If you believe Benedictine is made by monks, that's quite all right with Alain Le Grand, the 35-year-old president of Benedictine, S.A. The Le Grands have taken pains to associate their liqueurs with the labors of holy men, since Alain's great-great-grandfather founded the company in 1863 near the ruins of the famous Benedictine Abbey of Fecamp on the Normandy coast. In fact, Benedictine and its companion product, Benedictine and Brandy (B & B), do have the blessings of the Benedictine order in Rome: The order is a minority shareholder. But Benedictine, S.A. is strictly a secular enterprise. In the last fiscal year, it produced 20,000 bottles a day, earning $2.2 million on $17 million in sales. It maintains a growth rate of 10%, has almost no indebtedness, and last year paid out more than half its profits in dividends.

Much about this colorful company is fabulous. Its founder, Alexandre, was married twice and had 19 surviving children. Faced with a horrendous succession problem, he simply willed control to his four oldest sons and their descendants. Today the descendants number over 3,000. (A thousand of them actually turned up for a family reunion a few years ago.) But no more than 40 of the 3,000 are shareholders; descendants of the four sons own 60% of the stock and, by tradition, only they work actively in the company. (See "Family Affairs: The Benedictine Succession," below.)

Alexandre's descendants see the past not as a burden but as an asset to be preserved and exploited. It helps them create the image of a fine product that's a symbol of elegance, epitomized in the current B & B slogan, "Living well is the best revenge." At $15 to $20 a bottle, the good life does not come cheaply.

But then Benedictine, S.A. continues to make its products by hand, according to the founder's original formula, in stills set up at the turn of the century. Neither the bottle nor the label has changed in the 118 years since Alexandre carefully registered them.

"Our challenge is to sell an unchanging product in a changing world," explains Alain Le Grand in almost accentless English. "There's a whole new generation that has to learn the unique taste of our products. So we change our marketing approach. But we never change the product. It cannot be improved on."