Five months ago, Joshua Lutz began searching across the United States Chartreuse, a bright green herbal liqueur based on a secret recipe of 130 botanicals and produced in the French Alps by the order of Carthusian monks for more than two centuries.
Lutz, a healthcare technology professional in Huntington Woods, Michigan, has had a love of liquor for more than 20 years — long before it became a must-have item on cocktail lists. But it’s been out of stock for the last year at the local liquor store in Lutz. Now, when he travels for work, he takes a shipping box with him.
“Thes recent times have forced me to accumulate a little“, said.
The stockout isn’t limited to Lutz’s liquor store. While supplies of some spirits have dwindled due to glass shortages and shipping delays, Chartreuse—both the green variety and its milder yellow brother— it has become scarce because the Carthusians have refused to increase production to meet the growing demand.
Long considered the liquor of choice for an older generation, Chartreuse became a favorite of savvy bartenders during the craft cocktail movement of the early 2000s., favored both for the romance of its origin story—the recipe, entrusted to monks in 1605, comes from an ancient manuscript on the “Long Life Elixir”—and for its sweet-and-sour profile and notes of anise, tarragon, and fennel. According to Chartreuse Diffusion, the commercial arm of the monks’ operation, it took the Carthusians more than 150 years to “unravel the secret of the manuscript.”
In 2020, when the pandemic turned many people into home mixologists, sales of Chartreuse in the United States doubled, a pattern seen globally, reports Chartreuse Diffusion. Global sales exceeded $30 million in 2022.
This rise in popularity directly conflicted with a collective decision the monks quietly made in 2019 to limit production of its ingredient-intensive liquor to limit environmental impact and focus on his “main goal” of solitude and prayer, as explained in a letter published in January.
Production currently stands at 1.6 million bottles per year—the highest level since the late 19th century, when the Vatican pointedly reminded the Carthusians that they were monks, not businessmen.
“There is a limit to the Chartreuse you can produce without upsetting the balance of monastic life.said the Rev. Michael K. Holleran, a former monk who oversaw the production of Chartreuse from 1986 to 1990.
BECKY COOPER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6706141, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-10 14:00:07
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