The Nectum is an elixir, a liqueur made from fir cones.
This very old recipe owes its rebirth to a restaurateur established in Andorra, "Michel Baylocq".
Nectum is both a remedy for coughs and an aromatic accompaniment for meat and poultry.
The ancients harvested the cones of fir and let them macerate in sugar for 40 days.
Michel Baylocq lets the maceration work for much longer so that the aroma of the fir is more powerful.
And Michel Baylocq joined forces with another Catalan from the Pyrénées-Orientales, Claude Sarda, to develop the fir syrup in Roussillon.
"The mountain people and farmers of the Andorran and Catalan Pyrenees have always made it in the family, just as each family in the plains used to make its own jam," says Claude Sarda.
They created their own company Abies Lagrimus (the tears of fir in Latin) and their brand Lagrimus.
Thanks to a partnership with the ONF, the pine needles will be collected on a part of the Canigou massif, at an altitude of more than 1,700 meters, and if sales develop, more than 600 hectares of Abies Alba fir trees are available in the Eastern Pyrenees.
This former sales manager, who worked for a long time in the wine industry, also specifies that "We only pick the pine nuts from three trees out of ten and only 60 to 70% will be taken from each tree in order to preserve the resource".
The Lagrimus is, therefore, "sustainable development".
Restaurateurs in Barcelona, San Sebastian, Madrid and of course Andorra have already adopted the Nectum.
https://visitandorra.com/fr/produits-locaux/nectum/
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
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