A Liqueur, a Color, and a Hermit Order’s Major Source of Income

Chartreuse is a luxury liqueur produced by the Carthusians, a strict contemplative order of hermits founded by Saint Bruno, whose feast is today, October 6. Chartreuse Verte, a shimmering green liqueur created by the Carthusians with 130 herbs, plants and flowers, gives its name to a distinctive Spring-green color that is an equal mixture of green and yellow. The liqueur is paradoxically associated both with luxury and with holiness.

First, some examples of the luxury. On the night the Titanic sunk in 1912, a Chartreuse-based dessert was on the First Class menu. 

In Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, the narrator, drinks Chartreuse with decadent Anthony Blanche, who savors the liqueur with these words, “Real g-g-green Chartreuse, made before the expulsion of the monks. There are five distinct tastes as it trickles over the tongue. It is like swallowing a sp-spectrum.”

Russian Tsar Nicolas II insisted that a bottle of Chartreuse always be on his table.

Now for the holiness. The liqueur is named after the Carthusian monks' Grande Chartreuse monastery, located in the Chartreuse Mountains in France. Anthony Blanche's remarks in Brideshead refers to a perceived difference between the make-up of the liqueur from before  the expulsion of the monks by the French government in 1903 and after their return from Spain in 1940, when they resumed production.

In 1903, the Carthusian monks of Grande Chartreuse were forcibly removed from their monastery by the military and expelled from France.

Saint Bruno’s hermit life attracted followers into what eventually became the Carthusian order. He established the first charterhouse in 1082. (Charterhouse is an English corruption of Chartreuse.) Carthusians consecrate their lives entirely to pray and seek God. They intercede for the Church and for the salvation of the world.

St. Bruno, Founder Statue at St. Peter's Rome by Michelangelo Slodtz (1744). Text on statue Pedestal - S. BRUNO FUNDATOR / ORDINIS CARTUSIENSIS

The 2005 documentary Into Great Silence gave the world unprecedented views of their life.

Today, a few of the monks who were trained by their predecessors select, crush, and mix the secret herbs, plants and other botanicals used in producing the liqueur. Each monk only knows a portion of the recipe.

The large proceeds from the liqueur's sales provide the Carthusians the means to pursue their lives of intercessory prayer. After assisting to pay for the maintenance of the various charterhouses and the building of new ones, the rest of the income from the liqueur is devoted to works of charity.

Dom Benedict, on of the few people in the world who know the recipe for Chartreuse Verte