Stocking Your Bar with the Basics - One Cocktail at a Time

Check out lupecboston.com to read on!

Fabulous Fall Cocktails

Check out our latest post on Fabulous Fall Cocktails at our new online home.

We're Moving...

Guess what, LUPEC Boston blog fans? We’re moving!

We’ve got our own domain now, and a snazzy new design. Starting today, you can go directly to lupecboston.com to read about what we’re mixing up around town and sign up for our mailing list!

Many thanks for your readership and your continued support of our events. We’ve got some exciting stuff in the works for fall, so stay tuned!

Cin-cin!

LUPEC Boston

Reasons to Love Chartreuse

Chartreuse is an enchanting liqueur if there ever was one. As we covered in this week's Dig, the Chartreuse we drink today is based on a recipe for an "Elixir of Long Life" that was handed down to the Order of Carthusian monks in the 17th century. Reputed since their founding in 1084 as the Catholic Church's strictest order, the monks "dedicate themselves entirely to the service of God and to spiritual life, in permanent silence." Sales of chartreuse liqueur, which is most commonly found in green (its original form) and yellow, support the contemplative order.

Though the Carthusian monks were handed the manuscript for the "Elixir of Long Life" in 1605, it took over a century for them to decode it into something drinkable, the Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse which was first distilled in 1737. 130 different botanicals and plant extracts are used as ingredients, and the drink takes is signature color from the chlorophyll therein. The original stuff was a 71% alcohol, 147 proof, but recognizing the popularity of chartreuse as more than just a medicine, the monks created a more palatable 55% alcohol, 110 proof version which is what we know and love as green chartreuse today. In 1838 the Carthusians introduced the even milder, sweeter yellow chartreuse, which weighs in at 40% alcohol, 80 proof. A kinder, gentler version of the stuff and where you might want to start if you're new to drinking/mixing with it. White chartreuse was also produced once upon a time (1860-1900), as was a special V.E.P. in the (1960s.)

The complexity of the recipe is part of what has kept it secret for centuries. When the Carthusians were expelled from the France (along with members of all other religious orders) the recipe was nearly lost. According to the lore, the monk entrusted with the original manuscript was arrested and jailed during this time. He managed to smuggle it out of prison to another Carthusian who was also on the lam, but the recipient could make no sense of the recipe. Befuddled by the complicated instructions and believing the Chartreuse Order shuttered forever, he sold the manuscript to a Grenoblois pharmacist named Monsieur Liotard, who also didn’t “get it”. He was unable to do anything with the recipe, and his heirs returned it to the Carthusian monks after his death in 1816.

Similarly, the French government was unable reproduce the stuff after they "nationalized" the chartreuse distillery in 1903 causing the monks to flee to Tarragona, Spain. The government’s, Chartreuse-branded product failed in the marketplace within a decade (see right.)

Who wouldn't want to sip on a liqueur that's...

1. Made by an order of contemplative monks in the French Alps?
2. Based on an ancient recipe for an Elixir of Long Life?
3. Such a highly guarded secret that only two monks are entrusted with the recipe, and never known to any one person at a time?
4. Made from 130 different herbs and botanicals, secretly processed and mixed?
5. Has its own color scheme named after it?
6. So deliciously complex that its behavior in cocktails can be a total surprise?

Mix up any one of these and you'll know what we mean:

Gypsy
*Adapted by Contessa from a recipe she originally sampled at Bourbon & Branch

2 oz Plymouth Gin
1 oz lime
3/4 oz yellow Chartreuse
3/4 oz St-Germain

Shake in a cocktail shaker, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Cloister

1.5 oz gin
.5 oz Yellow chartreuse
.5 oz fresh grapefruit juice
.25 oz lemon juice
.25 oz simple syrup

Shake in a cocktail shaker, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Cin-cin!

Genever - its a Dutch thing

by Pink Lady

When I studied abroad in Ireland my junior year, I was shocked to learn that my Irish roommates preferred Budweiser to Guinness. The American import was pissier and more expensive than their native stout, yet none of the lads would be caught in the pub with a Guinness in hand. I chalked this up to the tendency to always want what you haven't got, and related to their impulse to eschew the familiar for the exotic.

This is not necessarily so, however, in Holland, where every fourth bottle of spirits sold is a bottle of genever. I learned this fun little fact from Bols brand ambassador Simon Duff at the Juniperlooza seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, and decided to put this theory to the test by contacting up my good friend Alexander, who hails from Amsterdam.

"Do you drink genever at all? Is it popular at home in Holland?" I texted him quite out of the blue last week while working on this week's Weekly Dig column about different types of gin.

"Yes I do! I have a bottle in my freezer! It's running low. Reminds me of my dad. I only drink it on special occasions..." he responded immediately.

So, there you have it folks, straight from the tall Dutchman's mouth. The stuff is indeed popular in Holland, if impossible to come by in the US.

We had a chance to try a small sip of both jonge and oude genever while in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, and sampled it again at a recent meeting chez Bourbon Belle. President Hanky Panky managed to smuggle several bottles back to the states with her on a trip to Amsterdam last spring.

The strong juniper flavor inherent in genever makes no bones about being a great-great-great grandparent to the modern dry styles of gin we know and love today. That said, its fuller and gads maltier than the stuff you put in a modern gin and tonic, a totally different gin-drinking experience. It is indeed special stuff, and though the real Dutch spirit is hard to come by in the United States, Genevieve by the San Francisco-based Anchor Distilllery stands in as a delicious take on the product.

So here's the ultimate challenge: get your friends who live in London to smuggle you back some Old Tom Gin and your very own tall Dutchman to return from Holland with a suitcase full of Hollands. Then mix them up in alternating batches of the following cocktail, as Seamus Harris of Bunnyhugs did and reported on here this past June.

Martinez
Recipe adapted from Imbibe! by David Wondrich

1 dash of aromatic bitters
2 dashes of maraschino
1 oz Old Tom Gin or Genever
2 oz Italian vermouth

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink is believed to be a predecessor to the modern martini, and was originally concocted with Old Tom Gin. The genever version is delicious as well. I wonder -- what would happen if I served this to the next person who requested "a martini" at the restaurant where I work...hmmm...

Cin-cin, or as the Dutch say, Proost!