I have a confession to make. I love Yellow Chartreuse. This is mildly problematic in the sense that it has honey in it, but I can’t quit it. So I guess I’m vegan, except for Yellow Chartreuse, and I have to take back my previous stance of saying I do not fuck with honey. Clearly I do. It’s been a confusing time for me too. But hey, like most moral stances, we have to live with the occasional confusing boundaries they present, and this is one I’m willing to live with. I could become one of those honey vegans, but I prefer this iconoclastic stance.
Anyway, now that we have got that out of the way, let’s get onto the important thing. What can you do with it? Well, lots of things. But for a second, let’s stay in France. For those of you who might not consume a ton of Chartreuse, Green is traditionally what you think of. It’s the color of…chartreuse (it is where the color comes from after all). The liqueur itself has a secret recipe that is only known by two of the Carthusian monks who produce it, basically like they have been for a long time now. The New York Times did a fascinating piece on Chartreuse, the process, and the Carthusians in the time of COVID back in December that I cannot recommend enough, just like the beverage itself. It’s a maceration of 130 or so herbs and plants. The yellow is similar, but with some key differences (though only the monks seem to know all of them).
Green is, for a lack of a better way to describe it, a bit hotter, coming in at 110 proof, and to my taste, coming in a bit spicier as well. Yellow, by contrast, is 86 proof, and is definitely the more mellow and sweet of the two. There are some other flavor differences that aren’t as worth getting into right now. Green is normally my go-to, and they both do relatively similar things, but they play with other liquors and juices a bit differently. They make a lot of other kinds of Chartreuse too, but most of them are not available in the United States, so that’s not worth getting into too much. I have a nice bottle that I’d describe as somewhere in between the Green and the Yellow, and I can share some with you if you come over, but I cannot in good conscience tell you to track down a bottle that is challenging to get for a beverage.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in France, Giffard makes some magic happen with Brazilian bananas to produce a fine liqueur called Banane du Brésil. It is not a liqueur I had encountered much until I picked up a bottle last summer as I began to dive deeper and deeper down the home bartending hole. There are a few fascinating recipes in Minimalist Tiki that make expert use of it, and a definite inspiration for this experiment here is There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand. I’ve riffed on this before with the Smoking Banana, which traded the Yellow for Green and reintroduced rum into the beverage, but this time, I wanted to get a bit more elemental than that. So I pared it down to basics.
A nice smoky scotch also pairs well with fresh pineapple juice. And you can never really go wrong with banana and pineapple. I didn’t really want to add too much sweetness, but it needed some, and that’s why I went with the Yellow in this case. At its most basic, this is also a riff on the time-tested formula of a Last Word. Lotta Seattle inspiration in this beverage apparently. And that’s how we ended up here:
.75 oz pineapple juice (fresh, preferably)
.75 oz Banane du Brésil
.75 oz Yellow Chartreuse
.75 oz Laphroaig 10 (though really, any peaty scotch you don’t mind mixing with should work here)
Pour it all in your trusty cocktail shaker, give it a good shake, and double strain into a chilled coupe. Were I more prepared, I’d have some grilled pineapple to garnish this with at a moment’s notice, but you know, that’s not how things work around here. There, now you have yourself a nice Carthusian Trip.
The joy of a good selection of bottles at home is that you can just play with them. I get that it’s an investment, and definitely not for everyone, but I enjoy, for lack of a better term, the alchemy of it all. Some experiments fail, and do not end up in here, but some succeed magnificently. I look forward to when I can share it with you, but for now, I guess we got batch cocktails to go from time to time :)
This is Trader Jane’s, a periodic newsletter about drinks (mostly tiki) and other fun writing. Follow me on Substack for something every week or two (if we are being honest), and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more timely updates on my beverages (and for lots of other things of course!)
And, as with any good drink, feel free to share (responsibly, of course)