Recently the Right Reverend Bob Gillies, Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney in the Scottish Episcopal Church, set out the case against the enthusiastic consumption of Buckfast Tonic Wine – made by monks, loved by the less devout – in Scotland. It leads people into sin, he said, suggesting that the Benedictine monks who produce it should consider their position.

In the unlikely event that the community was to stop making their 'medicated wine with a smooth, rounded taste', they'd be breaking with a tradition that's as old as religious orders themselves. The Scots I know didn't necessarily make the connection between Buckfast Abbey and its 'commotion lotion' when they sought cheap booze as teens, but monks and nuns have been making food and drink for a thousand years.

Many religious communities have always been farmers, brewers, cheesemakers or beekeepers, selling what was not consumed within the cloisters to passing pilgrims and, later, to more worldly customers. The produce is not all Buckie-standard: the stories of some of the world's finest beers and cheeses form part of the dreamy landscape of American writer Madeline Scherb's new book A Taste of Heaven, a guide to food and drink made by monks and nuns.



Church attendance may be in decline, but the fact that some of us spend our weekends worshipping at farmers' markets and food festivals is in holy-made foodstuffs' favour. They are, as they say, right for now, ticking all the most fetishised foodie boxes: traditional, local, small-scale, high-quality, preservative-free, traceable and made by skilled artisans.

The monks at Westmalle Abbey near Antwerp, for example, have staff to make their Tripel beer – within the monastery, using proper hops – but keep their own cows and make a raw-milk cheese whose flavour changes depending on what the herd's been eating. At Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, the monks' fudge is flavoured with the local bourbon, and the Benedictine nuns at the Abbey of St Hildegard in Germany tend their own Riesling vines and train in vinification. They have also long been experts in that most fashionable of grains, spelt: Hildegard apparently declared herself a fan 900 years ago, which is one in the eye for Roger Saul.

Of course, there are exceptions. Some products with monastic origins like Port Salut and Saint-Paulin cheeses have lost their holy savour, and only some beers qualify as proper, monk-made, Trappist products, rather than the commercial tribute act of 'abbey ales' (for the real thing, you'll be wanting Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, Westvleteren or Koningshoeven). Monks on the label aren't necessarily a guarantee.

Also, by their very nature, the holiest of foods can be hard to find. In Murcia a couple of years ago, we returned time and again to the convent church of Santa Ana, not for the architecture but for the elusive pastries. The nuns there are apparently master confectioners, and sell their cakes through what our notes called 'a hatch'. We circled the church repeatedly, in vain hopes of cake, but uncovered no evidence of the baking or the hatch; it would be great to hear from any WOM-ers who've been successful at Santa Ana where we went wrong, whether the pastries are worth it, and where else you've found cloistered cakes.

Scherb can't answer the question because her retreats didn't include Spain, or indeed the UK, but despite the little hurdle of dissolution (which interrupted the monastic tradition of making Wensleydale, among others) I reckon we can start a UK list that stretches beyond Buckie. Lindisfarne mead does not count as it is a) not made by monks and b) rumoured to be horrible, but the shortbread baked by the Cistercian monks of Caldey Island, off Tenby, certainly does.

In Yorkshire Ampleforth Abbey's famous apple orchards, worked by monks, produces rare apple varieties, lovely cider and cider brandy. St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough sells rare-breed pork and beef, along with honey from the apiary, although demand often outstrips supply. But where else would you recommend for food that's – and I make no apology – second to nun?