Once upon a time, many years ago, I was working in a bar in rural Ireland. I was 16 or 17, I was alone in the place, it was a slow afternoon, I was crouched down, putting bottles on shelves, idly wondering what the strongest drink - highest ABV - in this place was. Most spirits were about 40%, many less, some slightly more. At that moment I happened to look up and I swear a beam of sunshine at that moment lit on a bottle of green chartreuse above my head, highlighting the “55% ABV” on the label. In my memory, music also chimed. I just had to taste this stuff, so I poured a tiny drop into a glass. O. M. G. It. Was. _Vile_. To this day, it is my benchmark for how bad something tastes.
In fairness, I thought the same thing about most types of beer at that age. If you like cocktails and interesting flavors, Chartreuse is genuinely excellent and beloved by bartenders. There are bars that have drink programs that specialize in it, and this has been a thing since far before the shortage.
A few years ago there was a headline about how the monks who make chartreuse are going to spend more of their time on monastic pursuits and we're going to run out of chartreuse. Well, that's how many secondary articles described https://www.wsj.com/articles/chartreuse-craft-cocktails-liqu...
As a highly-intelligent anti-consumerist well aware of marketing materials and yellow journalism and also a very skilled reader of text who never makes decisions based on headlines, I scrambled to get a bottle of yellow chartreuse and one of green chartreuse. Never having had them as they are, I have to say they're quite enjoyable liqueurs on their own. Good fun.
After having bought the bottles and when the scramble was no longer necessary, I sat down to look at what the news actually said and found that all they said was that they aren't expanding production. Good show.
We have a small bar in Aarhus, Denmark called Lecoq that, for some years at least, was the bar in the world that sold most bottles of Chartreuse. I should make sure to stop by again soon.
… and has a sufficiently long history that it became the name for a color as long ago as the 1880s. Pretty sure it’s the only drink that has a CSS standard color name derived from it (burgundy isn’t in the list).
(Now I want someone to come on and argue that papayawhip and chocolate are actually derived from colors of liqueurs)
You're hitting on the main point of the article. It has been historically niche (limited supply, specialized use, intense/complex flavor) and recently expanded in popularity to transcend that niche status.
Once upon a time, many years ago, I was working in a bar in rural Ireland. I was 16 or 17, I was alone in the place, it was a slow afternoon, I was crouched down, putting bottles on shelves, idly wondering what the strongest drink - highest ABV - in this place was. Most spirits were about 40%, many less, some slightly more. At that moment I happened to look up and I swear a beam of sunshine at that moment lit on a bottle of green chartreuse above my head, highlighting the “55% ABV” on the label. In my memory, music also chimed. I just had to taste this stuff, so I poured a tiny drop into a glass. O. M. G. It. Was. _Vile_. To this day, it is my benchmark for how bad something tastes.
In fairness, I thought the same thing about most types of beer at that age. If you like cocktails and interesting flavors, Chartreuse is genuinely excellent and beloved by bartenders. There are bars that have drink programs that specialize in it, and this has been a thing since far before the shortage.
A few years ago there was a headline about how the monks who make chartreuse are going to spend more of their time on monastic pursuits and we're going to run out of chartreuse. Well, that's how many secondary articles described https://www.wsj.com/articles/chartreuse-craft-cocktails-liqu...
As a highly-intelligent anti-consumerist well aware of marketing materials and yellow journalism and also a very skilled reader of text who never makes decisions based on headlines, I scrambled to get a bottle of yellow chartreuse and one of green chartreuse. Never having had them as they are, I have to say they're quite enjoyable liqueurs on their own. Good fun.
After having bought the bottles and when the scramble was no longer necessary, I sat down to look at what the news actually said and found that all they said was that they aren't expanding production. Good show.
We have a small bar in Aarhus, Denmark called Lecoq that, for some years at least, was the bar in the world that sold most bottles of Chartreuse. I should make sure to stop by again soon.
It's not just the French! I'm obsessed with it too. It's fantastic.
How can they call Chartreuse 'niche'? It's one of the most popular cocktail ingredients in recent times.
… and has a sufficiently long history that it became the name for a color as long ago as the 1880s. Pretty sure it’s the only drink that has a CSS standard color name derived from it (burgundy isn’t in the list).
(Now I want someone to come on and argue that papayawhip and chocolate are actually derived from colors of liqueurs)
You're hitting on the main point of the article. It has been historically niche (limited supply, specialized use, intense/complex flavor) and recently expanded in popularity to transcend that niche status.
Bad title I guess.
Makes me think of Benedictine, which I kind of forgot about for a while now. Nice stuff. Now owned by Bacardi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9n%C3%A9dictine
saved you a click: It's Chartreuse