The morning after a nightful of those sweet, strongly alcoholic drinks served in small glasses after dinner, known as liqueurs, is not the best time to be reminded that they were originally invented and perfected to improve the health and wellbeing of mankind. But in fact that’s how they originated. Liqueurs are generally made of sugar, syrup, and spirits, then flavoured with plants, fruit or herbs. They can still actually be an aid to digestion, but are undoubtedly at their best when taken for the sheer pleasure. Liqueurs usually appear at the end of a dinner, but when presented in the right glass can herald the beginning of a long night. Although the distillation of water and aromatic liquids was known about earlier, spirit distillation was not understood and practised until around 900 AD when the Arabs discovered the process, unless the northern Europeans jumped them by distilling extracts from their cereal grains. Liqueurs were a later invention, and began with the addition of sweet syrups to the crude distilled spirits to enhance their flavour and to supposedly improve the health of those game enough to drink them. Throughout the Middle Ages, before the invention of Dettol, wine and later spirits, were used as dressings for wounds, and plants, roots and herbs provided the remedies for most diseases. The Church were the doctors of the day, and monks grew various plants in their monastery gardens, while the alchemists experimented with their uses. The alchemists were not scientists in the strictest use of the modern term, for they were largely concerned with the pursuit of the elixir of eternal life and of the ability to turn baser metals into gold, presumably to keep them well throughout their extended lifespans. However, modern liqueurs are direct descendants of their experiments, although modern liqueurists go about their activities with a more modest aim – to make our lives that little bit more tolerable, if not longer. Arnau de Vilanova was a Catalan physician and chemist, born around 1240. He was the `inventor of modern tinctures in which the virtues of herbs are extracted by alcohol’. With his pupil, Raimundo Lulio, he wrote about alcohol and made public his recipes for healing liqueurs. Such revelations aroused the interest of the Inquisition, and Arnau was only saved by the fact that one of his concoctions of wine, herbs and gold had actually somehow saved the life of the Pope, under whose protection he lived the rest of his life. Liqueurs mixed with vegetable balms and tonics provided a somewhat inadequate front-line against the advances of the Black Death, which swept through Europe. They were treasured and expensive, but sadly inadequate for the purpose. By the fifteenth century the Italians were the leading liqueur-makers, and Catherine de’ Medici took some of their recipes to France with her. One of Louis XIV’s favourite liqueurs contained amber, aniseed, cinnamon and musk. Other spirit bases besides wine brandy came into use, one of them being rum from the West Indies. Liqueurs prepared by housewives became common cooking ingredients in the kitchen. Last century the industry made such progress around the world that – Moonshine excepted – homemade liqueurs almost became a thing of the past. Benedictine is one of the great liqueurs, and is supposed to have originated around 1510 at the Benedictine monastery in Fcamp, France, by Dom Bernardo Vincelli, to fortify and restore his weary and beleaguered fellow-monks. It found royal favour in 1534, when Francis I passed through the region and tasted it. However the monastery was destroyed in the French Revolution, the Order dispersed, and the production of the strong elixir was halted for seventy years or so, until the formula came into the hands of one M. Alexandre Le Grand, who established the present secular concern which still today produces the liqueur. It no longer has any connection with the Benedictines or any other religious order. And for the liqueur buffs out there, D.O.M. does not mean `Dominican Order of Monks’, but `Deo Optimo Maximus’, which from the Latin of my schooldays means something like `To God, Most Good, Most Great’. Actually, I cheated a little there on the Latin… It is claimed that at any time not more than three people have known the precise recipe of Benedictine, for there have been countless attempts to duplicate the drink. It is greenish-yellow, and is flavoured with a variety of herbs, plants and peels on a base of brandy. Another classic liqueur with a religious origin is Chartreuse, which is today made in Tarragona, Spain, and Voiron, France, by monks of the Carthusian (Charterhouse) Order. It is made on a base of brandy, with the extracts of countless herbs and plants to flavour. It dates from around 1605, when Father Jrome Maubec gave the Order the recipe and spent the rest of his life trying to perfect it. By 1848 it was acknowledged that he had succeeded, for on its tasting by a group of French army officers, they undertook to make it known everywhere. It appears that they have succeeded also. The original Chartreuse recipe is in fact made no longer, and was for a clear `Elixir’, white and stronger than the modern-day green and yellow alternatives, of which the green is the stronger, the yellow the sweeter. Goldwasser (or Danziger Goldwasser) was developed by Dutch alchemists in the old port of Danzig, and actually contains inert flakes of 24-carat gold, which you drink. Gold was believed at this time to hold the key to eternal life. The most important of the thirty or so spices and flavours in goldwasser are aniseed and caraway. Grand Marnier is the largest-selling French liqueur, and its blend of old cognac and orange extract originated over 150O years ago. One assumes from its taste that its principal purpose was sensory rather than medicinal. Another great French liqueur, and one of the world’s greatest aperitifs when taken on the rocks, is Pernod. Pernod (and its compatriot, Ricard) is a pastis – made on an alcohol base with herb flavourings, notably licorice. It clouds and turns milky when diluted with water. However, as far as I am concerned its major claim to fame is in its direct lineage from absinthe, which originally derived its flavour from wormwood, a potent and addictive poison of the human nervous system. Of course the modern Pernod and Ricard are perfectly safe. Enough for now. It’s time to get back to the bunsen burner, the herb garden, the lumps of lead, the goldwasser and other preservatives in my authentic fifteenth-century medicine cupboard…
