page_title: Alexandre Le Grand (merchant)
section_title: Bénédictine
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandre Le Grand (merchant) / Bénédictine
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Vitrail dans le palais Bénédictine à Fécamp.
context_page_description: Alexandre-Prosper-Hubert Le Grand was a wine merchant and industrialist of the 19th century who in 1863 invented the liqueur known as Bénédictine from a mixture of native herbs and exotic spices.
context_section_description: The modern history of Bénédictine liqueur begins in 1863, when Alexandre Legrand – an industrialist, a merchant in wine and spirits, and also an art collector – discovered in his family library a 16th-century grimoire belonging to the Benedictine abbey of Fécamp. The book would have belonged to his grandfather, Prosper Elie Couillard, a procureur fiscal who might have acquired it during the French Revolution.
  Some sources record that a healthful elixir of 27 herbs and spices was concocted by one Dom Bernardo Vincelli, a Venetian Benedictine of the Renaissance period who was alleged to have stayed at the abbey of Fécamp, but there exists no concrete record of Vincelli's existence. The mysterious monk may have been invented by Le Grand to anchor his liqueur's origins in the Renaissance. According to legend, the liqueur first gained a reputation outside the abbey when Francis I, during a visit to Fécamp, tasted the elixir and was said to have exclaimed: "Foy de gentilhomme! Oncques n'en goustai de meilleur!" ("On my honor! I have never tasted anything better!") However, this story is more myth than history, as there is no historical record of Francis' ever having visited Fécamp. Le Grand may have invented all these stories to buttress the popularity of his liqueur. The palace which he would later construct would represent these stories in large stained glass windows.
  Patiently Le Grand re-created the medicinal formula, marrying myrrh with juniper, saffron with lemon rind. The drink was sent to market in a distinctive bottle. But first, Le Grand played a new card: that of advertising. He persuaded several renowned artists to create posters and placards for placement in France and abroad. These artists included Alphonse Mucha, Sem, Lopes Silva, and even Louise Abbéma in 1899, with an oil-on-canvas titled La Renommée de la Bénédictine displayed at the Salon in 1899 and then at the World's Fair in Paris in 1900.
  A decade after its launch, Bénédictine was selling 150,000 bottles per year. Its commercial success was so overwhelming that Le Grand in 1876 founded Bénédictine SA, a company dedicated solely to the production of liqueurs. In 1882, the year of its entry into the Bourse, the enterprise opened a new distillery to boost its production from 350,000 bottles annually to almost a million, driven by the Second Empire fondness for liqueurs.
  Le Grand demonstrated a genius for marketing, deploying the precursors of corporate sponsorship and creating a legend about the brand. The brand was bolstered by Le Grand's acquisition of medieval collections in the Palais Bénédictine and by his sponsorship of artists.
caption: The legend of Bénédictine in stained glass, at the Palais Bénédictine.
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