Fake 152

A  fake from the rather handsome cafeteria at Buckfast Abbey, the one tricked out with all kinds of natural materials, including serious looking, exposed timber beams holding up the roof. So this is some plastic lavender, packaged up in a jute bag - presumably real jute from India or Bangladesh - and branded 'Natural Garden'. But then, Catholics have never been shy when it comes to producing tricky visual effects around the altars and statues in their churches. Something which us Prots mostly eschew.

The Abbey also provides liquid succour to the drunks of Glasgow in the form of Buckfast Tonic Wine, although Wikipedia tells me that the monks no longer do the business themselves, but have subbed it out to J. Chandler and Company of Andover.  A company which appears to be just a shell, a cover, to provide a bit of distance between the monks and the booze. Independent existence limited to entries in computerised business directories.

It does have an address, but an address which appears to be on the edge of an industrial estate without any kind of identifying signage. Perhaps I ought to have scored it as another fake.

There are some serious looking sheds (centre bottom) to the south of the abbey, well away from the carefully tended gardens (centre top) that the public get to see, hidden between a screen of trees and the River Dart. There are signs suggesting abbey ownership of these sheds, so maybe that is where the stuff is still really made, whatever the paperwork might say.

PS: some time ago, we bought a couple of half bottles of the tonic wine for use as presents. But I sampled one of them, and, not seeing what said drunks saw in the stuff, poured the rest into the compost dustbin on the patio. This has reminded me to pour the contents of the second bottle into the same dustbin. It had been decorating a shelf in the front room bookcase for quite long enough.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/fake-151.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckfast_Tonic_Wine.

Reference 3: https://www.buckfast.com/born-on?page=/. The home page for the tonic wine. J. Chandler not visible here.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jute.

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