Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

For a special occasion coming up next week, a bottle of Benedictine has been ordered. This famous liqueur is supposed to have been first compounded in 1510 by Dom Bernardo Vincelli in the French Benedictine monastery at Fécamp. It was used to fortify the monks before their chores and restore them after their labours. Benedictine got the royal stamp of approval in 1534 when Francis I tasted it as he travelled through the region. Sadly, some 255 years later, the monastery was destroyed, the order was dispersed and the production halted. The reason? The anti-clerical hatred of The French Revolution. Its Reign of Terror, which saw the abolition of the Julian calendar and the sponsoring of an absurd "religion" called "The Cult of Reason", failed to create any liqueurs, though.

However, as the late Alexis Lichine noted in his classic Encyclopaedia of Wines & Spirits, "Some seventy years or so later, the formula came into the hands of M. Alexandre Le Grand, who established the present secular concern which produces the liqueur." Despite this separation of church and state, as it were, every bottle of Benedictine still carries the ecclesiastical inscription D.O.M., which means not "Dominican Order of Monks," as sometimes has been construed, but Deo Optimo Maximo ("to God, most good, most great"). If you are tempted to try Benedictine after reading this but find it too sweet for your taste, mix it half-and-half with brandy. Delightful, no?