La Fée Parisienne Absinthe, 1 x 70cl

Product Information

French government issue absinthe to soldiers in North Africa, to ward off disease. Returning troops contributed to making the drink popular in the cafes. April 1998 Rowley applied EU directive for spirits crafting the legal status absinthe uses to this day.

Grande Absinthe (Wormwood), Genepi (Alpine Wormwood), Star Anise, Fennel, Coriander, Green Anise, Southern, Wormwood, Hyssop

Base Spirits

The solution, I felt, was simple: I would export only beer with a maximum shelf-life of six months, which would retain its body and integrity. If it could be done locally with milk, with only three to seven days’ shelf-life, I surmised that it was logistically possible to export a drink that was good for six months, affording the consumer the luxury of true-tasting, fuller-flavoured Czech beer. It worked! The base alcohol is distilled from sugar beet, a plant commonly grown in France, Switzerland and throughout the northern hemisphere. The root is distilled to make a neutral spirit (at approximately 96%): La Fée Blanche and Parisienne are both distilled with beet neutral alcohol, other base spirits included grape alcohol (as used in our La Fée X•S range) and grain (as used in our NV (ENVY) and Bohemian range) all being examples of neutral spirit used for the production of the French & Swiss absinthe during its heyday. Once the spirit is distilled with the respective herbs and spices it will be cut down to strength using demineralised water for Blanche and Parisienne, the final Absinthe is cut to 53%abv (106 proof) and for Parisienne, the final Absinthe is cut to 68% abv (136 proof). The Taste of True French Absinthe The brand original, La Fée Parisienne Absinthe Supérieure, is a traditional French absinthe distilled at the Cherry Rocher distillery using Grand Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and other fine herbs.

If you like a little ritual with your drinking, you’ll love traditionally preparing Envy Absinthe: slowly drip water over a sugar cube into the spirit making a cloudy ‘louche’, then drink up. Suited and booted, with Radomir (my local assistant and translator) I approached what we considered, after much tasting and travelling throughout the country, to be the best of the independent brands and breweries. We had something revolutionary to offer these local enterprises across the Czech Republic: access to the UK, one of Europe’s key markets. Within six months we had signed up three good breweries, producing such beers as Lobkowicz, Rebel and our first spirit, the Czech national liqueur, (Becherovka, now, coincidentally, owned by Pernod Ricard.) Swiss absinthe historically was mainly a local spirit and the ban was enforced following a referendum. We had already come across John’s name during our own research while reading an article he had written in an early edition of The Idler. At the time absinth was only available in a few Prague bars, and if any other source existed in Prague or the rest of Bohemia, its profile was low to the point of invisibility. Although I had been working and playing in Prague since 1993, I had not come across any noticeable presence of absinth while I was there. There is one last stage before we are ready to bottle: A sample is couriered to Marie-Claude Delahaye (in Paris) and George Rowley, who test each batch, using their extensive experience of tasting Absinthe and their knowledge of the original master recipe.La Fée X•S Suisse, officially released in 2007, is a La Bleue produced in the town of Couvet in the Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland. Each distillation takes place in small copper stills which have the capacity to produce just over 100 bottles. It has a wine alcohol base. What follows is my journal; a celebration and first-hand account of the first years of absinthe’s return, from the launch of La Fée Absinthe Parisienne, a Grand Wormwood distilled absinthe bottled in Paris which, in 2000, restored traditional absinthe distilling to France for the first time since the 1915 ban continuing to this day.

La Fée captures the aroma and taste that great writers and artists such as Rimbaud, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh enjoyed at the end of the 19th century”. Marie-Claude Delahaye La Fée distil a range of six different absinthes: Parisienne, a traditional French style Verte (coloured/green) absinthe; Blanche, a traditional Blanche (white/clear) style; Bohemian, a modern, Czech style absinthe; La Fée X•S Suisse and La Fée X•S Française, which are two “extra supérieure,” wine-based absinthes; and La Fée NV, a lower strength absinthe for "modern drinking."

The Absinthe Museum in Auvers-sur-Oise, France shows social and cultural life of the impressionist era with artefacts, posters and paintings - with a bar to sample absinthe Whether chaperoning the World Bank, which was financing industrial operations on a grand scale for the first time in a former eastern bloc country, or a British supermarket seeking presence in the Czech market: I was conscious of the gap, not only between the then Soviet mentality and the western approach to business, but also to the potential impact of, and importance to our clients of local cultural differences. During its acquisition of the K-Mart operation in the Czech Republic, the Tesco due diligence team, for example, was most astonished to see Carp (the traditional Christmas Eve dish here) being sold live in store and then often being kept in domestic bathtubs for several days to purge them of the muddy taste characteristic of bottom-feeders. Another important distinction was the lower percentage of supermarket floor space around 30% – allocated to food retailing. Tesco is moving substantially towards that ratio in the UK (though live carp is still conspicuous by its absence) and it will be interesting to see how the company handles its current move into the USA, a market which La Fėe too is entering. Absinthe becomes widely exported around the world. New York, New Orleans and as far as China, enjoyed by millions in the heyday of the Belle Époque 1871 to 1914.