Eau de Mélisse des Carmes Boyer

Eau de Mélisse des Carmes Boyer is a clear spirit of 80 degrees, distilled from lemon balm and thirteen other plants, among them angelica, sage, rosemary, thyme and Roman camomile, with nine spices including coriander, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and gentian root. It is sold in small bottles of 4, 5 and 10 centilitres with a green cap and a label of melissa leaves. A few drops are taken on a lump of sugar, in water or in a hot grog, or rubbed on the temples.

The water descends from the pharmacy of the Discalced Carmelites in the rue de Vaugirard in Paris, who began distilling it in 1611. Cardinal Richelieu was said to carry it against his migraines, and Louis XIV granted the friars letters patent for it in 1709, after the ladies of his court had taken it for their vapours. It became the most famous of the monastic waters of Paris and was copied by apothecaries across France, who printed its formula in their pharmacopoeias.

The Revolution confiscated the convent, and in September 1792 more than a hundred priests were killed in its garden. Forty-five friars formed a society and bought back the right to make the water, which they continued to distil in the rue Taranne. In 1838 Amédée Boyer bought out the partners of the last of them and became, as his handbills put it, the sole successor of the Discalced Carmelites.

Boyer signed every label and pursued imitators through the courts, though he could not stop pharmacists making waters of their own under the same name. His firm moved its works to Courbevoie in 1877 and to Carrières-sur-Seine in 1990, and was led by his descendants for generations. Today it grows some of its own herbs beside the workshop and sells the water in French pharmacies and from its own shop.