Chartreuse is a French monastic herbal liqueur produced in Aiguenoire, in the Chartreuse Mountains, under the supervision of Carthusian monks—although most employees of the distillery are laypeople. There are two main styles, green Chartreuse and yellow Chartreuse. Both are based on a mix of 130 botanicals. The liqueurs are distilled, sweetened, and naturally colored according to a secret formula known only to a handful of monks. They are also aged for an undetermined amount of time.
According to brand lore, a French nobleman, François-Annibal d’Estrées, bequeathed the formula for a “long life” elixir to the Carthusian order in 1605. Known today as the Elixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse, it has been sold by the order at least since 1764. This elixir, intense and medicinal, inspired the monks to create a more pleasant liqueur, first sold in 1840. It became known as the green Chartreuse. The yellow version, sweeter and lower in alcohol (43°, compared to 55° for green Chartreuse), quickly followed. A white Chartreuse was also available until the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1960s Chartreuse has produced extra-aged expressions of both liqueurs, called VEP (for “vieillissement exceptionnellement prolongé,” or “exceptionally long aging”). This main range coexists with numerous limited or special editions.
Although Chartreuse has been produced in the foothills of the French Alps for most of its history, a conflict between the French state and the Catholic Church saw the Carthusian order expelled from France in 1903. They relaunched production in Tarragona, Spain, where they kept a distillery until 1989. They were first allowed back in France to open a distillery in Marseille in 1921, but only in 1932 were they able to resettle their operation in the Chartreuse Mountains. Since 2018, Chartreuse has been produced at a new distillery in Aiguenoire.
Both styles of Chartreuse are mostly drunk straight, as a digestive. Locally, yellow and green Chartreuse are sometimes mixed in a drink called an Episcopale. The liqueurs don’t appear in cocktail books until the 1880s, when authors such as Harry Johnson or George Kappeler called for them in recipes such as the Bijou or the Widow’s Kiss (although a “Punch Chartreuse,” with the liqueur mixed with cold tea and sugar, appears in a French punch book in 1866, as a drink popular in Lyon). See Bijou and Widow’s Kiss. Their striking colors also made them popular choices for layered Pousse Cafés. See Pousse Café. But Chartreuse’s cocktail golden age has undeniably been the cocktail renaissance. Spurred by Murray Stenson’s rediscovery of the Last Word, bartenders have increasingly turned to these monastic liqueurs for inspiration. See Last Word and Stenson, Murray. Marcovaldo Dionysos’s green Chartreuse–based Chartreuse Swizzle and Joaquin Simo’s Naked and Famous, featuring the yellow version, have become modern classics. Chartreuse was born as a “long life” elixir. It’s quite fitting that it probably has never been more popular than it is now, in its fifth century.
Galiano, Martine, et al. Chartreuse: La Liqueur. Voiron, France: Chartreuse, 2019.
Turenne [pseud.]. La véritable manière de faire le Punch. Paris: 1866.
François Monti