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RapierFugue -> RE: Absinthe? (5/3/2008 8:41:17 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: christine1
now that reminds me of the scene from Dracula, it was sexy as hell and i've wanted to try it ever since and i will, when i have someone i want to try it with. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LpFYDw2y-sQ wish i could find a shorter scene about this. god, the way he looks at her just kills me!
Heh. I love that sequence too, although the ones in “From Hell” (Johnny Depp) are better, I think (have you seen those?) … in Depp’s case you see him adding laudanum, which was popular at the time. It's amzazing how many totally illegal drugs were over the counter items even as recently as 120 years ago.
I’ve been drinking the stuff on and off for maybe 20 years, firstly when it was French-made, illegal stuff (which was wonderful), and latterly the somewhat sanitised commercial stuff.
The French stuff was made up in vast quantities in little stills/sheds in the woods all over the south of France (as eau de vie was in the north); you used to see these amazingly old French blokes sitting around sipping the stuff for hours on end, in smoky bars and pavement cafes, although latterly a lot of it is eastern European; if memory serves the Czechs and others used to make it, and I can’t recall if it was illegal or not under communism; I would suspect not, as oddly, communist countries used to have a fairly “hands-off” approach to regulation of that sort of thing.
As to the effects of proper absinthe; if you sit down and get SLOWLY and quietly smashed on the stuff with friends you *can* feel the effects; it’s similar to a small dose of pure MDMA, in that colours (especially green, for some reason) are, if not brighter, then “better”, people become more poetic and wordy, and you don’t get the gibbering/slurring you get when people merely drink huge amounts of alcohol (at least not until about 10 hours into a 12 hour session). It also seems to maintain the “happily smashed but not appallingly drunk” stage longer than similar, pure, spirits, in much the same way as Feuerzangenbole does. I’ve also never seen anyone get aggressive on genuine absinthe either, and I’ve seen a LOT of people utterly banjaxed on the stuff.
The older, illegal-but-the-French-don’t-care-much-about-laws stuff had much more wormwood & other “nasties” added, whereas the commercial stuff tends to be more alcohol-only in effect, although the stuff I bought recently in a little shop in, of all places, Trouville (Normandy) was outstanding in its “other” effects, as well as containing a lovely absinthe spoon on the side of the box.
The key thing I was told was always always always take it with sugar; there’s apparently something to do with the way the body metabolises the stuff that means that sugar helps cushion the blow; the one time (early on in my absinthe-drinking career) that I had an evening on absinthe without adding sugar I awoke the next morning feeling like I’d been mugged, whereas normally, with good absinthe, and of course depending on one’s constitution, you wake up feeling a bit “woolly”, but not much the worse for wear. I learnt my lesson early on.
The other thing to watch for is that, more than any other drink you can buy anywhere in the world, the alcohol content varies HUGELY; some absinthe is about 40% abv (normal whisky/brandy strength), most 55%, and some as high as 75-80% abv, so you may start drinking some, thinking “5 or 6 of these is about my dose, to start with”, then suddenly you and 3 friends have untied a small sailing boat from its moorings, taken it out into the Med in the dead of night, along with 4 more bottles of hastily-purchased absinthe (“this is good stuff! Let’s buy more of it!”), got lost (as none of your party is very good at sailing and absolutely none of you can navigate by the stars, despite all of you thinking you could 30 minutes previously), got found again, all while continuing to drink, and finally got back and had to explain to a somewhat un-amused local gendarme that it seemed like a good idea at the time, only to find that the boat’s owner, mercifully, finds the whole story hugely funny, and waves off the long arm of the law and asks if he can join you for what’s left of the bottles. Waking up in a farmer’s field come the morrow is optional, although an aversion to light for the first hour of waking is pretty de-rigueur.
Another nice habit is the one of lighting a cigarette, really nice cigar or joint from the flames … the taste is adorable. With the really alcoholic versions, try not to breathe in when your mouth is over the drink; it doesn’t do your lungs any good to inhale vapours above about 60% abv.
One final thing; if it doesn’t contain some form of wormwood or a derivative then it’s not absinthe.
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