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Absintherie Celle à Guilloud: A legend with a past and a future

The homeland of absinthe is an area which defies borders: from Val-de-Travers in Switzerland to Pontarlier in France. A wormwood herb with an exceptional flavour grows here in the French-Swiss Jura, which gives absinthe its shared heritage – historically, industrially, socially and culturally. After being re-licensed in Switzerland and France, the region has set itself the goal of promoting the original absinthe and its origins. This has given rise to the ‘Route de l’Absinthe’ with interesting places, events and products relating to the ‘green fairy’ along the way. One such station is the small Absintherie Celle à Guilloud in Fleurier, Val-de-Travers.

For centuries, the location in the canton of Neuchâtel has been a centre of the watch-making industry and the homeland of two Nobel Prize winners. Here, the legend of the valley (formerly also a centre of absinthe distilling) lives on. Daniel Guilloud’s different versions of the mysterious, aromatic drink are far from the industrial standard – visitors can see this for themselves on a tour of the distillery. The beautifully furnished store sells absinthe in various forms, as well as limited editions, hand-blown glass bottles, accessories and much more; above all, though, riveting stories about the mysterious past of absinthe, told by Pierre-André Matthey, the successor to founder Daniel Guilloud. Both received the World Spirits Award 2025 honoris causa for their lives’ work.

At the World Spirits Award, there was double gold for Absinthe La Guilloudtine 68°, gold for Absinthe Celle du Docteur 54° and for Absinthe Celle à Guilloud 54°.

Luding Group: Vodka Tchaikovsky as a high-spirited homage to the famous composer

At the beginning of the 1990s, the modern distillery ‘Fortuna’ was launched in a green field in the south of Russia – in the Krasnodar region, a strip of land with spa resorts and health centres. The distillery has specialised in unusual products, in a region with a particularly green fingerprint. The vodka created in honour of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky is special. The concept for this exceptional product is comparable with one of his musical scores: the work ‘Swan Lake’ served as an inspiration. Art enthusiasts can thus immerse themselves in the history of Russian estate life in the 19th century. The traditional white and blue colours underline the purity of this vodka.

The technical particularities span a wide quality-orientated spectrum: from the selected wheat, their own well water and the special treatment of the distillate with skimmed milk powder to the crystal-clear filtration with active birch coal. With so much perfectionism and monitoring of the individual production steps, the result is an especially gentle, animating and very typical vodka based on wheat. After the diluting of alcohol and pure distillate, the production process is continued with maturation in steel tanks. The aim is to ‘wed’ both ‘waters’, resulting in an especially harmonious vodka.

At the World Spirits Award 2022, Vodka Tchaikovsky was awarded double gold and honoured as the best vodka with the title ‘Spirit of the Year’.