My Favorite Lines From the Wikipedia Page On “Chartreuse (liqueur)”
“According to tradition, a marshal of artillery to French king Henry IV, François Hannibal d'Estrées, presented the Carthusian monks at Vauvert, near Paris, with an alchemical manuscript that contained a recipe for an ‘elixir of long life’ in 1605.”
“It is composed of distilled alcohol aged with 130 herbs, plants and flowers.”
“Chartreuse gives its name to the colour chartreuse, which was first used as a term of colour in 1884.”
“It is popular in French ski resorts where it is mixed with hot chocolate and called Green Chaud.”
“The book The Practical Hotel Steward (1900) states that green chartreuse contains ‘cinnamon, mace, lemon balm, dried hyssop flower tops, peppermint, thyme, costmary, arnica flowers, genepi, and angelica roots.’”
“The exact recipes for all forms of Chartreuse remain trade secrets and are known at any given time only to the two monks who prepare the herbal mixture.”
“…all attempts to reproduce real Chartreuse failed.”
“In Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, Anthony Blanche and the narrator Charles Ryder drink Chartreuse after dinner. Anthony muses that it’s ‘Real G-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks. There are five distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It is like swallowing a sp-spectrum.’”
