FYI, from the World Wide Web site with the URL
 
http://www.interport.net:80/witbeer/wit_3b.html
 
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> RISE, FALL AND REVIVAL IN EUROPE
>
>      Beer of Wit's style was first produced in the eastern provinces
> of Belgium over 500 years ago. At that time, before the universal
> usage of hops in brewing, local brewers employed a wide variety of
> ingredients to soften the bitter sourness that characterized their
> primitive beer, which was primarily made with wheat and thus called
> "witbier". The Flemish trade routes brought home oranges from Spain
> and exotic spices from the East Indies. Some brave brewer one day
> played with the odd mix of orange peel and coriander. The witbier that
> resulted must have been very pleasing to the pallet. Before long
> brewers all over Belgium were producing this new style.
>      By the 1800's, however, Belgian brewers increasingly turned to
> hop spicing and barley based beers, and the popularity of witbier
> diminished. Although no one knows for sure, there are probably several
> causes for this development. Clearly the ascendance of hop based beers
> in England and Germany had something to do with it. Technological
> advances that showed wheat to be more useful in bread baking, and
> barley in beer brewing, also contributed. Apparently an infection at
> some point spread through wooden vessels and spoiled the yeast strains
> required to produce the special taste of witbier.
>      Some time after the second world war, in fact, the last of the
> original witbier breweries closed its doors. And the beer style was
> actually extinct.
>      The world went without citrus and coriander spiced wheat beer for
> nearly two decades. In the late 1960's, however, at the very beginning
> of what would prove to be Belgium's own microbrewery revival, a local
> milkman, who had grown up next to one of the last witbier breweries,
> decided to resurrect the style.
>      By the mid 1980's several small breweries were marketing witbier
> in the major cities of Belgium and Holland. Although the beer sold at
> an expensive premium over more commonplace beers, demand developed
> quickly in the fashionable bars and cafes of Brussels and Amsterdam.
>      By 1993, sales of witbier accounted for a full 5 percent of all
> beer sales in Belgium and 2 percent of beer sales in Holland, easily
> making witbier the fastest growing type of beer in Europe. Today more
> than 40 brands of witbier compete in the Belgian and Dutch markets,
> and virtually every establishment serving beer carries at least one
> brand.
>
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