Ferme de Mont Saint Jean - Waterloo

Located at the foot of the famous Lion’s Mound overlooking the battlefield of Waterloo, Mont-Saint-Jean Farm has maintained traditions that go back more than a thousand years. Predating the former British field hospital, Waterloo Brewery has produced the finest traditional beers for 500 years and has now rekindled an old tradition by distilling high-quality Gin and Whisky. This is hardly surprising, given that a farm as impressive as Mont-Saint-Jean Farm most likely had its own distillery in previous centuries. After all, a distillery was an effective means of transforming expired beer into distillates, producing concentrated grain alcohol from beer. In this case, Waterloo Beer is the main ingredient of Waterloo Gin and Whisky.

Although juniper-flavoured spirits called ‘jenever’ or ‘peket’ were already distilled here, the Battle of Waterloo opened our eyes to new products. In the 17th century, the English had developed gin by adding spices from their colonies to Flemish jenever, and in so doing they created gin.

So despite all its terrible consequences, with over 6,000 soldiers being treated in the field hospital, the Battle of Waterloo also brought something positive to Mont-Saint-Jean Farm. The British soldiers are said to have left barrels of whisky and gin at this farm, which inspired farmers from the region to distil new spirits. The flavour nowadays of the Gin and Whisky distilled at the farm has been directly influenced by this Belgian-English heritage.