Chartreuse, a case study in how scarcity and authenticity can drive desirability

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was working in a bar in rural Ireland. I was 16 or 17, I was alone in the place, it was a slow afternoon, I was crouched down, putting bottles on shelves, idly wondering what the strongest drink - highest ABV - in this place was. Most spirits were about 40%, many less, some slightly more. At that moment I happened to look up and I swear a beam of sunshine at that moment lit on a bottle of green chartreuse above my head, highlighting the “55% ABV” on the label. In my memory, music also chimed. I just had to taste this stuff, so I poured a tiny drop into a glass. O. M. G. It. Was. _Vile_. To this day, it is my benchmark for how bad something tastes.

A few years ago there was a headline about how the monks who make chartreuse are going to spend more of their time on monastic pursuits and we're going to run out of chartreuse. Well, that's how many secondary articles described https://www.wsj.com/articles/chartreuse-craft-cocktails-liqu...

As a highly-intelligent anti-consumerist well aware of marketing materials and yellow journalism and also a very skilled reader of text who never makes decisions based on headlines, I scrambled to get a bottle of yellow chartreuse and one of green chartreuse. Never having had them as they are, I have to say they're quite enjoyable liqueurs on their own. Good fun.

After having bought the bottles and when the scramble was no longer necessary, I sat down to look at what the news actually said and found that all they said was that they aren't expanding production. Good show.

For a couple years the headline story about Chartreuse was that it was becoming impossible to get (which is annoying because it's an important ingredient in a bunch of super-popular cocktails, most notably the Last Word), owing to the monastery allocation scheme. But last I heard, you can pick up both the Yellow and Green at Binnys, which is the neighborhood liquor store chain in Chicagoland.

The Carthusians make an interesting story, but what I think is the bigger story is the collapse of the liquor market broadly. I think but can't cite sources that what's happened is post-pandemic shifts pushing bars out of business, and bars in turn significantly cutting back orders. Whatever it is, Eagle Rare was supermarket whiskey in 2010, was an back room allocation whiskey in 2021, and is back on the shelves again. Pretty much every whiskey is now gettable in a way it wasn't just a couple years ago.

Hey ! I'm precisely living in the Chartreuse Massif (in the French Alps), and regularly fly over the monks' monastery. Reading about our beloved drink here is fun ! I must say we also were worried when we learnt that they would reduce production (which had not been done in the monastery for a long time now, but in an adjacent city) but we're still able to buy it in our regular stores, so yes if feels like it was a marketing stunt.

It's not just the French! I'm obsessed with it too. It's fantastic.

For the curious, the Chartreuse liquor isn't the original formula, it was developed in the late 1800's, IIRC.

The original "secret elixir of eternal youth" from the crusades era is still available though, it's meant to be consumed as a medicinal tonic with a spoon. It comes in a cool small wooden bottle, I just scored and got three of them at my local Total Wine [3].

Edit: I just realized most probably aren't familiar with the history here. It's a fascinating story that starts with the crusades, involves the monks feeling both France and Spain, smuggling the recipe through prison, etc... [1] [2]

[1] https://www.chartreuse.fr/en/story/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur)

[3] https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/liqueurscordialsschnapps/h...

The Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Chartreuse and a nice documentary on their lives, Into Great Silence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Great_Silence

The full documentary on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8A8aT3eb2s

We have a small bar in Aarhus, Denmark called Lecoq that, for some years at least, was the bar in the world that sold most bottles of Chartreuse. I should make sure to stop by again soon.

How can they call Chartreuse 'niche'? It's one of the most popular cocktail ingredients in recent times.

Makes me think of Benedictine, which I kind of forgot about for a while now. Nice stuff. Now owned by Bacardi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9n%C3%A9dictine

It was only recently when I learned of, and was absolutely fascinated by, Carmelite Water and its derivatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelite_Water

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klosterfrau_Melissengeist

The existence of these tonics is a source of regret, because I have a lifetime vow to abstain from alcohol, but things like this sound absolutely delicious. I think alcohol is often mixed-in to discourage overindulgence, honestly.

saved you a click: It's Chartreuse