What is wormwood?
Wormwood: A bitter silver-green herb (Artemisia absinthium). It gives absinthe its name and vermouth its bitterness; vermouth comes from Wermut, German for wormwood.
- Category
- Botanical & raw ingredient
- Taste
- Very bitter, herbal, a little minty.
- Similar to
- gentian (another bittering root)
- Also called
- artemisia, grande wormwood
The story
Wormwood has been a medicine since ancient Egypt and Greece. In the 1800s people blamed it for absinthe's supposed madness, which got absinthe banned. The real culprit was the alcohol: absinthe was often 70% ABV.