Українська
московитів
Becherovka comes from Karlsbad, or Karlovy Vary, a famous Czech resort. Her recipe was invented at the beginning of the last century. And it all started in 1805, when Count Plettenberg Metingen and his personal doctor, the Englishman Frobrig, stayed in the Karlovy Vary pharmacist Jan Becher’s guesthouse “At the Three Larks”. Becher soon realized what a kindred spirit he had found in Frobrig: both were passionate about mixing aromatic oils, herbs and alcohol. Having experimented enough with various recipes, Frobrig left, leaving the apothecary with one of the most interesting, in his opinion, as a souvenir, on which Becher worked for two years, before the original aromatic drink “Becherivka” was released in 1807.
At first, Becherovka was sold exclusively as medicated drops that stimulate digestion. However, its medicinal, and most importantly, taste qualities were so good that the drink very quickly gained wide popularity and from 1841 began to be bottled en masse as a liqueur tincture on herbs.
The “Becherivka” recipe includes more than 20 herbs and spices, 3/4 of which are brought from abroad, and the rest are collected exclusively in the Karlovy Vary region. The recipe is kept in the strictest secrecy. Only two people in the company know it, and they prepare a miraculous mixture once a week: herbs and spices are mixed in a certain proportion and poured into canvas bags, which are then immersed in containers filled with alcohol and left there for about a week. After that, the extract is poured into handmade oak barrels and mixed with water and sugar. The aromatic elixir is infused in oak barrels for almost 2 months, thanks to which it acquires its typical taste and color. Before bottling, “Becherivka” is “married” or simply mixed with the contents of different barrels. And only after that, the drink is poured into original flat green bottles, the design of which has hardly changed since the 19th century.
