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.
The pandemic introduced so many weird shifts in demand for so many things, we're still not back at normal.
In this case, I think another factor is that the monastery decided to not ship to countries outside of Europe at all any more, and to reduce volume altogether. That introduced some shortage to panic buying alone, but it also meant that all American supplies had to import indirectly from the EU, which is not a big deal, but takes some time.
We stock Chartreuse at our bar, not easy, and we occasionally have to modulate the cocktails on the menu to slow customers down a bit. The Bay Area itself gets an allocation each month, which is then further allocated to individual establishments.
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.
It's very sweet. The thing here is nobody drinks it straight. Do equal parts Chartreuse, gin, Maraschino, and lemon juice (a Last Word); it's hard to hate, and a good introduction to what Chartreuse is about. My next move would be to put it in a Sazerac.
In fairness, I thought the same thing about most types of beer at that age. If you like cocktails and interesting flavors, Chartreuse is genuinely excellent and beloved by bartenders. There are bars that have drink programs that specialize in it, and this has been a thing since far before the shortage.
Malort tastes like Meyer's lemons (the ones you use to clean things instead of eat) and anise, most people without a strong anise culture would hate it.
Malort tastes like what it is: a cleaning solvent. It's a prank Chicagoans play on tourists. The authentic, artistically coherent version of Malort is Novasalus.
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.
I'm right there with you bud. I just wish it wasn't such a pain to get my hands on a bottle here in Portland so much of the time. So many cocktail nerds to compete with.
Now I want a Last Word, is quarter after two too early for a cocktail?
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.
Yeah you can buy it in pretty much every liquor store on earth, it even comes in those little single-slurp mini bar bottles, in tiny bottle stores in broke ass towns at the edge of the world.
You're hitting on the main point of the article. It has been historically niche (limited supply, specialized use, intense/complex flavor) and recently expanded in popularity to transcend that niche status.
I don't think that's quite it. Chartreuse had its big moment more than a decade ago, and the big story since then was the allocation program the supplier did, which made it scarce. It really was hard to get for a little while.
… and has a sufficiently long history that it became the name for a color as long ago as the 1880s. Pretty sure it’s the only drink that has a CSS standard color name derived from it (burgundy isn’t in the list).
(Now I want someone to come on and argue that papayawhip and chocolate are actually derived from colors of liqueurs)
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]
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.
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.
The pandemic introduced so many weird shifts in demand for so many things, we're still not back at normal.
In this case, I think another factor is that the monastery decided to not ship to countries outside of Europe at all any more, and to reduce volume altogether. That introduced some shortage to panic buying alone, but it also meant that all American supplies had to import indirectly from the EU, which is not a big deal, but takes some time.
Jim Beam even had to halt production due to the oversupply: https://www.fooddive.com/news/jim-beam-pauses-production-ken...
We stock Chartreuse at our bar, not easy, and we occasionally have to modulate the cocktails on the menu to slow customers down a bit. The Bay Area itself gets an allocation each month, which is then further allocated to individual establishments.
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.
It's very sweet. The thing here is nobody drinks it straight. Do equal parts Chartreuse, gin, Maraschino, and lemon juice (a Last Word); it's hard to hate, and a good introduction to what Chartreuse is about. My next move would be to put it in a Sazerac.
In fairness, I thought the same thing about most types of beer at that age. If you like cocktails and interesting flavors, Chartreuse is genuinely excellent and beloved by bartenders. There are bars that have drink programs that specialize in it, and this has been a thing since far before the shortage.
It's definitely strong and has an intense herbal flavor. There are far viler spirits, though (try Suze). Personally I find it an enjoyable sipper!
Malort tastes like Meyer's lemons (the ones you use to clean things instead of eat) and anise, most people without a strong anise culture would hate it.
Malort tastes like what it is: a cleaning solvent. It's a prank Chicagoans play on tourists. The authentic, artistically coherent version of Malort is Novasalus.
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.
It's not just the French! I'm obsessed with it too. It's fantastic.
I'm right there with you bud. I just wish it wasn't such a pain to get my hands on a bottle here in Portland so much of the time. So many cocktail nerds to compete with.
Now I want a Last Word, is quarter after two too early for a cocktail?
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.
Yeah you can buy it in pretty much every liquor store on earth, it even comes in those little single-slurp mini bar bottles, in tiny bottle stores in broke ass towns at the edge of the world.
You're hitting on the main point of the article. It has been historically niche (limited supply, specialized use, intense/complex flavor) and recently expanded in popularity to transcend that niche status.
I don't think that's quite it. Chartreuse had its big moment more than a decade ago, and the big story since then was the allocation program the supplier did, which made it scarce. It really was hard to get for a little while.
Bad title I guess.
… and has a sufficiently long history that it became the name for a color as long ago as the 1880s. Pretty sure it’s the only drink that has a CSS standard color name derived from it (burgundy isn’t in the list).
(Now I want someone to come on and argue that papayawhip and chocolate are actually derived from colors of liqueurs)
How about aqua?
And bisque in a way.
"Craft" cocktails is itself a niche, and I would guess represents a pretty small portion of liquor sales.
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...
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