Born in Massat, Ariège in 1837, Jean Teichenné was a passionate herbologist with a love for its Pyrenees homeland and the mysteries that sorrounded it. Within the family distillery, He undertoock undertook the task of creating a liqueur which would reflect the essence, the spirit of his beloved land, the Ariège, known for its legacy of heresy, because of its tradition of opposing the established powers, being the main home of the Cathars in the languedoc in the XIIIth century.
Surrounded by gigantic mountains, abandoned castles and beneath deep valleys where the occitanian language still survives today, Jean Teichenné found that a reflection of these wild lands and its local traditions traditions had to be somehow distilled.
Collecting and selecting the best herbs and plants from the meadows, the valleys and the mountains all over the Ariège, he created the (magic) formula of Heretic, widely used locally back then and believed to have special properties.