Chartreuse (liqueur)

Chartreuse is be near Grenoble in France, made ​​the name of several herbal liqueurs that by the Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse ( French La Grande Chartreuse ).

History

1605 gave a nobleman named d' Estrées ( Artillery Marshal of King Henri IV) the Carthusian monks in Vauvert a recipe for " elixir of longevity". The author of the recipe is unknown, maybe it comes from an alchemists of the 16th century. However, it was first forgotten, and only parts of the complicated formula was used. Beginning of the 18th century, the recipe was sent to the mother monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, where it examined the pharmacist 's brother Jérôme Maubec. 1737 he had developed a manufacturing process for the healing potion, which is still made today ( with an alcohol content of 69 % vol. Present) as Elixir Vegetal de la Grande Chartreuse. 1764 was a milder variant added with a lower alcohol content, the well-known today as Chartreuse Verte, green herbal liqueur. The recipe was kept secret, but fell in the years after the French Revolution, as a result of closed the monastery and the monks were expelled, temporarily into the hands of the pharmacist Liotard from Grenoble, which never produced the liqueur.

After the monks had in 1816 returned to the monastery, gave Liotard's heirs back the recipe. 1838, Brother Bruno Jacquet a milder, yellow Chartreuse liqueur ( Chartreuse jaune ); 1840 was followed by a white, however - was produced only until 1900 - with a break 1880-1886. 1860 ( according to other sources 1869) was built for the production of a larger distillery in Fourvoirie (Canton Saint- Laurent- du- Pont). 1903, the production was nationalized and the monks were forced to leave France. As a result, the French government sold the trademark rights for Chartreuse to a private company, the Compagnie Fermière de la Grande Chartreuse. Therefore, the monks built a new distillery in Tarragona, and another in Marseille, where she found her Liqueurs - further manufactured - known at that time as Une Tarragone. The site in Tarragona was only in 1989, closed again, those in Marseille in 1929, when, after the insolvency of the new operators managed the monastery to repurchase distillery and trademark rights and resume production in Fourvoirie again. 1935 destroyed a landslide the distillery. The production was relocated to its present site Voiron. The liqueurs underlying secret essence of herbs and spices, however, allegedly mixed in the mother monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, only two monks still. Supposedly only three monks know the recipe at the same time. Since 1970, the sales company Chartreuse Diffusion takes care of filling, packaging and shipping of liquors.

Products

The various Chartreuse liqueurs made ​​from wine alcohol, sugar and extracts of up to 130 different herbs and spices and mature five to eight years in large oak casks.

Chartreuse now exist in different versions: The most famous are the Chartreuse Jaune and the Chartreuse Verte (the green Chartreuse, with an alcohol content of 55 % vol. ) ( The yellow Chartreuse, with an alcohol content of 40 % vol. ). The taste of the yellow Chartreuse is sweeter and milder than the strong green. In addition, there is also the Élixir végétal with currently 69 % vol. ( a few years ago 71%), an anniversary version called 9 ° Centenaire of 1984 ( when the Great Charterhouse was 900 years old) with 47 % vol. and a very long mature VEP output from yellow (42 % vol ) and green (54 % vol ), which are delivered each with a serial number in a wooden box.

Sales in Germany via the Borco- Marken-Import GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Hamburg.

Others

In the 1950s and 1960s was the Chartreuse, alongside, among others, the Escorial Green, a popular party drink. Because of the great popularity it came even to the composition of the hit song " Carthusian Knickebein Shake", which, sung by Lutz Jahoda, 1963, first appeared in the GDR, a year later, also in the FRG in a recording with Will fire.

On the Bar Convent Berlin Chartreuse Verte (green) was awarded Spirit of the Year 2007 by a jury of the journal Mixology.

The Chartreuse liqueurs are drunk neat or on ice as a digestif or as a long drink with juices or tonic. Known cocktails Chartreuse are Alaska (gin, Chartreuse Jaune, orange bitters ), Widow's Kiss ( Calvados, Chartreuse Jaune, Benedictine, Angostura Bitters ), Bijou (gin, Chartreuse Verte, Vermouth Dry, orange bitters ) and Last Word (gin, Chartreuse Verte, maraschino, lime juice ).