world stage in a beautiful Southern Bohemian town. By chance a theater group Divadlo Sklep -who were involved with the hotel – spotted the absinthe bottle and asked for some, the Green Fairy spread her wings and headed to Prague with that lucky band of actors.

 

 

Why would someone ask for absinth? It is actually well known! One only has to look around former Hapsburg Europe for other examples of this homemade thujone rich drink. For example Polish Piołunówka; this brew is named after “piołun” which is the Polish word for wormwood; the French word for wormwood is absinthe. Piołunówka is made by macerating wormwood and other herbs in alcohol and not by distilling; it is claimed that this helps the wormwood, and it’s constituent thujone,  to survive in a much more potent form. Then of course there’s Pelinovak from the former countries of Yugoslavia

 

Hills Absinth Brušperku u Ostravy

Bottling the Green Fairy 🙂 You’ll find more great photos and info on Hill’s world famous absinth (in Czech) at the Gurmet Klub website :

http://gurmetklub.cz/reportaz-likerka-hills-absinthu-4.html