Chartreuse fascinated me long before my foray into classic and vintage cocktails. At my favorite liquor store, the green elixir would stare down at me in a lonely fashion, awkwardly surrounded by grappas to the left of it, fruit brandies to the right of it, and it, stuck in the middle with me. But, at $42 a bottle, I couldn’t justify the expense lest it taste of raspberry and ketchup and I get stuck holding the bag (note to self, generally recipes that have survived for 400+ years don’t taste of ass…). Fortunately, my wife in her telepathic wonderfulness (ok, I may have dropped a few whine-intoned hints) wrapped a bottle for Christmas and made this cocktail nerd a very happy man. 

That evening, upon opening the bottle, I was astounded at the smell; with very strong and complex herbal tones of, well, just about everything (130 ingredients indeed!), I had just never smelled anything like it. ‘I simply must drink this now‘, I thought. But, given the in-laws still hanging around, the kids still opening presents, and it being 10am I thought the better of it. So, anxiously awaiting the witching hour of 4:30pm (my personal mark for when it’s acceptable to begin ‘hitting it’) I researched it instead.

So, a short detour; originally intended as a medicine (just like Campari during prohibition!), Chartreuse is purported to have been presented to Carthusian monks in France around 1605 as an ‘elixir of long life’ and had somewhere on the order of 130 ingredients (mostly herbal) with a wine alcohol base. The recipe was slightly modified in the mid-18th century to create the widely known ‘Green Chartreuse’ and became very popular. Soon after, the monks were expelled from France for a short time, and then allowed back in. A hundred years or so went by during which the monks developed a sweeter and less-proofy version of Chartreuse which became known as ‘Yellow Chartreuse’. The French government, not learning from their earlier mistakes seized the monastery in 1903, the monks were expelled again, and this time they left for Spain and began creating the elixirs there. The French government attempted to produce the liqueurs from 1903 to 1927 and failed miserably, nearly bankrupting the production company.  Local businessmen purchased all of the devalued shares and presented them as a gift to the expatriated monks in Spain, who quickly returned to the distellery to resume production only to have a mudslide destroy the distellery in 1935. The government rebuilt the distellery, allowed the monks to regain full citizenship, and it’s been produced to this day with only three monks knowing the full recipe and production process at any given time¹.

I stared at the bottle, a newfound respect upon me (and an understanding of the price tag for this stuff – it reads like an Updike story). So hell, it’s Christmas, it’s 4:00, let’s do this thing! Finding a recipe using Chartreuse proved harder than I imagined (this, before I began my deep research into true cocktails) and I found this recipe in ’The Bartender’s Black Book, Eighth Ed.‘.

Green Dragon

• 2 oz Vodka
• 1 oz Green Chartreuse

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Hmmmm, nice because it definitely shows off the Chartreuse but that’s about all it does. Also, with Green Chartreuse clocking-in at 110-proof, any drink that after one of them makes you wonder about your faculties probably means you’re risking enjoying the rest of your evening. So, I drank these once a week or so until I got through a third of the bottle and then let it sit. It just felt like there could be something so much more to using Chartreuse than this… So, it sat… until I began researching truly classic cocktails and the vintage recipes that kept our forbears company.

Alamagoozlum

Now, I’m not going to provide the recipe for this drink here for two reasons:

1. It deserves its own post and review, being as unusual as it is – so I’ll not spoil it, and
2. I’ve not been able to find it anywhere on the Internet. As you probably know, it’s featured in Ted Haigh’s ‘Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails‘ but usually you’ll find these standard recipes reproduced somewhere. But not this one. So, in the spirit of honoring what may be Dr. Cocktail’s desire, even though the recipe may be public domain, I will reach out to him for permission before reprinting since even his book excerpts (except Amazon’s ‘Search Inside!’ feature), interviews, and other resources don’t list this recipe.

This recipe involves no less than eight ingredients, and astonishingly enough, the Chartreuse just rang through the thing. It’s a very interesting and worthwhile drink for anyone interested in lost cocktails to try but I was truly dismayed that even among such playmates the Green Chartreuse just battled its way through to the tongue. Far less complexity or depth than I was expecting, and given the time-consuming nature of mixing this drink, not something I’ll be trying again soon. It is novel in its design, but not a good cocktail to feature Chartreuse. Damn… hmmmmmmm… and the bottle sat again until the next contestant crossed my path.

The Last Word

• 1 oz Gin
• 1 oz Maraschino
• 1 oz Green Chartreuse
• 1 oz lime juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I was very skeptical of this recipe because while I could see there was a good blend of sweet, tart, and herbal in the drink and while I’m a huge fan of Maraschino and Chartreuse I just didn’t trust that the Chartreuse wouldn’t overpower the thing. But, I fell upon the recipe watching one of Robert Hess’s (aka Drinkboy) online videos and Drinkboy is one of the good ones and I trust him implicitly.

This cocktail is simply amazing and beautifully shows off just how a well-made cocktail is a thing of beauty. After making myself and my wife one, which we both loved, she actually requested one the following day. That is about as high a recommendation as you’re ever going to get regarding a drink on the dry side of the spectrum. The Chartreuse lays behind the Maraschino (another strongly-flavored liqueur) and Gin in a way you wouldn’t expect and given that this has half the ingredients of the Alamagoozlum and it’s a hefty shot of Chartreuse in the mix it’s a more than pleasant surprise. If you’re interested in Chartreuse at all this is a great place to start, or if you have used it but haven’t had this recipe this shows it off beautifully. As the man said, ‘The only liquor so good they named a color after it’.

Prosit!

Green Dragon Rating:

Alamagoozlum Rating:

The Last Word Rating:

1. all historical information gathered from wikipedia.org and confirmed via text sources – any errors or omissions should be forwarded to the editors of wikipedia – that’s a little nerd joke btw [↩]