Carthusians

Hey Jeff, said the old guy while he was still in the act of sitting down.
"Have you heard the one about the monk, the flood and the helicopter?"
"I have…" I started to say.
He began telling me the joke before I even got the words out.
"A man is stranded on a roof in a flood," he said.
"I've heard it…" I began again.
"The man waves off three rescue attempts, one by canoe, one by power boat and another by helicopter.
"I've already…"
"When he finally drowns, he confronts his maker," continued my jokester. "When the monk asks why he
wasn't saved, the deity responds 'I sent you 2 boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?'"
"Get it," said my jokester. "He couldn't take a hint."
Oddly, I had never thought of the joke quite that way before.
Some hours later when the ticket for a yellow chartreuse came through on my service bar printer I was
reminded of another group of monks who perhaps also couldn't take a hint. Those monks are known as
the Carthusians. And like the convoluted plotline of a Dan Brown book, their history became tied to a
secret formula and French political mechanizations. It all began in 1605 when a secret alchemical recipe
was presented to the Carthusian monks by one François Hannibal d'Estrées, a marshal in the French
kings army (King Henri IV was a recent convert to catholicism, and d'Estrées was the brother of the King's
mistress). This "Elixir of Long Life" was duly dispatched to the order's headquarters, the Grande
Chartreuse monastary in the southeast of France near Voiron. The very monastery where St. Bruno had
founded the order in 1084. The secret recipe was modified over the next 100 or so years until Brother
Gérome Maubec is said to have perfected it in 1737. His recipe called for over 130 herbs and flowers as
well as a few secret ingedients (one of which is rumored to be wormwood, which is the active ingredient
in absinthe). Green chartreuse was born, and with it the problems for the reclusive monks began.
The canoe:
It wasn't just the aristocracy that suffered in the aftermath of the French revolution. The clergy, so long a
force in France were stripped of their authority, their power and subsequently their property. As a result
the Carthusians were forced from their monastery in 1793. The recipe remained with a single monk, who,
believing that the order was finished, sold it to a pharmacist in Grenoble. Unable to decipher the recipe
the pharmacist then passed it on to the Napoleonic authorities (who were now in charge in France). The
authorities deemed the recipe worthless and returned it to the pharmacist. Upon his death the recipe was
willed back to the Carthusians, who had been allowed to return to their monastery in 1816. There they
began producing their liqueur once again. In 1838 the monks created a second, yellow chartreuse, which
was a sweeter, less alcoholic version of the original. The monks even toyed with a white chartruese
produced from 1860 to 1880 and again from 1886 to 1900, until finally settling on just green and yellow.
The powerboat:
In 1903, the French government decided to nationalize the distillery. They took over the facility and sold
the Chartreuse trademark. Meanwhile the monks began to produce chartreuse in Tarragona, Spain. For
nearly twenty years the world saw two distinctly different chartreuse products. One produced by the monks
labeled Liqueur fabriquée à Tarragone par les Pères Chartreux (liquor manufactured in Tarragona by the
Carthusian Fathers), and another produced by a Voiron corporation, which had purchased the name and
the assets from the French government. In 1927, this corportation went banrupt and sold their nearly
worthless shares at auction. Some Voiron businessmen bought the shares and presented them back to
the Carthusians. This time the French government turned a blind eye to the still standing expulsion order
and the monks once again began making their elixir at the Grande Chartreuse.
The helicopter:
On the night of November 14, 1935 a mudslide (an act of God?) roared down the hill and destroyed the
distillery sweeping much of the Chartreuse stored there into the river. Eventually the distillery was rebuilt in
nearby Voiron with the help of the Vichy French government. It was an attempt by Marshall Petain and his
fascist puppet government (the bad guys in the movie Casablanca) to establish their legitimacy by
courting the papacy with kindness shown to French Catholics. The end result being that by the end of
World War II , the Vichy were gone, but the Carthusians were back in business, legitimatley, back home in
France.
These days chartreuse is produced in Voiron under the supervision of three monks from the Grande
Chartreuse monastary. The three monks each know only a part of the mysterious recipe and have taken a
vow of silence in order to preserve it's mysteries (Is Dan Brown taking notes on this?). Today there are
four different types of Chartruese produced. A green, which is 110 proof (or 55 percent alcholol, long life
indeed). An 80 proof yellow (colored with saffron), and an aged VEP (Viellissement Exceptionnellement
Prolonge- exceptionally prolonged aging- which I believe refers to the liquer itself and not to the imbiber)
available in both green and yellow that is packaged in 19th century reproduction bottles hand sealed with
wax. Reportedly chartreuse benefits from aging, a good thing too because the vegetel licorice taste and
high proof is not for everyone.
My jokester, those monks and Dan Brown have left me with three thoughts.
1. Very high proof alcohol doesn't promote long life, in fact I believe that the opposite might be true.
2. Whether we are bartenders, joke tellers or monks, we often see, hear, believe what we want to, not
what is actually happening.
3. Considering that the French have had 17 different governments since the French Revolution, it's a
miracle that the Carthusians have survived at all. Perhaps it is really they who have actually gotten the hint
given.