The ALPESTRE story is an old one. A story that dates back to 1857, in France, at the Hermitage on the Gier river, when brother Emanuel, a Marist monk, a herbalist and healer, devised a formula for the distillate for the care of his fellow monks. This distillate combined the beneficial properties of 34 herbs thus producing a delicious liqueur which soon became very famous. In fact, the French government required the product to be sent in assistance as a first aid remedy to those soldiers that had suffered harquebus wounds from the enemy - from here the name 'Arquebus de l'Hermitage'. As a consequence of the anti-clerical laws, the Marist monks moved at the beginning of this century, to Carmagnola, near Turin, taking with them the art and the secret of this preparation that they had jealously handed down from generation to generation. In this new location the distillery evolved, little by little, to its present size, and the name of the product, no longer protected by counterfeit laws, definitively became known as ALPESTRE. Now, as in the past, expert herbalists cultivate the 34 aromatic herbs - which include : thyme, lavender, angelica, fennel,, tansy, Levant wormseed, sage, mint, lemon balm, Lysippus, camomile and lemon verbena, to cite just a few- which are collected at exactly the right moment of ripening. These herbs are left to macerate in alcohol for a certain length of time and then properly distilled. This process allows for the beneficial properties of the herbs to be absorbed by the final liqueur. A distilling process with no addition of sugar contributes to the clear and natural colour of ALPESTRE.