Chartreuse (US: /ʃɑːrˈtruːz, -ˈtruːs/ ⓘ, UK: /-ˈtrɜːz/, French: [ʃaʁtʁøz]) is a French herbal liqueur that has been made by Carthusian monks since 1737, reportedly according to instructions set out in a manuscript given to them by François Annibal d’Estrées in 1605.[1] It was named after the monks’ Grande Chartreuse monastery, located in the Chartreuse Mountains north of Grenoble, France. Today the liqueur is produced in their distillery in nearby Aiguenoire. It is composed of distilled alcohol aged with 130 herbs, plants and flowers, and sweetened, though the exact recipe is known only to select monks. The color chartreuse takes its name from the drink.
The story of the liqueur is fascinating.
To start the original manuscript was an alchemist recipe for the elixir of life, it might have been brought back from Constantinople by one of François Annibal d’Estrées ancestor.
Since it seems valuable but he couldn’t do anything with it, he brought it to the best herbalists he knew: the cartusian monks.
The monks worked on it for a while but it’s only in 1755 that he brother Jerome Maubec managed to refine the recipe to create the first chartreuse “Elixir de Santé”. The recipe was written down in a manuscript and kept secret at all cost.
A lot of events happened after that, the monk got expelled and the monastery was seized by the French revolutionaries. They came back few decades later. They created the brand “Chartreuse” in 1840.
In 1903 the monastery and the brand “Chartreuse” was seized by the French government and the monks expelled once again. This time the monks saw the wind turn in advance and moved all the production equipment in Spain to protect it and started the production there. From 1903 the Chartreuse was produced in Tarragona (Spain) by the monk.
At this period the recognition of the liquor grew internationally. In 1925 it appears in the novel “The Magnificent Gatsby”.
The monks finally regains the brand after decades of trials and the right to move back their monasteries.
In 1935 a landslide destroyed their facilities at “la Fourvoirie”. They saved what they could and moved everything to Voiron, to be close to a train station for logistic. (I have a picture of my great grandfather supervising the transportation of the barrels after the landslide, I can share it if I manage to find it again).
They moved the distillery to Aiguenoire in 2018.
The monks created a company that produce the chartreuse, all the technical steps (bottling, labeling …) are done by this company under the monks supervision but the recipe is still kept secret and only a few monks have access to it. So, despite the million of bottles produced every year, the critical steps of the recipe, the mix of plants, are still done by the monks themselves in secret.
Chartreuse can be hard to find in the US right now since it grew in popularity since the early 2010s but the monks don’t want to increase production. From what I understand their mindset is that there is no point of increasing the production for a trend that might be gone in a few decades.
Super interesting! Have you tasted it; can you describe the flavor?
English isn’t my first language so it’s hard to find the word to describe it.
It’s definitely a unique drink, very herbal. The green is not on the herbal side, the yellow a bit more on the spices like vanilla, liquorice.
The best way to drink it is to slowly sip it in a wide glass. Like a perfume, the flavor profile change with time. So the first sip will not taste the same as the second sip.
I sometime “forgot” a glass for an hour and two and when I came back it was a completely different drink, sill as delicious as the beginning.
Floral, herbal, incredibly rich. There’s nothing quite like it. Definitely one of my fav liquors. Green moreso than yellow and VEP moreso than either.
I have a bottle at home since i got from relatives that live close to the region. Its a unique flavor that resembles tea and liquorice maybe… Hard to describe but you can tell it’s a mix of lots of herbs.
Thanks for that!
Thanks for sharing!