B and B

An elegant two-ingredient digestif combining cognac with the honeyed herbal complexity of Bénédictine.

The B and B traces its origin to the 21 Club in New York City, the Prohibition-era speakeasy on West 52nd Street that transformed after Repeal into one of Manhattan's most celebrated restaurants. During the 1930s, a bartender there began combining Bénédictine with brandy as a simpler after-dinner serve. The combination was not entirely new — brandy floated over Bénédictine had appeared in American cocktail books as early as 1910 — but the 21 Club version popularized it as an equal-parts mixed drink. Bénédictine itself carries one of the most celebrated origin stories in spirits: the recipe is attributed to Dom Bernardo Vincelli, a Venetian monk at the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy in 1510, though the modern commercial version was developed in 1863 by Alexandre Le Grand, who claimed to have found the monk's manuscripts among the Abbey's ruins after the French Revolution. The liqueur contains 27 herbs and botanicals, including saffron, hyssop, and angelica, and carries the initials D.O.M. — Deo Optimo Maximo, Latin for to God, most good, most great — on every bottle. The B and B became so popular at the 21 Club that in 1937 the Bénédictine company began producing a pre-blended version — 60 percent Bénédictine and 40 percent fine French brandy, aged in French oak casks — specifically for the American market. That pre-mixed B&B now outsells straight Bénédictine in the United States.