A Green With Some Integrity

 

As an intellectual vibration smack dab in the middle of spectrum, Green can be a problem. That’s because there’s so many different greens inside of Green and each one has a different IQ. There’s the green that should never have happened: the “stupid green.” The green that is “green with envy.” Then there’s the “so-so green,” the “who-cares-anyway?” green.

But somewhere in Green is a green here and there that has something to say; a truly intelligent green, a green with some integrity.

That’s the kind of green for you and me. There’s a green to be seen with: vivid, vibrant, living alive! We should spend the better part of our time, yours and mine, with a green like this. Maybe some of it would rub off.

— Ken Nordine, “Green,” from Colors

 

In just a few short weeks, the time this issue hangs around the newsstands, we’ll have fully shifted from the Botanical seasons to the Meteorological one. Mother Nature will no longer show off Her handiwork or mark the passage of time by the fruits of the earth — from strawberries to blueberries to apples, etc. — but will flex Her muscles with wind and blizzard and bone-chilling cold and dark. 

Soon there won’t be a lick of green outside the window. If the Drinking Man is to get his fill — his chlorophyll — he’ll have to turn elsewhere. Midori and Apple Pucker and the other not-found-in-nature shades simply won’t do. (I said chlorophyll not chloroform.) No, we must go supernatural if we’re to rage, rage against the dying of the green and temper Mother Nature’s fickle bitchiness.

What we need are some monks, some really strict monks, the kind of monks with hoods and vows of silence and a secret formula that makes a concoction so green that people who deal in green would want to name a green after it — “a green with some integrity.”

What we need is some Chartreuse!

The Carthusian Order was founded by Father Bruno of Cologne in 1084, and is easily the strictest in the whole of Christendom. The order’s three main tenets, Separation from the World, Inner Solitude and Solitude of the Heart, plus their vowed silence, make them one of the most fascinating yet least understood bunches of monks you can imagine. Luckily for us, a German filmmaker was able to gain access to the Grand Chartreuse monastery near Grenoble, France and capture glimpses of their unique life. Into Great Silence is shot entirely in the natural light of the monastery. The film often has the gorgeous look of a Vermeer painting, which is a godsend since, as you’d expect, there’s not a lot of dialogue.

In 1605, the order received a manuscript containing a recipe for an “elixir of long life.” It was complicated. It had 130 herbs, botanicals and other ingredients, and there weren’t a lot of details concerning procedures. It would take more than 100 years before Brother Gérome Maubec deciphered and modified the recipe to produce something similar to what we have today. To this day, only three of the monastery’s brothers know the secret combination of botanicals that make up Chartreuse. They blend and grind them and ship them to another set of brothers at the production facility down the road in Voiron. The French government, you see, so loved the Carthusians that it built them a distillery near the railroad spur.

Actually, that’s only part of the story. In 1903, the government outlawed the Carthusians, who exiled themselves over the border in Spain, where they continued to produce their liqueur. Meanwhile, the French government began producing and selling its own version of Chartreuse, but without success. In 1927 a group of investors bought the ailing company and sent the shares to the Carthusians. Secretly, or at least without any further molestation, the monks took over the government’s operation in Voiron. A mudslide in 1935 wiped out that distillery, prompting the government to relocate the facility off the mountainside and down to the railroad tracks.

There are several iterations of Chartreuse:  the original “Elixir Vegetal,” Yellow Chartreuse, Chartreuse V.E.P, and the flagship Green Chartreuse. (The state of Maine only allows Green Chartreuse inside its borders, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on here.) At 55 percent alcohol (110 proof!) and packing a fiery, spicy, bat-swinging herbal wallop, Chartreuse can actually seem like a bargain on the home liquor shelf — a little goes a long way. Drinks featuring Chartreuse also tend to have a lot of “hang time” — they linger on the palate long after the last swallow. So measure carefully: a little too much will make your drink taste like that albino monk from The Da Vinci Code made it.

 

The Alamagoozlum comes completely out of left field, and on paper looks like the quintessential example of “two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.” Then again, it’s purported to be the creation of J.P. Morgan himself, whose uninhibited, acquisitive nature defined him. 

The recipe is full of ear-pricking idiosyncrasies. First, you’ll need a gang to drink this one — the recipe states that it makes five drinks, but it’s closer to three the way we moderns use glassware. But how, pray tell, do you get half an egg white? It’s easier to simply make a double batch and have seconds. Second, there’s Genever gin, a milder, somewhat richer version than standard London Dry. There isn’t a true Genever allowed in Maine, so aim for a milder version of London Dry, like Plymouth. Third, there’s water as an ingredient, almost as if this were a kind of punch. And look at all those bitters: zowee, a full half ounce! This is a rich mahogany-hued cocktail, deep and dark and chock full of aromatic goodness.

The Bijou, on the other hand, is in an entirely different mode — crisp and austere, with an edge like a finely cut jewel. This cocktail first appeared in Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual, ca. 1890, and then disappeared from sight until the ’20s, when it resurfaced in a couple cocktail books published in Europe. The Bijou is a cousin of the early Martini, particularly the versions from the 1890s that consisted of gin, sweet vermouth, and a couple dashes of orange bitters. Add a little Chartreuse and you’re in Bijou country.

The Last Word is a forgotten cocktail that shouldn’t have been discovered in the first place and had probably never spent much time outside its birthplace, the Detroit Athletic Club. Then the Internet and Murray Stenson came along.

 

One day Mr. Stenson was flipping through a quirky cocktail book from 1951, Ted Saucier’s Bottom’s Up. It’s decorated by some of the great illustrators of the day, drawing and painting in sexy pin-up style. The drink recipes inside aren’t from the standard cocktail canon, but rather are submissions from various celebrities, columnists and famous restaurants. It’s not the kind of tome cocktail geeks go trolling for gold in, but Stenson isn’t your average geek. He owns the Zig-Zag, in Seattle, one of the great cocktail joints in the country. When his gaze falls upon a little nugget like this, he puts it on the menu. 

When Stenson put the Last Word on his menu, that should have been the end of it. Except Robert “Drinkboy” Hess hangs out at Zig-Zag, and so does Paul Clarke of Imbibe magazine and cocktailchronicles.com. Within weeks the Last Word passed from one wet blogger to another, and an entirely new old drink was born. Inevitably, variations appeared, and our pal Phil Ward contributed The Final Ward to the renowned cocktail list at New York’s Pegu Club.

The Widow’s Kiss is one of the most haunting and evocative cocktails you’re liable to encounter in your drinking travels. It tastes like Nostalgia and smells like Loss and really does embody the bittersweet combination of a widow and her kiss. At least this version does — there are a lot of cocktails that wear the name yet bear no resemblance to this recipe from George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks of 1895. None come as close to evoking the wistfulness of October, the inevitable loss of color from the landscape, the interminable period of grays and browns ahead, when green, any shade of green, even the “stupid one,” is welcome.

 

Alamagoozlum

2 oz Genever gin
2 oz water
1.5 oz Jamaican Rum
1.5 oz Chartreuse
1.5  oz simple syrup
.5 oz orange liqueur (Triple Sec, Cointreau etc)
.5 oz Angostura bitters
.5  egg white

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker and shake hard until well chilled. Strain into cocktail glasses.

 

Bijou

1 dash orange bitters
1 oz gin
1 oz sweet vermouth
1 oz Chartreuse

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker and shake hard until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry and a twist of lemon.

 

Last Word

1 oz dry gin
1 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz Chartreuse

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker and shake hard until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

 

Final Ward

1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz Chartreuse

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker and shake hard until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Widow’s Kiss

1.5 oz apple brandy (Laird’s Applejack will do but a good sturdy Calvados is better)
.75 oz Chartreuse
.75 oz Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled shaker and shake hard until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

 

— John Myers