Ricard

Paul Ricard was born in 1909 in Sainte-Marthe, a village near Marseille. When France banned absinthe in 1915, it left a legal gap: an anise-flavored drink without wormwood could still be sold. Ricard spent his teenage years experimenting with formulas in small distilleries across Provence. In 1932, at the age of twenty-three, he registered his pastis recipe and began selling it under his own name in Marseille bars.

Pastis, from the Provençal word for mixture, was the official category that replaced absinthe after the ban. Ricard's formula used star anise, licorice root, and Provençal herbs, at lower alcohol than absinthe and without any wormwood. He sold it aggressively, driving a van through Provence and placing his product in cafés himself. By 1938 his company was producing three million liters per year.

Ricard marketed his drink not just as a beverage but as the taste of the Midi, the sunny south of France. Advertising campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s cemented the association between the yellow liquid turning milky in a glass and the Provençal way of life: slow afternoons, pétanque, cicadas. The name Ricard became inseparable from the category. In southern France, asking for a ricard meant asking for pastis.

In 1975, Ricard merged with Pernod Fils to form Pernod Ricard, a company that now owns Absolut, Jameson, Chivas Regal, and dozens of other brands. Paul Ricard died in 1997. His name still appears on approximately seven hundred million servings a year, making Ricard the best-selling anise spirit in the world. The young man who mixed herbs in a Marseille kitchen in 1932 created something that outlasted him considerably.