Though it appeared as a medicinal concoction throughout the middle ages, it was popularized in 1792 by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire. Henri-Louis Pernod opened the first Absinthe distillery in Switzerland and then moved to a larger one in Pontarlier, France in 1805. By the 1850's it had become the favorite drink of the upper class. Originally wine-based, a blight in 1870's on the vineyards forced manufacturers to base it with grain alcohol This also made it more affordable and the Bohemian lifestyle embraced it, dubbing it Le Fee Vert (the green fairy).

The gothic and romantic literary movements were closely associated with absinthe; as were the symbolists, surrealists, expressionists and impressionists in the galleries. Picasso, Poe, Baudelaire, Alfred Jarry, Oscar Wilde, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Degas, Manet, Verlaine, Rimbaud and many others were serious absinthe drinkers, and some created their greatest masterpieces under its influence. It was one of the few drinks considered lady-like and women freely enjoyed it in the coffee houses where it was most commonly served. Victorian era men however, found women freely enjoying Absinthe distasteful. Prohibition movements were underway. Absinthe was singled out as the maddening culprit and became synonymous with alcohol. Experiments started to be conducted often by injecting large doses of the oil of wormwood into animals. Absinthism was named as a disease. On July 25th, 1912, the Department of Agriculture issued Food Inspection 147, which banned Absinthe in America, followed by France in 1915.