Oh, just imagine making a batch of this stuff! From the Guardian: Very merry seventeenth century punch recipe found in Yorkshire.

A recipe for a very merry Christmas drink for 17th century monks, beginning with ten pints of brandy, has been rediscovered by a Durham university academic, in the archives of Ampleforth Abbey in north Yorkshire.

The recipes – there were two similar versions, one for a punch, one for a drink known as “shrub” – were written down for English Benedictine monks who were in exile in France after the dissolution of the monasteries. Both were flavoured with orange and lemon peel, with added sugar and water, and involved days of steeping and mixing the ingredients. [continue]

The Guardian article’s link to the Monks in Motion site is wrong. The correct address is:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/mim/ .