Three winners will be heading over to visit the Distilleries et Domaines de Provence distillery during the annual wormwood harvest.
For those of you not lucky enough to have tried Absenteroux it is a vermouth, but a vermouth that’s mum made sweet love to absinthe. Using white wine from Provence (in the form of Ugni Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Vermentino & Clairette), the base wine is combined with sugar, distillates (including coriander, anise, lemon balm and mint) along with orange, gentian extracts and wormwood. 
The wormwood extract gives the finished product 10 mg thujone per litre. The result is a vermouth that we think will be cropping up on more and more on cocktail lists across the country. It’s producer certainly has a history of making products bartenders are drawn to, with RinQuinQuin coming from the same distillery.
Emporia Brands are encouraging bartenders to get experimenting with Absenteroux with a competition that see’s the winner of each of the 3 regional heats heading down to the beautiful Provence region in France. On the trip the lucky bartenders will get to visit the stunning (according to the pictures) distillery and check out the annual wormwood harvest. Being France there will undoubtably be plenty of lovely food and drink flowing as well.
The rules for the competition are a lot less complex than the liquid itself – you must use a minimum of 20ml. That’s it. The rest is up to you.
There will be heats in the South, North and Scotland. Now it’s over to you to get involved. To enter visit the Emporia website right here. Entry deadline is 8th May.
Good luck.