# Wormwood Bitters
**URL:** https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027
**Category:** Spirits
**Created:** [April 25, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027 "2025-04-25T14:43:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/1 "2025-04-25T14:43:24Z")
Now that the Green Swizzle has arisen in [the Falernum discussion](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/corn-n-oil-and-falernum/1019/17), perhaps it’s time to dig in a little to wormwood bitters?
The Green Swizzle is an island drink that was around in the first couple decades of the 20th Century before fading out (and being replaced by a different Green Swizzle that involves green crème de menthe). @Splificator and @dsoneil write about the Green Swizzle in the in the OCS (p. 335-6) and it also gets an earlier section in the revised edition of Imbibe! In this case the wormwood bitters is “a simple infusion of wormwood and strong rum”.
Sounds like a Caribbean island version of a simple Old World remedy: snip some sprigs of whatever species of artemesia you’ve got in your back yard, cover them in whatever alcohol you’ve got, strain when ready. The art, I presume, is in selecting the infusion components and recognizing when to arrest it.
Back in 2011, @dsoneil published [a more elaborate whiskey-based recipe](https://www.artofdrink.com/bitters/wormwood-bitters) from the _Standard Manual of Soda_. I presume the wormwood in that recipe is dried.
Wormwood bitters were commercialized back in the 19th Century, and [this old post by Ferdinand Meyer](https://www.peachridgeglass.com/2013/05/what-are-all-these-wormwood-bitters/) shows off some intriguing advertising. There are a pile of commercial “wormwood bitters” on the market, today. Most seem to be from dubious cottage industries. I have a bottle of the one Berkshire Mountain Distillers made for Cocktail Kingdom, and it’s in a dasher bottle, tastes straight bitter and is obviously spiced with cloves (and probably something else). Not a rum base.
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### Author:  [@BeerAndAShot](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/BeerAndAShot)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2025, 6:35pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/2 "2025-04-25T18:35:13Z")
I have fond memories of wormwood bitters because my name accidentally ended up on a certain commercial brand of them back in the blogging heyday. No idea how that happened.
Later, I was at a cocktail bar and the bartender was being completely condescending to me and my friends. He had a bottle of those bitters on his bar so I asked him to show me them then showed him my ID. (I did also explain that my name was on there by mistake, but watching him backpedal before I got to that was very amusing.)
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### Author:  [@GoodSpiritsNews](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/GoodSpiritsNews)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 12:09pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/3 "2025-04-26T12:09:14Z")
Do you think that Malort would be a suitable substitute?
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### Author:  [@EvanD](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/EvanD)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 3:10pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/4 "2025-04-26T15:10:16Z")
Seems like you made a blog post about wormwood bitters and Berkshire Mountain Distillers used your recipe and wanted to credit you on one of the early production runs. Your name’s not on the bottle I have. And I couldn’t find that post using the search function on your blog.
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### Author:  [@BeerAndAShot](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/BeerAndAShot)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 3:17pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/5 "2025-04-26T15:17:21Z")
I never posted about wormwood bitters on my blog nor was it Berkshire.
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### Author:  [@EvanD](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/EvanD)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 3:35pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/6 "2025-04-26T15:35:15Z")
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### Author:  [@BeerAndAShot](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/BeerAndAShot)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 3:40pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/7 "2025-04-26T15:40:58Z")
I never heard of Berkshire before today. I just knew they were Cocktail Kingdom. But no, I never posted about them, and Greg wasn’t sure how they thought I was affiliated with them.
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### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/8 "2025-04-26T21:16:19Z")
The Caribbean wormwood bitters were very simple indeed. Here’s some argument from an 1873 excise case that hinged on whether Angostura bitters were a spirituous liquor, as reported _Barbados Agricultural Reporter_:
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### Author:  [@EvanD](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/EvanD)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/9 "2025-05-02T20:13:19Z")
So perhaps Berkshire cribbed the recipe from
[https://www.artofdrink.com/bitters/wormwood-bitters](https://www.artofdrink.com/bitters/wormwood-bitters)
And mixed up which blog it came from?
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### Author:  [@BeerAndAShot](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/BeerAndAShot)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2025, 6:11pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/10 "2025-05-03T18:11:07Z")
Probably because Darcy and I are practically twins.
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### Author:  [@BeerAndAShot](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/BeerAndAShot)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2025, 6:12pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/wormwood-bitters/1027/11 "2025-05-03T18:12:17Z")
(BTW, that’s me being very sarcastic. I like Darcy, but he’s _much_ better looking than I am. 🙂