In Born to Run, In Bruce Springsteen's celebrated autobiography, the rock singer stated: “I was starting to drink, so I took everything I could get my hands on. We were a little hooked on green Chartreuse. “It was pretty fun.” That yellowish green that pales beautifully in the glass fascinated even characters of the etylic stature of Jay Gatsby, in whose story written by FS Fitzgerald we read: “… we arrived at Gatsby's apartment, a bedroom and a bathroom and an Adam-style study , where we sat and drank a glass of some Chartreuse that he pulled out of a cabinet on the wall.”
The detail of keeping the bottle in a closet may help to recognize the value given to a liquor whose sudden shortage in the United States has become a drama in cocktail bars in New York, Seattle or Michigan, where it is used in cocktails such as Strawberry Brava, Last Word or Sammy's Paradise.
What is the reason for the scarcity of this liquor with extraordinary properties (febrile, spirituous, digestive), based on a secret recipe of 130 botanical ingredients entrusted to the monks in 1605, coming from an ancient manuscript about an “elixir of long life?” ” and produced under the protection of the Isère mountains (France) by the order of Carthusian monks since the 18th century? The answer is easy: the Carthusian monks have refused to increase production, turning a deaf ear to the growing demand.
In a world governed by economic profitability, it is difficult to understand that someone is moved by emotional profitability, but the monks of Chartreuse have put on the brakes to remain faithful to their motto: “The world turns, the cross remains still.” “Growth for growth's sake does not make sense for us,” Emmanuel Delafon, president of Chartreuse Diffusion, stated in the French press. “You can't make that much Chartreuse without ruining the balance of monastic life,” the Rev. Michael K. Holleran, a former monk who oversaw the liquor's production from 1986 to 1990, said in an article published in Terre de Vins. On the other hand, Climate change makes it increasingly complex to obtain the necessary quantities of all plants. Even in the Caves de la Chartreuse, in Voiron, where it is made, and in the surrounding villages, where the consumption of this rooted and popular drink is common, sales have been rationed.
A few months ago, an article in The New York Times focused on the attitude of Mr. Joshua Lutz, a health technology professional based in Huntington Woods (Michigan) who has loved (and needed) liquor for more than 20 years, because, aware that finding a bottle was increasingly more complicated, he had begun to tour the country and travel outside of it in search of Chartreuse.
During the pandemic, when every neighbor's child became a professional mixologist in their kitchen, liquor consumption skyrocketed in the United States to such an extent that, according to Chartreuse Diffusion, sales worth $30 million were reached.
To imagine Mr. Lutz from store to store or to get an idea of America's devotion to this drink, it would be enough to review that scene from Inglourious Basterds in which Tarantino gathers his friends around a bar table to buy them shots. of chartreuse with an incontestable intensity and interest. Tom Waits names the liquor in his song Til the Money Runs Out, Frank Zappa did the same in his Fifty-Fifty and that very peculiar group called ZZ Top directly dedicated a song to him that begins like this: “Chartreuse you got the color that turns me loose” (you have a color that drives me crazy) and with a title that could not be more explicit: Chartreuse.
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