1. What is "Absinthe Montmartre"?
Absinthe Montmartre is the first and probably only traditionally distilled, naturally colored, high quality austrian premium Absinthe. A true old-viennese speciality!
2. How did Absinthe Montmartre came to be?
Absinthe Montmartre is a cooperative project of the old-viennese Schnapsmuseum and Tuivels Absinthe Haus. The reason to start the project was our wish to create a product that would be of high quality and bring austrian Absinthe to be recognized by international connoisseurs.
3. How do you make Absinthe Montmartre?
Absinthe Montmartre is carefully distilled and naturally colored with herbs just like it was done more than 100 years ago. We put great emphasis on sticking strictly to the old methods of production that are described in various historic books and protocolls.
4. If Absinthe Montmartre is produced just like real Absinthe was produced in the past doesn't that mean it's dangerous and against the law?
Not at all! Absinthe Montmartre isn't much more dangerous than any other alcoholic drink. The high quality methods of production make sure that our Absinthe is well within the law. When correctly distilled, most of the harmful substances are largely removed from the Absinthe. Only inferior methods of production (like those often employed and not controlled during the end of the 19th century) run the risk of producing a potentially toxic product.
5. But if Absinthe Montmartre is a genuine Absinthe that hasn't been "modernized" doesn't that mean that it automatically has to have more Thujone than what is allowed today.
No! Unrealistic Thujoncontents of 60 - 300 ppm like they are often still reported for vintage Absinthe today have allready been disproved by serious scientific research. Absinthe produced by quality methods does never have more than 35ppm Thujone. Not now, not in the past. It's just a fairy tale rooted in analytical errors of 19th century "scientists".
Here for example are two scientific articles dealing with just this subject:
Emmert-analytik Thujon Studie/absinth.htm
Myth, reality and Absinthe (englisch)
6. So how much Thujone does Absinthe Montmartre contain then?
Our Absinthe contains the same amounts of Thujone commonly found in high quality Absinthe-brands of the 19th century.
We distance ourselves from the practice of publishing exact thujone contents because in a traditionally distilled product the thujone content will vary naturally just as it varies in the wormwood plant itself. Proclaiming a fixed thujone content would be rather questionable and not much more than drama.
We, the creators of Absinthe Montmartre, prefer our product to convince by superior taste and pleasant effect. Deceiving customers with invented thujone contents isn't quite our idea of product presentation.
7. But can an austrian Absinthe really be called traditional and authentic? After all Absinthe is a french thing isn't it?
The distillery Fischer (today the old-viennese Schnapsmuseum) was founded in the year of 1875 and started distilling genuine Absinthe back in the days of emperor Franz Jospeh allready. Sadly the production came to a halt when the distillery was hit hard during the second world war. But now it is resumed again! That means our Absinthe Montmartre is rooted in an old-viennese Absinthe tradition that goes back at least a 100 years in time.
8. Why is Absinthe Montmartre more expensive than some of the other brands i know?
Its traditional and natural method of production is time consuming and expensive. Many other producers tend to use cheap oils and artificial additives instead of real herbs. They also often use machines to mix their oily absinthes rather than distill them correctly. (Of course that practice is usually sold to the customer as "modernized" and "controlled" production)
9. My last bottle of Absinthe Montmartre tasted somehow better than the ones before... or is that just my imagination?
No! We are indeed still working at improving and refining our Absinthe all the time. That's one of the reasons the opinions of our customers are so important to us. We want to implement the wishes and suggestions of our customers as good as possible where it is applicable.
10. So how do i know what's really inside my bottle... isn't this going to be awfully confusing?
Not at all. We plan to
announce important changes in our recipe to the public in time. We also plan
to note recipe changes on the label so the customer will allways know what
he pays for. It's very important to us to make the process of recipe improvement
and development as transparent to our customers as possible.