By Andrew Jefford

Foot-pounded figs on a path, pine resin drifting from the forest, wild thyme scuffed into pungency – all evoke the Mediterranean, but none of these aromas is quite as evocative of life around the sea’s rim as is the aerial sweetness of aniseed. Sit down by the soft waves anywhere from Perpignan eastwards to Tripoli and Beirut, and it tends to be milky emulsions based on this spice that accompany the falling of the hours. The name may change (pastis, ouzo, raki, arak), but the flavour note is constant.

In France, pastis was a 20th-century creation; the term (a Provençal word for “mixture”) first appeared in 1932. But its much-demonised 19th-century progenitor was absinthe. This strong, unsweetened liquor of Swiss Alpine origins was based on the wormwood family (especially Artemisia absinthum), particularly the original 18th- century recipe of Dr Pierre Ordinaire, later popularised with colossal commercial success by Henri-Louis Pernod. Wormwood has a bitter taste, so most absinthe recipes included Florentine fennel, green aniseed and other plant extracts to counterbalance it. The physical sweetening was provided by the drinker, who dripped icy water through a sugar cube on an absinthe spoon into the green liqueur below.

The late 19th century was a time of far greater alcoholic excess in Europe than our own; after the phylloxera epidemic, cheap absinthe became more widely consumed than wine in France. As a result, it became the target of temperance movements, who claimed that the thujone in wormwood provoked hallucinations and insanity. Causes célèbres such as la crime du Lanfray – the murder by a French agricultural labourer living in Switzerland of his wife and children in August 1905 – were cited as evidence, though Lanfray drank up to four litres of wine a day which he merely garnished with the occasional absinthe. France eventually followed Belgium and Switzerland by banning it in 1915. Manufacturers turned to pastis, though it only became legal to produce thujone-free, aniseed-flavoured drinks of 40 per cent alcohol by volume from 1922. Low-thujone versions of absinthe are now once again on sale, but they seem unlikely to dent the popularity of ready-sweetened pastis, which remains by some margin the most widely consumed spirit in France (where it outsells whisky, gin and vodka combined).

Two ingredients characterise pastis, and both are evident in France’s biggest-selling brand, Ricard: aniseed and liquorice. There are other flavourings in Ricard, but it’s hard to discern them. The aniseed flavour comes from star anise and fennel rather than the more expensive aniseed itself; anethole is the key compound surrendered by all three. In addition to its intrinsic flavour, anethole is perceived by humans as 13 times sweeter than sugar.

One of the appeals of the drink is, thus, that it appears to be sweeter than it actually is – and hence doesn’t cloy. One follows another, with treacherous ease. By a strict, two-ingredient definition, Pernod isn’t a pastis at all but a boisson anisée, since it contains no liquorice; instead, its aniseed flavour is complemented by herbs such as mint, coriander, angelica, tarragon (a relative of wormwood) and camomile, and it is more highly sweetened than Ricard. Pastis 51 was originally a Pernod variant that did contain liquorice in contrast to the original, which bore the number 45.

Other smaller marques include Casanis and Duval (both produced in the same factory in Marseilles by the Burgundy-based Boisset group) and the colourless Berger Blanc (now owned by the Franco-Polish group Belvédère).

There are also artisanal alternatives such as Eyguebelle, Jean Boyer and Henri Bardouin. The last of these is the most widely distributed of the three, and claims grand cru status – though the notion of the cru or “growth” is hard to sustain for a spirit whose main single ingredient is alcohol derived from sugarbeet. The difference between Henri Bardouin and its mass-market alternatives are that the recipe is notably more complex, containing (according to company chief Alain Robert) some 65 different herbs and spices.

“Pastis is usually a drink you have two or three of before a meal,” says one pastis-drinking friend of mine from south-west France, “but with Bardouin, I only have one, and I sip it slowly.” Admiration was perfectly mixed with reproof. Like many southerners, he says he “hates” Pernod, which is regarded as unforgivably Parisian; Marseilles and Provence are the home turf of pastis.

Even those who merely gaze at others consuming pastis will know that the clear spirit turns milky when water is added. This process is called louching, and is due to some of the ingredients becoming insoluble at a strength lower than that at which the spirit is bottled. Absinthe does the same. The water is important: pastis should always be cut by at least five parts water to one of spirit, and nine to one is perfectly acceptable, according to Alain Robert. “The origins of the drink were something you added just a little of to water to give it a nice taste, and it was meant to refresh you when it was hot, or windy, or when you were thirsty.”

If you dislike pastis, it may be because you have only ever tried it neat. Serving pastis on the rocks is, Alain Robert says, a doubly bad idea: not only will it be overly strong and fail to refresh, but adding ice before water causes it to become scummy. Water first; ice after.

And sunshine always. I love the drink, but the idea of consuming it in winter is deeply unattractive. A sip of pastis not only summarises an entire sea, but its emblematic season, too.