The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of anise spirits

anise spirits form one of the oldest and most widespread categories of spirit, emerging from the medieval Mediterranean to root itself throughout the world. As a result, they come in a wide variety: sweetened, unsweetened, high-proof, low-proof, based on grapes, grape pomace, grain, beets, dates, figs, sugar-cane juice, molasses. What’s more, the anise they’re flavored with isn’t always anise. The seeds (or actually the seedlike fruits) of Pimpinella anisum are rich in anethole, the compound that gives them their characteristic fresh, licorice-like flavor. But so are the seeds of fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), a relative; star anise (Illicium verum), not a relative at all; and licorice roots themselves (Glycyrrhiza glabra).

Anethole is soluble in alcohol and will pass through a still alongside it. It is not, however, soluble in water, and when water—particularly cold water—is added to a distillate containing it, it will spontaneously form a microemulsion, with tiny droplets of it coming out of solution. This makes the liquid turn cloudy—the “louche” effect, as it is known (it can be prevented by chill-filtering the spirit).

The origin of anise spirits is as cloudy as they are. There are some who trace their origin to India in antiquity, although evidence for that is scarce and dating uncertain. At the least, aniseed arrack seems to have predated European colonization of India. See India and Central Asia. In China, star anise has long been one of the common ingredients in medicinal paojius. See paojiu and yaojiu. Similarly, in Europe green anise was a common component in the multi-ingredient, medicinal aquae compositae, or “compound waters,” that characterized the early years of the European spirits industry. Its “simple” version, aqua anisi, or anise water, is common in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European medical texts, many of them from Arab sources. Yet this is not always alcoholic, and it can be difficult to tell which version is being called for.

In any case, anise doesn’t appear to have become a dominant flavoring in spirits until the seventeenth century. Then it flourished. Having the advantage of being cheap and, to many at least, tasty, anise became the flavoring of choice for spirits all around the Mediterranean, in both its Ottoman eastern and southern parts and its Italian, French, and Iberian northern and western ones. It conquered the Iberian possessions of the New World as well, and “aniseed water” was even among the earliest spirits to come into recreational use in England. When English colonists in Barbados began distilling rum, in the 1640s, some of it may have been anise flavored—as was a portion of the arrack the Dutch were shipping to Europe from Batavia (modern Jakarta), their base in the East Indies. See arrack, Batavia. It was even one of the key flavorings of Irish usquebaugh, the flavored forerunner of whisky. See whisky.

By the late eighteenth century, some of this tide of anise-flavored spirits had receded. Spirits such as Batavia arrack, Caribbean rum, and Celtic whisky no longer needed a “cover” to mask the uneven quality of their distillation. But the particularly refreshing nature of anise spirit when mixed with cold water ensured its popularity around the Mediterranean. Turkish rakı, Lebanese ‘araq, Greek ouzo, Italian anice and sambucca, French pastis and anisette, Moroccan mahia, and Spanish chinchón and anis amply demonstrate its prevalence. By the nineteenth century, a common sight in any town in the region was the water seller, circling the streets with a sweating earthenware jug of water and a tray of little bottles with which to flavor it, always including one of anise spirit. See arrack; mahia; ouzo; pastis; and sambuca. Colombia’s cane-based aguardiente and the anisado made in the Philippines by rectifying nipa-palm spirit with anise demonstrate the enduring influence of the Spanish version. See Andean South America and Philippines.

The modern age has been less kind to anise spirits than to many others. The availability of clean water and ice have made their sanitizing and cooling virtues less unique, and they tend to seem a little archaic. Yet that cooling virtue is undiminished, and there are few things more pleasant than to be sitting in one of Palermo’s baroque piazzas and sipping a glass of acqua cu zammu—ice water with a healthy splash of the unsweetened, 60 percent ABV Anice Unico Tutone, made in the same small factory in the heart of town for over two hundred years.

anise spirits

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