PERNOD: WAS PASTIS REALLY BORN WITH RICARD?

Everyone knows Ricard. Fewer people know Pernod. And yet — before Ricard, before pastis, before the apéritif as we know it today, there was one man. One. Born in Le Locle in 1776, in the Neuchâtel mountains, a few kilometres from the French border.

PERNOD: WAS PASTIS REALLY BORN WITH RICARD?

The answer is in Môtiers, in the Swiss Val-de-Travers. And it will surprise you.

Everyone knows Ricard. Far fewer know Pernod. And yet — before Ricard, before pastis, before the apéritif as we know it today, there was one man. Just one. Born in Le Locle in 1776, in the Neuchâtel mountains, a few kilometres from the French border.

His name? Henri-Louis Perrenoud. Who became, in an act as founding as it was strategic, Henri-Louis Pernod.

A remedy that became a pleasure

The story begins not in a Parisian café but in a modest workshop in the Swiss Val-de-Travers. At the end of the eighteenth century absinthe was not yet a drink: it was a medicinal elixir. Grande absinthe, green anise, fennel, hyssop, lemon balm — five plants distilled in copper, macerated, transformed. Ancestral botanical knowledge that women had carried for centuries before the stills ever appeared.

In 1797 Perrenoud went into partnership with the Dubied family at Couvet and founded the first commercial absinthe distillery. Eight years later, in 1805, he crossed the border, settled in Pontarlier, gave his name a French spelling, and founded the house of Pernod Fils.

What follows reads like an industrial novel.

20,000 litres a day, and a pension fund

Within a few decades Pernod Fils became one of the largest distilleries in Europe. By 1896: 26 stills, 22 colouring vats, 20,000 litres of absinthe at 72% per day. Absinthe followed French soldiers to Algeria in their military rations. It took the cafés of Paris. It inspired Verlaine, Rimbaud, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Picasso himself, who would paint a Pernod bottle into his cubist still lifes.

But Pernod was not only a visionary industrialist. In 1871, a century before it became a legal obligation, he set up a pension fund for his workers. The owner thought about the men as much as about the plant.

The fall, and the recovery

On 16 March 1915 France banned absinthe. Switzerland had already done so in 1910. The stills of Pontarlier fell silent. A century-old industry stopped by decree.

Pernod did not disappear. As early as 1918 he launched Anis Pernod, a pioneering pastis that worked around the ban without betraying the craft. The still survived. The recipe adapted. And on 20 December 1974 came the strategic masterstroke: rather than exhaust itself fighting its rival Ricard at the height of its boom, Pernod merged with it. Pernod Ricard was born, and took its place among the world's great spirits groups.

So — was pastis born with Ricard? No. It was born of constraint, of resilience, and of the intelligence of a man from the Val-de-Travers who had lost everything and rebuilt all of it.

An exhibition that asks questions

This is the saga told by the temporary exhibition PERNOD — The Birth of the Apéritif, open until 7 March 2027 at the Maison de l'Absinthe in Môtiers.

Thirteen bilingual French-German panels. A previously unseen portrait film. A historical slideshow of the Pontarlier factory. A case of rare objects, including a bottle melted in the fire of 1901 and a full bottle still sealed from the period.

And one detail that raises the hairs: absinthe was made legal again in Switzerland on 1 March 2005. The anniversary of Henri-Louis Pernod's birth. Two hundred and twenty-nine years later. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

The exhibition does not hand out answers. It asks questions. This one, among others: What will be left of our work in two centuries?

Maison de l'Absinthe — Grande Rue 10, 2112 Môtiers (NE), Switzerland

29 May 2026 — 7 March 2027

Exhibition included in the entrance ticket:

Pernod: The Birth of the Apéritif