The 1886 document, cited in the recent history of the company and the Order, reads: “The mystery of the chartreuse has long been a disappointment to distillers, just as the forget-me-nots are a natural blue painter’s disappointment. Father Holler spent five years overseeing the distillation process, ordering the components and scheduling its production. When he left the place in 1990, he became the only living outsider who knew the ancient formula of liquor.
“She’s safe with me,” he said. “Surprisingly, when I left they didn’t make me sign anything.”
This trade is both a covert marketing coup and potential destruction. The president of Chartreuse Diffusion told the New Yorker in 1984, “I have no idea what I’m really selling.” I am always very scared. Only three brothers know how to make it – no one else knows the recipe. And every morning they drive together to the distillery. And they drive very old cars. And they run it very badly. “
Except for the two monks who now guard it, the others involved in the production of chartreuse – Carthaginian or not – only know the pieces of the recipe.
Within the Grande Chartreuse, skilled monks receive, measure and sort 130 unlabeled plants and herbs in substitute (or, in 2020, QR-coded) sacks. Then, at the distillery, five non-Carthaginian employees work with two white-robbed monks, distilling, mixing and aging the liqueur. The computerized system also allows them to make surprise inspections from the ashram.
With its five weeks of distillation process, and in subsequent years of old age, those two monks are also the ones who taste the product and decide when it is ready to sell and sell the bottle. “They are quality control,” said Emanuel Delafen, current CEO of Chartreuse Defiance.
The order is almost exclusively owned by the spreading company, and works with secular employees of the business, who perform very foreign functions for the hermetic business of the order.
“It’s their product, and we’re at their service,” Mr. Delafen said. “They need it to maintain their economic independence. He believes in making a link between the life of the monastery and everything else. ”
