BUCKFAST, England » Sticky, sweet and flavored like spiced wine, with a hint of violet and a jolt of caffeine, the alcoholic drink produced here for the last century by Benedictine monks is the heart of a thriving enterprise.

Buckfast Abbey, where the tonic wine is blended, employs scores of people, donates money to worthy causes and has undergone a massive renovation.

Locals even have a mischievous nickname for their well-financed monastic community: Fastbuck Abbey.

But now the popularity of the drink — especially hundreds of miles north in Scotland, where its sweetness and a high caffeine content have made it a favorite in recent years of young drinkers — has put the abbey and the surrounding area into the midst of a debate over who bears responsibility for alcohol abuse.

Concerned about reports that such drinks create "wide-awake drunks" who are linked to a variety of crimes, including drunken driving and sexual assaults, the Scottish Parliament is considering legislation that could ban Buckfast — often known as Buckie — unless its recipe is changed.

The distributors of Buckfast say there is no medical evidence to link their product to such crimes. But the criticism has cast a cloud over this tranquil rural corner of western England, where the abbey is an important part of the local economy, and the notion of being lectured about alcohol abuse by Scotland seems jarring, if not downright offensive.

The debate would probably seem strange to the creators of Buckfast tonic wine, Benedictine monks from France who arrived in Devon in the 1880s and built their community on a site first occupied by a religious order nearly a millennium ago.

Soon they were importing wine from Continental Europe, fortifying it and blending the sweet drink originally sold as a tonic or medicine.

"It is a perfectly good drink if consumed modestly as a tonic wine," said Richard Simpson, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament and architect of the proposed law. "It is a pity that it has become what it has become."

Criticism of Buckfast wine has little to do with its 15 percent alcohol content, which is only slightly stronger than some table wines. Instead, critics cite the combination of alcohol and caffeine.

In Scotland, there is heightened concern about the demand from younger drinkers, some of whom seem to use Buckfast as a convenient alternative to mixing alcohol with energy drinks and caffeinated soft drinks.

"There is no doubt that caffeine-alcohol mixers make wide-awake drunks," added Simpson, a medical doctor. "You are more likely to drive, and there is much more of a sexual risk. If you drink enough alcohol you eventually become comatose, but if you combine it with caffeine you can go through a fairly aggressive phase before you become comatose."

His bill would limit the caffeine content of all alcoholic drinks. He has allies among other opposition parties, and the Scottish government says it is considering whether to give support.

Under the plan, caffeine would be capped at 150 milligrams per liter of alcoholic drinks, the limit in Denmark. Buckfast contains more than double that level.

Critics like Simpson cite a 2009 report for the Scottish prison service, based on research at an institute for young offenders, which concluded that "the salience of one brand, Buckfast tonic wine, was noteworthy."

The brand "dominated wine consumption," ranked as the favorite drink of four in 10 respondents, and was consumed by 43.3 percent of the respondents before they committed a crime, the report said.

In 2010, the police in Strathclyde, Scotland, said Buckfast wine was mentioned in 5,638 crime reports from 2006 to 2009.

The leadership of Buckfast Abbey is famously publicity-shy and, its head, Abbot David Charlesworth, declined to speak to a reporter.

But Stewart Wilson, sales manager for Buckfast’s distributor, J Chandler & Company, said that while the drink is the top-selling fortified wine in Britain, it makes up just 1 percent of the alcohol market.

He called the police statistics out of date, and said they unfairly singled out Buckfast wine.

"In Scotland it is seen as a political football," Wilson said. "A number of politicians use our product to get into the newspapers and to get themselves into the limelight."

The criticism often feels motivated by "religious bigotry," he said, adding: "Alcohol is alcohol; it needs to be consumed responsibly. If someone abuses a particular brand it is the individual who is responsible, not the brand."

Many here in Buckfast and in other towns near the scenic River Dart, defend the product that has brought jobs to an area that has lost its traditional industries.

According to British media reports, the abbey received about 6.6 million pounds, or more than $10 million, from its business interests in 2012, the majority of which came from the tonic wine. J Chandler & Co. places its annual sales at about 40 million pounds; the public relations company employed by the abbey did not respond to questions about income from the wine.

Despite concerns, Buckfast Abbey is being spruced up ahead of the millennial anniversary of the first monastic settlement here in 1018. It is already one of the biggest tourist attractions in the region, employing scores of gardeners, caterers and other workers.

"They are a very private organization, and they are not terribly visible," Pam Barrett, deputy mayor of neighboring Buckfastleigh, said of the abbey. Buckfastleigh serves as the administrative district for the abbey. "But they do quite a lot of good in the community. It is a beautiful building and a beautiful location, which brings lots of people in."

Here in Buckfast, the tonic wine is not a common drink.

"It is not to say that we don’t have problems with antisocial behavior, and there are certainly problem drinkers," Barrett said. "It’s just that they drink a different type of alcohol."

Though blended at the abbey, the tonic wine is bottled at another site. Katie Coates, a member of the Buckfastleigh Town Council and its former mayor, said she could not remember the wine’s appearing as an issue in the four years she has served on the council.

"At the end of the day it’s not different from any other alcohol," she said. "In Scotland, they make whisky; it’s all about responsibility."

Mike Lang, who lives opposite the abbey, said that the wine "feeds money into the local community," and that if the abbey ever were to close, "Buckfast and Buckfastleigh would shrivel."

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