Compared with absinthe, other drinks are like hurriedly smoking a cigarette outside a Metro station.
Knowledgeable local guides point out wild herbs: verbena, mint, rosemary, marjoram, sage, thyme, and absinthe.
The most coveted table, underneath a painting called The Absinthe Drinker, was, as ever, "reserved".
Bathing in their too-bright, wasteful light became a sort of guilty pleasure, like absinthe or chocolate creams.
"I fell in love with her things in the window of a shop called Absinthe, " he recalls.
Bartender Jack McGarry traded Scotch and Irish whiskeys for rye, and toyed with a variety of liqueurs, bitters and absinthe.
Absinthe inspired poets and artists, like Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire and Edouard Manet - and has given regulators headaches for decades.
Tate bosses also opened an absinthe bar serving the notorious green drink which fuelled many of the wilder visions of great artists.
The Commission proposed that anything labelled absinthe must contain thujone and suggested minimum and maximum levels of five to 35 milligrams per kilogram.
Bryan Davis, a Lleida, Spain distiller who makes the Obsello brand of absinthe, says he's found half a dozen bottles at antique fairs.
Absinthe is usually around 60 or 70% alcohol, though it is not designed to be drunk neat, but mixed instead with water, much like pastis.
Degas's painting "Absinthe" (1875-76) or Van Gogh's "Corner in Montmartre" (1887) depict the territory and atmosphere of 19th-century Bohemia in Paris in oil on canvas.
"I've had young people in secondary school who have told me that they are on the hunt for absinthe because it's a strong alcohol, " he adds.
Speakers include Jay Freeman, the creator of Cydia, and the Chronic Dev Team, who developed Absinthe, the jailbreak of the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2.
Up to 30 guests can be seated at the room's dozen tables, each adorned with crystal glasses that circle the reproduction absinthe water fountain at the centre.
Absinthe is distilled with the leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, known as grande wormwood, which contains the drink's "special ingredient", thujone, which reputedly has mind-altering effects.
Cheaper, chemical-laden distillates are rare, yet easy to spot: High-quality absinthe turns brown as it ages, while the artificially colored ones remain green even after a century.
We placed the decorative absinthe spoon on top of the glass, a sugar cube on top of that, and let the fountain drip ice water over it for several minutes.
The unnamed female bartender told police Gooding stopped by the Old Absinthe House in the French Quarter in the early hours of Tuesday with a group of people.
They say thujone is "not an indispensable characteristic" of absinthe.
At issue is whether absinthe needs to contain minimum levels of two substances - anethole and the chemical thujone, a toxin extracted from wormwood, which reputedly has mind-altering effects.
It was Patrick Ricard's wish that the founder's French heirs remain at the helm of the group ever since Paul Ricard first commercialized pastis, originally produced as absinthe, in 1932.
Later, the rule was relaxed, allowing the drink to be sold as long as it was not called absinthe, and instead labelled "a spirit made from extracts of the absinthe plant".
Brewed from a concoction of natural herbs, true absinthe includes three crucial elements: anise, fennel and Artemisia absinthium (grand wormwood, used as a remedy since the time of the ancient Egyptians).
The latest attempt by the European Commission to define and standardise absinthe has been blocked by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, in a resolution adopted by 409 votes to 247, with 19 abstentions.
Simple, and safe: for the problem with all tranquillisers up till then, from henbane and absinthe to barbiturates, was that they gave unpleasant side effects at moderate doses and, at larger ones, killed you.
The bar's policy is no more than three pours of absinthe in an evening, but the amount of time it takes to prepare and drink the spirit, along with its high alcohol content, means the limit is rarely an issue.
Lying in the shadow of the active volcano Mt Tarawera, Rotorua Lakes is an unrivalled natural landscape where water is clean enough to drink, sweet-smelling air comes alive with native birdsong and fern-filled forests are as bright as a bottle of absinthe.
The best distillers of their day, such as Pernod Fils and Edouard Pernod, were so concerned with knockoffs they used intricate wax seals and foils on their bottles, which, now 100 years old, are nearly impossible to fake, says David Nathan-Maister, a London rare-spirits dealer who specializes in absinthe.
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