Vintage 1970s - 1980s Domaine de Laroche Spiritueux Fine Supérieure Label 🏰 Pink Castle Spirit NOS

Domaine de Laroche "Fine Supérieure" Spirits Label 🏰 Menin, Belgium · 1970s - 1980s

Size: 4 1/2" x 4 1/2"

A pretty pink one: Domaine de Laroche in gold script, a turreted château over the vineyards in a cloud-shaped frame, and a big swooping "Fine" - that's French for brandy - with SUPÉRIEURE under it. Never used. I have a stack, so yours will look just like this one.

🔎 The Address Dates It

Look at the bottom line: Anc. Ets. Rob. Dewaegenare 8600 Menin. That 8600 is a Belgian postcode, and Belgium didn't have postcodes until 1969. Then on October 1, 1990 the whole list was redone - Menen became 8930, and 8600 went to Diksmuide. So this label was printed somewhere between 1969 and 1990, whatever the castle and the old-fashioned script would like you to think.

🥃 What the Fine Print Says

"Anc. Ets." is Anciens Établissements - the old firm of Rob. Dewaegenare - and "Maison fondée 1899" says the house went back to 1899. R. C. Courtrai 78.466 is its number in the commercial register at Courtrai (Kortrijk), the big town next door, and "Cont. 98 cl." is a 98-centiliter bottle, just shy of a liter. The best part is the Dutch paragraph, which says, roughly: "We guarantee the natural strength of this spirit, which contains no artificial fortifier. Because of its origin it does no harm to your health, causes no stomach or other pains, is very digestible, and is an effective remedy for many illnesses." A brandy that's good for what ails you - you've got to love it.

🏙️ Menin on the Lys

Menen - Menin in French - sits on the Lys River right on the French border, facing the French town of Halluin across the water, about 11 kilometers from Kortrijk and 15 from Lille. Louis XIV had his engineer Vauban rebuild the town's fortifications from 1679 to 1689, and stretches of those walls are still there. And if the name rings a bell, it's the Menin Gate at Ypres: the road through that gate led to Menen, the Menin Road became one of the most fought-over few miles of the First World War, and the Menin Gate memorial carries the names of tens of thousands of soldiers with no known grave.

📜 The Stories

Collectors of French and Belgian labels like to say the château on labels like this wasn't always a real place - printers kept stock castle engravings any bottler could use to look like an old estate - so whether Laroche ever had a castle is anybody's guess. West Flanders lore says the spirits houses there were fussy about their printing, hiring engravers from the Ghent and Brussels traditions to stand up to the French Cognac labels, and even insisted on local paper as a point of Flemish pride. Menin's own local legend says its spirits houses kept their label stock in cellars rebuilt after the First World War, and Belgian collectors say West Flemish printers made a habit of printing far more labels than a client needed, so nobody was ever left with bottles and no labels - which is how unused ones like this keep turning up.

Lovely framed in a kitchen or a home bar - and that pink goes with everything.