I.

Derivation of Term—Eichhoff—Gregory of Tours—Liqueur Wines—Herb Wines—Scot’s _Ivanhoe_—Hydromel—Murrey—Delille—Montaigne—Monastical Liqueurs—Arnold de Villeneuve—Catherine de Medicis—Elixir Ratafia.

The word _liqueur_ has been traced by Eichhoff to a Sanskrit root, viz., _laks_ or _lauc_, to see, appear. It is now commonly understood of a drink obtained by distillation, a beverage of which alcohol is the base.

To the ancients liqueurs appear to have been unknown. The art of distillation on which they depend was not apparently discovered till the middle ages. Fermented wines, of which some description will be found in another part of this book, occupied their place at dinner and dessert. Old Falernian when mixed with honey probably bore some near resemblance to what is now understood by liqueur. But this drink was found to have such disastrous effects by way of intoxication that it was forbidden to women to drink of it.

Our ancestors, perhaps in imitation of the ancients, composed a sort of liqueur with the must of wine, in which they had infused berries of the _lentiscus_, or a portion of its tender wood. The artificial wines made either with this _lentiscus_, or with other aromatic herbs, called by Gregory of Tours _vina odoramentis immixta_, were the only approaches to the modern liqueurs, even some time after the discovery of the process of distillation.

Among these liqueur wines must be mentioned that species of cooked wine which was the result of a portion of must reduced to half or a third of its original bulk by boiling. The capitularies of Charlemagne speak of this drink as _vinum coctum_, and the southern provinces called it _Sabe_, from the Latin _sapa_, which with the Romans had the same signification. Both Galen and Hippocrates refer to a Greek composition called _Siræum_ or _Hepsema_, which, says Pliny, we call _sapa_. The fashion in which this wine was cooked is shown in the _Pitture antiche d’Ercolano_, t. I., tab. 35.

Those artificial wines which consisted solely of infusions of aromatic or medicinal plants, such as absinthe, aloes, anise, rosemary, hyssop, and so on, were called _herb wines_, and were frequently employed as remedies and preventives. With a herb wine, the wine of a honied absinthe, it was that Fredegonda poisoned him who reproached her with the murder of the Pretextate. The most famous of these wines were those into which entered, besides honey, the spices and aromatic confections of Asia, to which were given the name of pigments. The highly spiced and “most odoriferous” wine sweetened with honey is one of those drinks which Cedric bids Oswald, in _Ivanhoe_,[69] to place upon the board for the refreshment of the Knight Templar. It is mentioned in company with the oldest wine, the best mead, the mightiest ale, the richest _morat_,[70] and the most sparkling cider.

The poets of the thirteenth century speak of this decoction with transport. They regarded it in the light of an exquisite delicacy. As no gentleman’s library is complete without the presence of some

## particular work of which a bookseller is anxious to dispose, so no feast

at which pigment was not present was held to be complete by the medieval _gourmet_. Indeed this drink seems to have been all too sweet, and was, in consequence of its inebriating property, like the honied Falernian,

## partially prohibited. The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817 decreed

that on festival days only might this voluptuous cup be introduced into conventual repasts.

Hydromel and hippocras were allied to this category of fermented and almost alcoholic drinks, but they were not liqueurs. Finally certain liqueurs were composed entirely of juices of fruits and held the rank and title of wines. Such were cherry, gooseberry, strawberry wine, and others. Another liqueur wine often cited by the thirteenth-century poets is _Murrey_, a thin drink coloured or otherwise affected by mulberries.

The word liqueur appears to have had a considerable latitude of signification. We talk now of coffee and liqueur, but according to the French poet Delille, who lived at a time very near our own, coffee itself was included under the latter category—

“Cest toi, divin café, dont l’aimable liqueur Sans altérer la tête épanouit le cœur”:

which presents us with a view of coffee akin to that held by Cowper of tea, when he talks in his _Task_ (Book IV.) of

“the cups That cheer but not inebriate.”

Liqueurs, indeed, properly so called were not known till long after the distillation of wine had been recognised, probably about the fourteenth century. Many years elapsed before these preparations escaped from the domination of the alchemists. Those religious who employed distillation for the confection of balsams and panaceas seem to have been the first to discover them to the world. Montaigne, in the strange account he has written of his travel in Italy, speaks of the Jesuits of Vicenza—the _Jesuates_ as he calls them—who had a liquor shop in their fair monastery, in which were sold phials of scent for a crown. The good fathers appear to have busied themselves in the intervals of their religious exercises with distilling waters of different herbs and flowers for the public use, as well for medicine as for sensual delight. Speaking of Verona, Montaigne says he saw also a religious of monks who call themselves _Jesuates_ of St. Jérosme. They are dressed in white under a smoked robe with little white caps. They are not priests, neither do they say mass, nor preach,[71] and they are for the most part ignorant. But they make a boast to be excellent distillers of _eau de naffé_[72] and other waters, both in Verona and elsewhere.

Monastical liqueurs are worthy of a paragraph to themselves. So long as monks have existed, they seem to have manifested a taste for the concoction of these drinks. We can scarcely pass the shop window of a liqueur-seller without having our attention attracted by what the French call a _Kyrielle_ or litany of flasks of diverse forms, decorated with tickets bearing such titles as the following:—_Liqueur des Chartreux_, _Liqueur des Benedictins_, _Liqueur des Carmes_, _Liqueur des Trappistes_, _Liqueur des Pères de Garaison_, _Liqueur du P. Kermann_, and so on. A large volume might well be composed on these liqueurs alone. About their supposed virtues,—aperient, digestive, antiapoplectic, antispasmodic, anticholeric, tonic, etc., that book might be well supposed likely to stretch out as far as the list of Banquo’s issue to the diseased imagination of Macbeth.

The search for the philosopher’s stone and the powder of projection was by no means wholly fruitless. It strengthened the hands of chemistry. It was also the cradle of liqueurs. In the early part of the middle ages the learned inhabitants of the convents devoted their leisure time, of which they appear to have had no lack, to the so-called _magnum opus_. The _magnum opus_, the quintessence, the elixir of long life, were three different denominations of one and the same thing. Monkish intellectual toil was chiefly connected at that time with the study of essences, spirits, alcohols, and distillations. The plants which they sought with the greatest eagerness were rosemary, arnica, elder, camomile, sweet trefoil, rose, borage, balm mint, snake weed, iris, etc.

In the thirteenth century, Arnold de Villeneuve, a celebrated physician, possessed with this devil of a _magnum opus_, formulated the question of the quintessence or elixir of long life in these terms, which became afterwards a dogma for all his monastic successors. “This is the secret, viz., to find substances so homogeneous to our nature that they can increase it without inflaming it, continue it without diminishing it ... as our life continually loses somewhat, until at last all is lost.” The outcome of the long and patient labours of the monkish alchemists was certain elixirs and liqueurs, of which the secret composition was transmitted from generation to generation in convents and monasteries. Such liqueurs were in their origin simply a pharmaceutic product. It is only within the last few years comparatively that they have been converted into delicacies after dinner. Our age bears the hall mark of positivism. The monks labour no longer for the sole glory of God and comfort of the sick. Their object at the present day is to effect, it is affirmed, a ready and productive sale. It may be so; happily it is not our business to determine. It is certain that a vast development has taken place in the manufacture of the majority of the monkish liqueurs. The _Chartreux_ of _L’Isère_ now realize annual benefices of considerable value, of which a portion is said to be contributed to the continually diminishing Papal exchequer, under the title of Peter’s pence. Of this medicinal liqueur the active and benevolent element is gathered from herbs scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, or on the slopes of the Pyrenees, or in the sombre forests of the north (see the Prospectus), or in the shops of the apothecaries. But they all assuredly depend upon cognac for their element of life. _Benedictine_, with its four cabalistic letters, A M D G,[73] is made by the monks of Fécamp, at the famous Carthusian monastery of _La Grande Chartreuse_, near Grenoble. The elixir of long life, _de Sept-Fonds_, is made in a convent of the Trappists of l’Allier, and _Trappistine_ is the work of the good fathers of the abbey of _La Grâce-Dieu_ (Doubs). It is, however, affirmed that only Chartreuse, coloured yellow or green at will, and Trappistine, are the works of religious hands, while all other liqueurs are made by the laics. The methods of fabrication employed in the convents are now well known.[74] Benedictine is the only liqueur which has escaped analysis.

_Absinthe_ is not strictly a liqueur. It substitutes bitter for sweet. This strong spirituous liquor, so prejudicial to French health and morality, is, however, commonly called a liqueur. Its base is an alcoholate, composed of anise, coriander, and fennel. It is flavoured with wormwood, a species of _artemisia_, and other plants containing _absinthin_. It is said to be commonly coloured with indigo and sulphate of copper. It is prepared chiefly in Switzerland, but much of it is made at Bordeaux.

Arnold de Villeneuve, in his medical treatise, written in Latin, _On the preservation of youth and the retardation of age_, has a sermon upon Golden water. “I have not,” he says, “read the properties of this water in books of distinguished authority, but it is to be presumed that, if it exists, it is so sublime a work that they have concealed the method of its preparation, and have even refused to mention its name. Of gold, however, they have spoken, and set it among cordial medicines. They have praised it for the comforting of the heart and for the palliation of leprosy. It is possible that since we every day find things diversified by alteration of substance, acquiring the operations of those other things into which they have been transformed, so out of wine may be made a water of life very different from wine both in colour and in substance, in effect and in operation. And the doubt here is, not about the fact, but how it is brought about. That the bodies of all metals may be reduced into water by the ingenuity of mankind, experience allows us not to question; but the operation and nature of those things by which this end is obtained it is no easy matter to discover.”

This golden water was originally nothing else than _eau de vie_ in which had been macerated certain herbs and aromatic spices to give it taste and colour; afterwards minute portions of metallic gold were added. The ingredients mentioned by Arnold de Villeneuve are rosemary flowers, from which, he says, the water obtains its golden colour, cinnamon, grains of paradise, cloves, cubebs, liquorice, and the like.

In the mind of the middle ages, gold was held to be a remedy for every ill. Many people applied themselves to the task of dissolving this metal and rendering it potable. It was put into drinks, baths, victuals, pills, and the pharmacopeia of the time abounds in elixirs of gold, tinctures of gold, drops of gold, and so on. To please the public eye, those pieces of the precious metal were cast into the composition which we now know as _Eau de vie de Dantzig_.

Catherine de Medicis brought into France all the voluptuous discoveries and superfluities of Italy, and helped to augment considerably the number of new liqueurs and to popularize their usage. Henry II. was especially fond of the _anisette_ of Marie Brizard of Bordeaux. Sully, in 1604, examining the objects of luxury in France, found _Populo_ and _Rossolio_ to have the chief share in the public estimation and expenditure. Of them _Populo_ is mentioned in the Letters of Gui-Patin.[75] It was composed of spirits of wine, water, sugar, musk, amber, essence of anise, and essence of cinnamon.

_Rossolis_, our _Rossolio_, or _Rossoli_, said to be derived, in consequence of its extreme excellence, from the dew of the sun, _ros solis_, was made of burnt brandy, sugar, and the juice of sweet fruits, such as cherries or mulberries. Louis XIV. was much attached to this

## particular liqueur. That prepared for him was said to differ a little

from the ordinary compound. A receipt is given of the king’s drink.

Equal quantities of _eau de vie_ and Spanish wine, in which were infused anise, coriander, fennel, citron, angelica, and sugar-candy dissolved in camomile water, and boiled to a thick syrup, were a distinctive feature in this royal liqueur.

Owing to oblivion or ignorance of the _anisette_ of Henri II. this monarchical recognition of _rossolio_ has led to the supposition that liqueurs were invented to invigorate the senile decrepitude of Louis XIV., but it has been shown that they existed long before his time. George IV. is said to have been attached to liqueurs in much the same way as Louis XIV., who may have supposed that they in some measure improved his health or arrested his decay.

The liqueur industry is chiefly continental, and the liqueurs are very numerous. Holland is famous for its _Curaçoa_ and Russia for its _Kümmel_, and almost every large district of France has its own speciality of liqueur. Bordeaux[76] is remarkable for its _Anisette_, Dijon for its _Cassis_, Marseilles for its _Absinthe_, Grenoble for its _Ratafias_, and Paris and Lyons are each noted for many different kinds.

The English have attained as yet no high rank as liqueur manufacturers. The prosaic nature of the Trade Returns includes all liqueurs of foreign origin under the heading of “_Sweetened or mixed Spirits_.” It makes no distinction between Eaux and Crèmes or between Ratafias and Elixirs. We have been told that elixirs are yellow and aromatized, and eaux or crèmes white, while ratafias are substantially infusions of fruit. Originally this may have been so. It is not the case at present.

Both _Elixir_ and _Ratafia_ are interesting from an etymological standpoint. The latter word has excited considerable discussion. Menage, writing it as it was commonly written in his time, _ratafiat_, says it is a term derived from the East Indies. Leibnitz, on the contrary, holds it to be a corruption of _rectifié_ applied to alcohol. Another etymology is _rata fiat_. Parties were supposed to enter into a contract, and after drinking the liqueur to say, “Let it be ratified.”

_Elixir_[77] is an Arabic word derived from the Greek, by which the alchemists denoted their powder of projection or philosopher’s stone.

[Illustration]

LIQUEURS.