I have three very unique and wonderful brothers. One is the sort that will call the restaurant during your birthday dinner and pay for your wine over the phone, then text you later and instruct you to have Chartreuse for dessert. The other two brothers would never do that, although they have their own particular charms.
Chartruese. The color is named after the liqueur, not the other way around. The liqueur is named after the French mountain range where it was born, distilled by monks who needed something to occupy their time. Did one monk gather the 130 herbs and flowers, or were there 130 monks that each brought their favorite? I’m still not sure. Someone definitely put some thought into it.
You don’t really drink this so much as you engage it. It is cagey, it doesn’t appreciate cynics or tolerate skeptics. It remains in your senses long after it has left your stomach. It is the cerebral to the cortex, the auld to the lang syne, the wind to the willow. It is a sheep in wolves clothing.
Like the best of family, it is devoted, it will not wrong you or cross you, it will only slay the particular dragon that is haunting you. It is not bread, it is not meat, it is not wine. But it makes them possible. It is neither fire nor ice yet it commands both.
It is summer and fall and spring and winter all combined. Did you think those 130 herbs and flowers present themselves all at once? Is it from just the mountains, one wonders, or are there journeys to the ocean as well? I thought I caught a drift of sea breeze, a hint of salt air. Apricot and olive, hyssop and myrrh, cradle and grave, they all meet here, shake hands then go their separate ways. Should we dare to know more, or is it best to leave the mystery alone to solve itself, disguised as an aperitif of longing, a cordial of joy, a phantom of the opera of life itself?
Perhaps it is our destiny to just dash it down and go on to live the life of the pure, the anointed; the ultimate binding of faith and frolic; the untarnished vessel of regret and passion; the headwaters of the reoccurring dream of absolute forgiveness.
I have no standing in the debate. I wait. Absolution comes fast and hard. All four brothers raise their glasses and chant the chant, “I am here, I am here, I am here”.