Salers Liqueur de Gentiane (Gentian)

Joseph Védrenne, a trained engineer, founded Vedrenne in 1923 with a deliberate decision: he set the distillery in Nuits-Saint-Georges, where the slopes above the famous Burgundy vineyards were planted with the dense-skinned Noir de Bourgogne blackcurrant — and where he could process fruit hours after picking, before any aromatic loss. That fruit-to-still proximity remains the house's defining advantage a century later.

The early business specialised in maceration of single fruits in neutral spirit: blackcurrants, raspberries, peaches, sloe, cherry. The headline Supercassis, a 20% concentration crème de cassis, sits at the upmarket end of the category alongside the standard 16% reference. The house's range expanded over the twentieth century into violet, chestnut, peach-de-vigne, mirabelle, and a number of two-fruit cocktail bases.

Vedrenne was acquired by Marie Brizard in 1987, then by the Renaud-Cointreau family in 1997, who merged it with verveine specialist Pagès. The two houses now operate from the original Nuits-Saint-Georges site plus a secondary distillery in Dordogne. In 2017, Vedrenne was awarded Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant status by the French Ministry for the Economy, recognising continuity of artisanal production methods.