It’s a sunny day in May on the foot of the French Prealps, and the bar-brasserie Le Schuss within the city of Voiron is throwing—there’s no different phrase for it—a rager. On the out of doors terrace, a DJ stands together with his turntable on a raised platform, rallying a horde of youngsters in inexperienced and yellow bandanas, pumping their fists to pop hits from the 2000s and ’10s. The audio system blast “Starships” by Nicki Minaj as beer spills from plastic cups. What resembles a positive mist hovers over the scene—smoke from cigarettes and vapor from vapes.
This is, to my nice shock, half of Les Fêtes de la Chartreuse, an annual competition within the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes area of France that, certainly, fetes Chartreuse. It’s a triple celebration: of the inexperienced liqueur distilled from about 130 botanicals by Carthusian monks in accordance to a centuries-old secret recipe; the verdant mountain vary after which the drink, the monks, and their monastery are named; and the world’s pure bounty on the top of spring. The Voironnais, with their neighbors in close by Saint-Étienne-de-Crossey and Saint-Nicolas-de-Macherin, have hosted Les Fêtes for the previous 10 years. I have come to partake, as a francophile and booze hound, hoping to find out about Chartreuse at its supply.
Chartreuse is available in two “flavors”: inexperienced and yellow. I favor the previous—herbaceous, piquant, and virtually overwhelming. Drinking it straight seems like a meadow grabbing you by the throat and saying, “Do you like that?” (My reply is sure.) That sharpness tempers no matter drink it’s in, as within the sweet-and-sour Last Word, an IBA cocktail made with gin, lime juice, Maraschino liqueur, and inexperienced Chartreuse. But the yellow variation has its charms too. It’s milder—at about 40% ABV, in contrast to inexperienced’s 55%—and sweetly cozy, like a great morning kiss from an informal lover.
Given Chartreuse’s rarified place of delight in bars and drink menus around the globe, I anticipated a extra refined, cosmopolitan vibe to the proceedings in Voiron—possibly tastings that study totally different vintages, or gastronomic menus made to pair with Chartreuse-based tipples. Instead, I discover a parade on Voiron’s essential road that includes circus performers and stiltwalkers in Chartreuse-colored wigs; a “banquet populaire” with meals stalls promoting wursts in stale buns; semi-professional musical acts led by French dads; French mothers in cropped denim jackets hooting and hollering, pints in hand, with their besties from lycée in Lyon, Grénoble, or proper right here in Voiron. As I weave by means of the lengthy refectory tables overflowing with revelers and ale, I can’t assist however snort: The complete affair is rambunctious and unabashedly down-home, like a cross between a state honest and a frat’s block occasion. To be clear, I don’t dislike this.
Inside Le Schuss, I squeeze by means of the group clad in various shades of mint, pear, and lime. Over the music (Katy Perry’s rager anthem “Last Friday Night”), I ask the barman for a glass of Chartreuse. He shrugs that Gallic shrug and says, ever so Frenchly, “Pas possible.”
You see, there’s a Chartreuse “shortage.” It was all around the information about three years in the past—or not less than it was in my mixology-pilled corner of the internet. Historically, the liqueur was little-known, an if-you-know-you-know trade favourite imbibed by of us in F&B as a result of it was very robust, scrumptious (so distinctive on the palate {that a} style for it made you cool), and barely requested by prospects. That modified within the Covid-19 pandemic, when the lots took up hobbies like at-home mixology to kill time and, in my case, self-medicate. What was as soon as left to collect mud on cabinets began flying off of them. Scrooges hoarded the stuff. Prices spiked for bottles, for those who may discover one. Call her the elusive Chartreuse.