Exhibitions

Henry-Louis Pernod, a visionary

Name: Henry-Louis Pernod, a visionary
Start: 2026-05-29
End: 2027-03-07
Location: Maison de l'Absinthe

Thirteen bilingual panels, original objects, a portrait film and an animated map retrace the birth of Pernod Fils at Pontarlier in 1805 and the rise of a distillery that shaped the history of the aperitif.

When: Until 7 March 2027

Plan your visit

The Pernod exhibition entrance: a wall reading "Pernod, naissance de l'apéritif" beside a chronological frieze, visitors inside

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

Pernod: was pastis really born with Ricard?

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

His name? Henri-Louis Perrenoud. Who became, in a founding and strategic act, 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. An ancestral botanical knowledge that women had carried for centuries before the stills entered the picture.

In 1797, Perrenoud joined the Dubied family at Couvet and created the first commercial absinthe distillery. Eight years later, in 1805, he crossed the border, settled at Pontarlier, Gallicised his name, and founded the house of Pernod Fils.

What followed reads like an industrial novel.

Engraved portrait of Henri-Louis Pernod, 1805, printed in blue ink

20,000 litres a day, and a pension fund

Within a few decades, Pernod Fils became one of the largest distilleries in Europe. In 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 conquered the Parisian cafés. It inspired Verlaine, Rimbaud, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Picasso himself — who painted a Pernod bottle in his Cubist still lifes.

But Pernod was not only a visionary industrialist. In 1871, a century before it became a legal requirement, he created a pension fund for his workers. The employer thought of people as much as of machinery.

The fall, and the recovery

On 16 March 1915, France banned absinthe. Switzerland had already done so in 1910. The stills at Pontarlier fell silent. A century-old industry reduced to silence by decree.

Pernod did not disappear. From 1918 onwards, he launched Anis Pernod, a pioneering pastis that circumvented the ban without betraying the craft. The still survived. The recipe adapted. And on 20 December 1974, a stroke of strategic genius: rather than exhausting itself fighting its rival Ricard at the height of the boom, Pernod merged with it. Pernod Ricard was born, and became one of the world's great spirits groups.

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

The historic Pernod Fils label: "Liqueur d'anis supérieure, Couvet en Suisse"

An exhibition that asks questions

It is this saga that the temporary exhibition PERNOD — Birth of the Aperitif recounts, open until 7 March 2027 at the Maison de l'Absinthe in Môtiers.

Thirteen bilingual French-German panels. An unreleased portrait film. A historical slideshow of the Pontarlier works. A display of rare objects: including a bottle melted in the fire of 1901, and a sealed full bottle of the period.

And a detail that gives you chills: absinthe was rehabilitated in Switzerland on 1 March 2005. The birthday of Henri-Louis Pernod. 229 years later. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

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

The other temporary exhibitions

25 Oct2024 30 Sep2025

ExhibitionsMaison de l'Absinthe, Môtiers, Val-de-Travers
A Bottle at Sea
Exhibition around the odyssey of a cargo of absinthe that left Couvet and Pontarlier in 1871 aboard the three-masted vessel Marie-Thérèse, whose bottles were recovered from the seabed in 1991. One surviving bottle is displayed as the centrepiece.
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22 Oct2022 31 Dec2023

ExhibitionsMaison de l'Absinthe, Môtiers, Val-de-Travers
In Troubled Waters
Immersive exhibition featuring more than twenty audiovisual testimonies from a valley long lived in clandestinity — historians, artists, distillers and residents tell the story of absinthe. The aim: to preserve the intangible cultural heritage of this regional spirit.
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25 May2021 31 Dec2021

ExhibitionsMaison de l'Absinthe, Môtiers, Val-de-Travers
Delirium!
Collaborative exhibition with Visarte Neuchâtel presenting nineteen works by visual artists who take absinthe as their source of inspiration — paintings, three-dimensional works, engravings. A nod to the deliria of the collective imagination fed by the green fairy.
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24 Apr2019 31 Dec2019

ExhibitionsMaison de l'Absinthe, Môtiers, Val-de-Travers
In All the Senses
Interactive sensory exhibition inviting visitors to explore absinthe through sight, smell and taste, through workshops and scientific analysis modules. Developed in collaboration with specialists, it offers recognition games and an educational approach to the composition of absinthe.
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21 Apr2017 25 Feb2018

ExhibitionsMaison de l'Absinthe, Môtiers, Val-de-Travers
Absinthe on Canvas
Temporary exhibition bringing together around thirty works by artists from Franche-Comté, primarily paintings by students from the Xavier Marmier secondary school in Pontarlier. The centrepiece: an 8-metre canvas hung in the museum's central light well.
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