93 points - RateBeer
91 points - Beer Advocate
90 points - Draft Mag
St. Bernardus is an Abbey brewery, although their history is entwined with that of the Trappist monks. Back in the 1800s, anti-clericalism forced the Catsberg Abbey monks to leave France for Belgium, where they founded the Refuge Notre Dame de St. Bernard and entered into an agreement with, and gave brewing license to a neighbouring abbey called St. Sixtus, to brew and market their full-bodied and quality Trappist beers. The agreement came to an end in 1992 when the law stipulated that to use the word 'Trappist', the beer has to be brewed within a monastery. This forced the brewery to continue brewing under a different name, a name that the beer world now knows and loves – St. Bernardus.
