Contemporary pastis makers who work for big CO enterprises are very often cutting corners and commit 7 modern Pastis' sins:



1.low quality alcohol is used, usually it is beet;

2.natural or artificial oils are used which only suggest what should explode with finesse;

3. it is either sugared or oversugared;

4.too many ingredients are used

5. hardly any balance is found

6. maceration is short or simply omitted

7. very blunt dull taste

Apart from point no. 4, Ricard which should be a benchmark of Pastis de Marseille the real McCoy scores them all.



The current version of it (we can pray that 1936 version was much better) is terrible: star anise oil, inferior alcohol base, loads of sugar. If you are able to detect any herbal nuances in that pastis, like pontica or mugwort, you were lucky, I wasn't.



If I am to sip pastis, I simply go for Prado which although much cheaper, is surprisingly much better.