Bénédictine is a liqueur made in France with a robust affiliation with a Benedictine abbey within the city of Fécamp. It’s typically talked about alongside Chartreuse as a monastic liqueur. The 2 merchandise are fairly completely different in some ways, however they might share a few of the similar historical past.
Throughout the Center Ages, about 90% of the inhabitants of Europe was the non-landowning laboring class, with the rest break up between the the Aristocracy and church. Many members of the church lived in monasteries which might be situated in city areas or extra remoted, with completely different quantities of interplay with the encircling folks relying on the kind of order—Carthusian, Benedictine, Cluniac, and the like.
The monks have been the keepers of most scientific and medical data, as they have been literate and infrequently frolicked copying essential texts from one monastery to the following. Some monasteries operated hospitals and possibly all had medicinal herb gardens and apothecaries on web site to make medicines for themselves and the encircling group. Many additionally bought items to the native folks, together with medicines but in addition dairy merchandise and beer. This follow survives within the Trappist breweries like Chimay and La Trappe.
Natural medicines have been and are sometimes infused into alcohol to extract the energetic properties of crops, protect them, and to make them drinkable. Monks unfold the data of distillation from monastery to monastery throughout the Center Ages as properly. Many medicines of the time have been a mixture of helpful herbs, spices, roots, and barks, which could act as cures for particular illnesses or (for ones with a substantial amount of elements) common cure-alls. Like Trappist beers, the monks typically bought these medicines.
Immediately many monasteries nonetheless promote the fashionable manifestation of those medicines as natural liqueurs. None are as well-known as Chartreuse, which continues to be produced by monks. Funds from its gross sales assist the order. Bénédictine, however, just isn’t made by monks and has not been for your complete time that it has been commercialized.
Based on the model, Benedictine monk Dom Bernardo Vincelli created a medicinal elixir on the monastery at Fécamp in 1510. It was utilized by the monks there till they have been expelled throughout the French Revolution on the finish of the 1700s. (The monks that make Chartreuse have been additionally expelled from their monastery, twice, however have been capable of return each occasions.) One of many Benedictine monks had a duplicate of the recipe for the elixir in a guide he gave to a good friend for safekeeping throughout the Revolution. That good friend’s grandchild was Alexandre Le Grand.
In 1863 Le Grand tailored the recipe to make it extra nice to drink, in line with a consultant for Bacardi that now owns Bénédictine, however he stored the identical variety of elements (27). How shut is it to the unique, medicinal elixir? You and I’ll most likely by no means know.
Le Grand additionally constructed the grand palace, Palais Bénédictine, by which to make the liqueur and home his artwork assortment. (The web site describes it: “The Palace, half-Gothic, half-Renaissance, is a refined concord of extravagance and sobriety.”) Immediately it’s a vacationer vacation spot the place visitors can be taught concerning the model and take cocktail courses.
As Bénédictine has been round for almost 160 years now, it has naturally made its method into cocktails each traditional and trendy. The classics embrace the Bobby Burns, Singapore Sling, and Vieux Carré.
The liqueur tastes primarily of honey and baking spices, with citrus peel, herb, and stone fruit notes. It pairs properly with aged spirits (and so properly with cognac that the model launched B&B for “Bénédictine and Brandy” a few years in the past), and with richer fruit juices like pineapple and grapefruit. Because of the commonality of some elements, think about it the place you may use allspice dram or Angostura bitters. It additionally makes a pleasant Sizzling Toddy with a splash of aged spirit and slightly lemon. Heavenly.
