The Story of Grand Marnier
There was a good crowd at the latest event in this year's programme from the Cercle français de Belfast when "yours truly" gave the talk on Grand Marnier. As usual the Dark Horse Coffee House in the Cathedral Quarter matched the proceedings perfectly. I decided that it might be a fun idea to do a kind of Who Do You Think You Are? approach to the subject. The concept of the popular BBC ancestry programme has made it into French, in Canada at least, where it is known as Qui Êtes-vous? The first part of the enquiry then looked into the origins of the drink and focussed on Jean-Baptiste LAPOSTOLLE who, in 1827, set up a distillery to make fruit liqueurs in Neauphle-le-Chateau near Paris. The story moved to his son Eugene who returned from travels with bottles of "burnt wine" - brandewijn - from the Cognac region. He is said to have offered a taste to his friend Louis-Alexandre MARNIER who hit upon the idea of adding his recipe for bitter o...