Chartreuse (liqueur)
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- For the color chartreuse, see Chartreuse (color).
Chartreuse is a French liqueur composed of distilled wine alcohol flavored with 130 herbal extracts. The liquor is named after the Grande Chartreuse monastery where it is produced, which in turn is named after the Chartreuse Mountains, the region in France where the monastery is located.
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[edit] Types
There are two main types of Chartreuse:
- Green Chartreuse (110 proof or 55%, and from which the name of the color is derived), a naturally green liqueur flavored with extracts from 130 plants. Its coloring comes from chlorophyll.
- Yellow Chartreuse (40% or 43%), which has a milder and sweeter flavor and aroma.
Other kinds of Chartreuse include:
- Chartreuse VEP (Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolongé) is made using the same processes and the same secret formula as the traditional liqueur, and by extra long ageing in oak casks it reaches an exceptional quality. Chartreuse VEP comes in both yellow and green.
- Elixir Végétal de la Grande-Chartreuse (142° proof or 71%). The Herbal Elixir gets its unique flavour from 130 medicinal and aromatic plants and flowers. It is a cordial, a liqueur and a very effective tonic.
[edit] History
According to tradition, in 1605 a marshal of artillery to French king Henri IV, François Hannibal d'Estrées, presented the Carthusian monks at Vauvert, near Paris, with a manuscript that contained a complicated recipe for an "elixir of long life". The recipe eventually reached the religious order's headquarters at the Grande Chartreuse monastery, in Voiron, near Grenoble. It has since then been used to produce the "Elixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse". The formula is said to call for 130 herbs, flowers, and secret ingredients combined in a wine alcohol base. The monks intended their liqueur to be used as medicine. The recipe was further enhanced in 1737 by Brother Gérome Maubec.
The beverage became popular quickly, and in 1764 the monks adapted the elixir recipe to make what is now called Green Chartreuse. In 1793, the monks were expelled from France and this resulted in the interruption of the manufacture of Chartreuse. Several years later they were allowed to return to their monastery. In 1838, the monks developed a sweeter, 40% alcoholic (80° proof) liqueur, colored with saffron and sold as Yellow Chartreuse. The monks were again expelled from the monastery by French law in 1903, and their real property, including the distillery, was confiscated by the government.
The monks, however, spirited away the recipe for Chartreuse. Finding refuge in Tarragona, Spain, they began producing the liqueur in that location, with the same label, but with an additional label added which said Liqueur fabriquée à Tarragone par les Pères Chartreux ("liquor manufactured in Tarragona by the Carthusian Fathers").
At the same time in Voiron, the French government tried and failed repeatedly to reproduce the recipe. The venture was a disaster. By 1927 the production company was facing bankruptcy, and its shares became nearly worthless. A group of local businessmen in Voiron bought all the shares at this low price, and sent them as a gift to the monks in Tarragona.
Being now again in possession of the distillery, the Carthusian brothers returned to the monastery with the tacit approval of the French government, and began to produce Chartreuse once again. Despite the eviction law, when a mudslide destroyed the distillery in 1935, the French government assigned Army engineers to relocate and rebuild it near a location in Voiron where the monks had previously set up a distribution point. After World War II, the government lifted the expulsion order, making the Carthusian brothers once again legal French residents.
Today the liqueurs are produced in Voiron using the herbal mixture prepared by three monks at the Grande Chartreuse. Other related alcoholic beverages are manufactured in the same distillery (e.g. Génépi). The exact recipes for all forms of Chartreuse remain trade secrets and are known at any given time only to the three monks who prepare the herbal mixture. The herb hyssop is one of the most obvious major constituents of the flavour.
[edit] In literature
In the short story "Reginald on Christmas Presents" (contained in the 1904 collection Reginald by Edwardian English author Saki), the title character declares that "people may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die."
In the Poppy Z. Brite novel Lost Souls, a band of vampire revellers drank Chartreuse for its potency and characteristic green colour.
Hunter S. Thompson mentions green Chartreuse in several of the stories collected in Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. Curiously, the characters seem to be drawn to it in moments of great desperation shortly before death.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby shares a bottle of Chartreuse with Nick, the narrator.
In Evelyn Waugh's famous novel Brideshead Revisited, Anthony and the narrator Charles Ryder drink Chartreuse after dinner. Anthony muses that it's "Real G-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks. There are five distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It is like swallowing a sp-spectrum."
Rubén Darío speaks of Chartreuse in his Parisian Story The Nymph. ¨It was the hour of Chartreuse,¨ he says, ¨...of the liquid emeralds of mint.
Chartreuse is mentioned in the Tom Waits song "'Til the Money Runs Out" (off of the album Heartattack and Vine) with the lyric, 'with a pint of green chartruse ain't nothin' seems right'.
[edit] References
- Harold J. Grossman and Harriet Lembeck, Grossman's Guide to Wines, Beers and Spirits (6th edition). Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1977, pp. 378-9. ISBN 0-684-15033-6
