By Gus Vahlkamp (From Issue 7)

When I was younger I believed that the best way to familiarize myself with the features and benefits of any given alcoholic beverage was to keep detailed notes of every drop that passed my lips. Somewhere among the detritus of my career are interred the illegible fruits of my labor: notebooks, cocktail napkins and other fusty ephemera, bearing the names and vitals of this wine or that beer, this spirit or that cocktail recipe, and the obligatory terse criticism which I’m sure I thought was clever at the time.

I’m not a census-taker anymore, at least not boozewise. Where I used to be the guy in the forest counting every tree, now I sit by the river and wait for what it brings me. Mystery, as it turns out, is way more fun than fact.

Of all commercially available spirits, no more profound mystery exists than Chartreuse. My own introduction to it, about 15 years ago, was innocently lowbrow: a friend and I drained a couple shots of it before a freakishly cold April baseball game. I don’t remember the outcome of the game, but I will never forget the herbaceous, almost astringent sweetness of the Chartreuse, or the restorative warmth that spread outward from my belly to my fingers and toes. I shivered through my share of frigid evenings at Candlestick Park, but not that night. Mystery, indeed.

In 1605, the Marechal d’Estrees delivered to the Carthusian Fathers in Paris a manuscript of unknown provenance, which listed the ingredients for an “Elixir of Long Life.” At the time, the Carthusian Order was renowned for its ironwork. The Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, in the Franco-Alpine wilderness above Grenoble, operated eleven blast furnaces at the peak of its productivity. However, stiff competition for the necessary metallurgical resources eventually forced the monks to consider other means of subsistence, and in 1737, Brother Jerome Maubec, the apothecary of the Grande Chartreuse, developed from the original manuscript the practical formula for distilling the elixir, a recipe which is still in use today.

Only one copy of the formula is known to have been made, in 1793. The monks were dispersed by the French Revolution, distillation was halted, and the recipe made its way into the hands of a lay person, a pharmacist in Grenoble who never reproduced the elixir. The manuscript was returned to the monks after his death in the early 19th century. And the elixir has been produced continuously by the monks of the Grande Chartreuse ever since – except for a brief period after the Carthusians were expelled from France (again) in 1903 and set up a distillery in Tarragona, Spain. In 1935 the production facility was moved to the town of Voiron and since 1970 a company called Chartreuse Diffusion has handled the packaging, marketing and selling of the products.

Herein lies the mystery: only three Carthusian monks at any given time know what is in Chartreuse and how it is distilled. Other monks at the monastery may assist in gathering and preparing some of the raw ingredients, but since their monastic vows prevent them from talking to each other or to anyone else, the formula remains a secret. The original manuscript apparently calls for 130 different herbs and spices, which are macerated in alcohol to extract their essential characters and then distilled in small copper-pot stills. Distilled honey and “golden syrup” are added to the finished product before it is racked into massive wooden casks. Some of the barrels are well into their second century, evidenced by thick greenish-black gunk slowly crystallizing on their outer staves.

The Herbal Elixir of the Grande Chartreuse is the original product, and it is still created in exactly the same manner as it was 250 years ago, with the addition of a minor labeling caveat: it lists sesame seed as an ingredient. Even the monks of La Grande Chartreuse are not immune from lawsuits filed by allergy sufferers. We can logically assume, then, that peanuts and shellfish are not among the secret ingredients. Other than that, it’s anyone’s guess.

Should you be lucky enough to visit the distillery in Voiron, you will see video of monks unloading large, green and yellow burlap sacks of ingredients from the back of a truck. The color code is the only outward indication of what may or may not be in the distillate, and no one has yet been able to explain scientifically how the monks are able to maintain the vibrant color of their products without adding artificial agents.

The Herbal Elixir is not available in America, because it is 71 per cent alcohol (142 proof ), and at that degree of alcoholic strength, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires a label listing all ingredients, which the monks of course will not do. It is bottled in small (10-centiliter) glass flasks, which themselves are encased in sealed wooden cylinders that protect the liquid from light. It’s probably an unintended consequence, but the relatively small size and secure packaging of the elixir might also facilitate its transatlantic smuggling. I would never do such a thing, but if I did, I would stow the contraband in my checked baggage.

The Herbal Elixir is the mother spirit. Through further dilution and sweetening, the monks obtain from it both of the liqueurs (green and yellow) that have been on the market in the US for decades. Each of the liqueurs is produced in one of two grades: a simpler and more widely available regular bottling, and the higher-quality, barrique-aged V.E.P. (Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolonge). The V.E.P. is produced in tiny quantities and has been known to disappear from the American market from time to time. The V.E.P. is to the regular bottling what 20 year-old, single malt Scotch is to Johnny Walker: not necessarily stronger, but more refined, complex and rhapsodic. It’s also considerably more expensive.

In addition to the elixir and both of the liqueurs, the monks bottle a number of other products, none of which are exported to the U.S., unfortunately. Three of them are commemorative liqueurs similar in style to the originals: Liqueur du 9ème Centenaire (created in 1984 upon the 900th anniversary of the founding of the order), Chartreuse 1605 (a stronger and more medicinal green spirit that replicates the initial liqueur), and another yellow one, slightly bitter, commissioned by Les Ouvriers des Sommeliers, the fraternal organization of French wine professionals. Four different fruit liqueurs are made from seasonal local berries: Mure Sauvage (wild blackberry), Cassis (black currant), Myrtille (huckleberry), and Framboise (raspberry). And, finally, the distillery also produces two versions of an Alpine liqueur made from what the mountain people call “genepi,” a generic term for various species of high-altitude aromatic plants. The genepi products have more in common with lighter styles of Italian amaro (they are more bitter than sweet, more woodsy than herbal), and have become quite popular among skiers, who take it in shots as a tonic against the cold.

Ultimately, the greatest testament to the mystery in the Elixir of Long Life can be found in the tasting room at the distillery in Voiron. Along one wall is a glass display case about eight feet wide and three shelves deep, where the monks and their business partners have collected as many of the counterfeit versions of Chartreuse as they have been able to find, dozens of different bottles from five inhabited continents, some of them over a hundred years old. What other beverage has spawned so many pretenders, and by extension so much flattery? Even if we knew what was in it and how it was made, because of its colorful history Chartreuse would still rank as the most authentic and alchemical of Old World potables. But we don’t. To taste Chartreuse is to consider the unknown. It is the flavor of faith.