• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the wake of the French Revolution, members of religious orders were forced into exile. The Carthusians fled in 1793, after making a copy of the manuscript and entrusting that copy to one monk, who was allowed to remain in the monastery, and the original to a second monk, who was eventually arrested by the authorities and sent to prison in Bordeaux. Miraculously, he was not searched and managed to pass the manuscript along to a supporter, who smuggled it back to Chartreuse to a third monk, who was hiding near the monastery. Convinced that the order was finished, this monk sold the manuscript to a pharmacist in Grenoble, who was unable to understand the complex recipe. When Napoleon issued an order that all medical formulas be sent to the minister of the interior, the pharmacist obliged. The recipe was promptly rejected and sent back to him. When he died, his heirs donated the manuscript to the monks, who had returned to the monastery in 1816.

The Chartreuse monks might have hoped that history had finally passed them by, until, in 1903, the French government nationalized the distillery, once again expelling the monks, who repaired to Spain with their precious manuscript. They built a new distillery in Tarragona, and another in Marseille, both of which continued to produce the genuine Chartreuse. The government, meanwhile, sold the Chartreuse trademark to a group of distillers, who marketed a beverage that bore no relation to the original, and who went bankrupt in 1929. Shares of the now worthless stock were bought up by friends of the order and presented to the monks, who thereby regained possession of the Chartreuse trademark. No sooner had they returned to their monastery, however, than an avalanche roared down the mountainside and destroyed the distillery. A new distillery was built in nearby Voiron, although the selection and blending of the herbs and botanicals is still performed at the monastery by three monks entrusted with the secret recipe.

Chartreuse has inspired a cult of secular devotees over the centuries. Its mystique was probably sealed early in the past century with the endorsement of the ultimate host, Jay Gatsby, who, according to his biographer, Nick Carraway, served the drink at his glittering parties on Long Island. I find it stimulating to contemplate this history while passing a glass of Chartreuse under my nose; the survival of the recipe, with its obscure origins, seems nothing short of miraculous. Equally stimulating are the aromas from the glass, which provide endless opportunities for speculation—one of the reasons that Chartreuse is of interest to wine geeks like myself. The most prominent feature is the anise/fennel/licorice note. Dozens of other nuances tease you as they evanesce on the alcoholic vapors. More than 130 varieties of roots and leaves are allegedly involved in Chartreuse’s production (including, according to rumor, wormwood, the active ingredient in absinthe).

My friend Jim Signorelli, a Chartreuse aficionado and movie director, suggests that it’s enough just to smell the stuff. Hunter S. Thompson, another Chartreuse devotee, presumably swallowed. Alice Waters, also a fan, can probably parse out more of the herbal aromatics than most of us. Three kinds of Chartreuse are currently produced. Green Chartreuse, the standard, was first adapted from the original recipe in 1764 and weighs in at 55 percent alcohol, slightly mellower than the original elixir of life, which was 71 percent. Milder still is yellow Chartreuse, at 40 percent, first distilled in 1838. A small portion of production is selected for extra aging in wood and is sold in reproductions of the nineteenth-century bottles as VEP (Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolongó) Chartreuse. Chartreuse benefits from aging. It is possible, especially in France, to find dated bottlings from the distillery in Tarragona, which finally closed in 1989.

Aficionados ascribe various curative properties to the liqueur, which was