Adam and I have been lucky to spend a lot of our Friday afternoons on *free* CEA excursions. The last two excursions just happened to be alcohol-related. Although it's exciting to be allowed to drink here, we haven't been consuming much alcohol. We don't really like the taste that much, so frankly we'd rather spend our money on something else {like pastries!}.
Two weeks ago, we went with a group of CEA students to a local liquoristerie. This particular site is famous for inventing a new, legal version of absinthe, an apertif popular with Impressionist artists in the late 1800s. The drink was outlawed around the turn-of-the-century because it contained a substance that drove people literally insane when consumed in large doses. We toured the factory {not as interesting as chocolate} and then got to try absinthe, which is black licorice flavored and absolutely horrible!
Here are some pictures that I stole from my friend Hilary's blog. Absinthe is really strong by itself, so the liquoristerie uses this weird fountain contraption to dilute the drink with water.
Last Friday, we went to a wine tasting held in one of our classrooms at school. A really nice Canadian lady who's involved with the wine tourism industry organized the event for us. She brought six different wines {two white, two rose, and two red} for us to try. The best part was that each of these wines was produced locally and were within a cheap college student's budget - they were all around five euros per bottle. She gave us a brief lecture on history of wine-making and how wine is produced and then we moved on with the tasting. It was really hard to describe the smell and taste of each wine! They all started to taste the same after a while, although we did enjoy white wine the most.
It was great to learn more about liquor and wine over the past few weeks, but it hasn't changed our opinion of alcohol's yucky taste!
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You're awesome!