Green Chartreuse

The Order of Chartreuse was more than 500 years old when, in 1605, at a Chartreuse monastery in Vauvert, a small suburb of Paris, the monks received a gift from François Hannibal d’ Estrées, Marshal of French King Henri IV’s artillery: an already ancient manuscript from an “Elixir” soon to be nicknamed “Elixir of Long Life”. This hand-written document was probably the work of a 16th century alchemist with a great knowledge of herbs and who possessed the skill to blend, infuse, macerate the 130 of them to form a perfect balanced tonic. It was this elixir that was destined to become the world-famous Chartreuse liqueur, but it would take more than a century before the alchemist’s recipe to reach a definitive formula. By the early 17th century, only a few monks and even fewer apothecaries understood the use of herbs and plants in the treatment of illness. The manuscript’s recipe was so complex that only bits and pieces of it were understood and used at Vauvert. Then, at the beginning of t