The Neudietendorf AROMATIQUE spice liqueur has been in existence since 1828. According to legend bordering on fact, it started out as a medicine. When at the beginning of the 19th century an epidemic broke out in the Neudietendorf area, a local chemist called Daniel Thraen produced an alcohol-based remedy using natural substances known since time immemorial for their healing effect on the stomach and bowels. He called his new concoction "tinctura aromatica compostita".
After the epidemic had ended demand for this "tincture" continued unabated, encouraging the succeeding chemist, Theodor Lappe, to develop the makeshift medicine into a spirit and from 1828 to market it as Aromatique spice liqueur. In the following years a number of other spirits firms were founded which also made Aromatique. Slight changes to the basic recipe caused a difference in flavour, and further distinctions were achieved by prefixing the name of the firms founders or owners, e.g. Lappe's Aromatique/Schultz-Aromatique. After the Second World War till the mid-50s there were still five Aromatique firms in existence in Neudietendorf.
Our contemporary company resulted from a firm founded in 1876 by Reinhold Schmidt as a spirit and liqueur factory which was taken over in 1897 by Theodor Kramer and continued from 1932 by three tenants as Th. Kramer & Co. The main product was Kramer-Aromatique, and to this day we still use its original recipe to make Genuine Neudietendorf Aromatique.
Our spirits factory was saved under the GDR regime by two typical steps: state participation in 1958 and full nationalisation in 1972. However, from 1958 onwards the state required it only to produce Aromatique in order to cope with demand for the popular spice liqueur caused by the closure of the other four producers.
With reprivatisation and the subsequent founding of the Spirituosenfabrik Aromatique GmbH on 1st August, 1991, a new era in the firm's more than 100 year history was ushered in. Today we are an independent family business with a staff of eighteen.
The poor state of the works which dated from the preceding century and were situated in the middle of the town were reason enough for us to build a new plant in the Neudietendorf industrial estate. Thus since 1995 we have a factory equipped with modern technology and built on a scale to cope with future expansion, which being next to the A4 autobahn has superb logistical access.
Since then the new production facilities have enabled us to enlarge our range of products. Next to our main product of AROMATIQUE and in continuance of company tradition, we today produce further bitters, semi-bitters, liqueurs and private label brands.
The fact that Genuine Neudietendorf AROMATIQUE goes very well with a large meal, chases a nice cool beer beautifully and is drunk with pleasure in-between times has long since ceased to be known only to its many fans in its home territory of Thuringia.
Let's have an Aromatique - has also become a slogan with its longstanding and growing band of supporters in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hesse, northern Bavaria, Lower Saxony, North-Rhine Westphalia, Hamburg and Schleswig Holstein.
Current exports go to such countries as the UK and Israel, and further expansion of exports is one of the company's most important objectives.
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