Green Tarragone Verte -85
⏳ Drinking Window
Fully mature and drinking spectacularly now, with the structure to easily cellar for several more decades.
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
dark chocolate desserts, strong blue cheeses, neat as a digestif
✨ Technical Specifications
The legendary 'Tarragone' bottlings of Chartreuse represent a fascinating chapter in spirits history. Following their expulsion from France in 1903, the Carthusian Monks established a distillery in Tarragona, Spain, where they continued to produce their enigmatic green liqueur until 1989. The period between 1973 and 1985 yielded some of the most coveted expressions of Green Chartreuse ever made. Crafted from the secret recipe of 130 botanicals macerated in a grape-based spirit and aged in oak, these Spanish bottlings are celebrated for their distinct character, often showing a richer, more honeyed, and intensely complex herbal profile than their French-distilled counterparts. Over decades of bottle aging, the fiery alcohol has integrated beautifully, transforming the liqueur into a sublime, harmonious elixir of anise, mint, rosemary, and warm baking spices.
🍾 About the Producer
Chartreuse represents one of the world's most legendary and enigmatic spirit traditions, rooted in an alchemical manuscript for an 'elixir of long life' presented to the Carthusian monks by François Annibal d'Estrées in 1605. Brother Jérôme Maubec and Brother Antoine spent decades unraveling its formula, establishing the Élixir Végétal in 1764 and Green Chartreuse in 1840. While production historically migrated from Fourvoirie to Tarragona during monastic expulsion, and later Voiron, primary distillation moved to the Aiguenoire facility in Entre-Deux-Guiers in 2018. Surrounded by the limestone massifs of the Prealps, only two designated Carthusian monks hold the complete secret formula, overseeing the selection, weighing, and blending of 130 alpine herbs, plants, and botanicals. The complex multi-stage macerations and copper pot distillations age in colossal uncharred oak foudres, creating peerlessly complex liqueurs capable of decades of bottle maturation. Benchmark expressions include the intensely herbal Green Chartreuse (55% ABV), saffron-tinged Yellow Chartreuse (43% ABV), and extended-cellared V.E.P. bottlings.