No, not all at once (at least not necessarily). I%26#39;m looking for supply shops for good quality flamenco skirts as well as absinthe supplies.
Anyone know of any?
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try the pages jaunes.
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Flamenco : in Spain, not France.
Absinthe : in past, not present as it%26#39;s forbidden for about 100 years.
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Actually absinthe is available in France but illegal in the rest of the world. I%26#39;ve seen two different brands on the shelves of some wine shops and it%26#39;s EXPENSIVE. Don%26#39;t try to bring any back through US customs.
I%26#39;d never seen the little ritual you have go through to drink it till we ordered absinthe at le Procope and they served it with everything, the silver and glass water urn with 4 spigots, the slotted silver suger cube spoons, and the art nouveau glasses with silver handles.
As far as finding all this gear, I%26#39;ve only seen it once at the weekend fleamarket at Porte de Vanve.
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Absinthe is strictly forbidden in France. What you have seen is made in Spain (like the flamenco skirts, by the way) and is an anis liquor just using the name of Absinthe (easy way to get the thrill without the poison).
It has nothing to do with what was Absinthe before WWI, with all the ritual of the sugar cube, the fork etc.
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Oh my I had no idea! Thanks Denys.
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Amazingly enough, there are small distillers in Spain, Switzerland, and Austria who are making actual Absinthe again....with the wormwood ingredient inside. The stuff can be up to 68%+ alcohol. Talk about a way to poison oneself! Still very illegal to import into the US.
I%26#39;d love to find some of the old supplies at a flea market. The stuff is incredibly collectible!!
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See the following website www.lafeeabsinthe.com/parisian/index.php This is the real stuff 68%. Tells you where it can be purchased.
You can buy real absinthe in the UK (my shop sells it) costs nearly 40 gbp a bottle! Totally knocks you for six though!
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I bought a bottle or absinthe at CDG airport in the duty-free shop. It is actually legal in EU, but the levels of the thujone must be so low that will probably do nothing to you. I brought it to US, cuz it did not occur to me even that it may not be allowed.
Absinthe is sold in the US too, but the one for US market does not have any good stuff in it at all. So what is the point. May as well drink vodka.
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You can also buy real absinthe made from workmwood in the Czech Republic. I tried it there. I love pastis and licorice-tasting things in general--but this was truly the nastiest stuff I%26#39;ve ever tasted! It was amazingly effective, however!
All you need to %26quot;enjoy/suffer through%26quot; absinthe is a glass, a spoon, a sugar cube, and a carafe of water. Old items with absinthe advertising (posters, water carafes) are very collectible. The spoons are collectible, but are quite common and inexpensive. They are fairly readily available at St-Ouen and Vanves.
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I know of people go to Prague to get wormwood so they can make their own absinthe. It is proven to prove brain damage, so I think I will pass.
An interesting quote from an article about absinthe:
A century ago, the ���green fairy���, as it was called, was the drink on everybody%26#39;s lips, literally and figuratively. Popular among soldiers in Algeria in the 1830s as an alleged protection against dysentery, the drink rapidly became fashionable back home. Artists in quest of inspiration were seduced by its mind-bending qualities. Toulouse-Lautrec always carried a small shot of what he called ���earthquake��� in the hollow top of his walking stick. The poets Rimbaud and Verlaine went in for bulk intake. Drinking a glass of the blueish liquid became known, picturesquely, as ���throttling a parrot.���
But by the 1860s, the working classes had begun to get their hands on it, and all hell started to break loose. Consumption rocketed to 20 million litres a year. Innumerable clandestine distilleries produced moonshine absinthe at 75�� proof, frequently tainted with industrial ethanol. A new word, absinthisme, was coined to describe the symptoms of excessive absinthe intake: spreading numbness, epileptic fits, paralysis and death. Public authorities brought out blood-curdling advertising campaigns showing drink-maddened men throwing themselves off roofs, asylums full of glazed ex-drinkers, bars full of death%26#39;s-heads clinking glasses and grinning. The drink had such a sulphurous reputation that when Manet asked an actress friend of his to pose for his famous 1876 painting Les Buveurs d%26#39;Absinthe, he almost ruined her career.
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