Les Pères Chartreux

The Carthusian monks who make Chartreuse belong to an order founded in the French Alps by Bruno and his companions in 1084. Their liqueur-making story began with a manuscript given to the Paris monks in 1605, followed by generations of work that led to a written Elixir formula in 1764. Today the liqueurs are made at Aiguenoire in Entre-Deux-Guiers, near the monastery where the secret formula is kept.

For Green Chartreuse, the monks prepare a mixture of 130 plants, flowers, bark, roots and spices. Distillation and maceration are followed by long ageing in oak vats. The monks marked the order’s nine-hundredth anniversary in 1984 with the 9th Centenary liqueur, a blend of liqueurs aged for different lengths of time.