Tarragone Fabriquee Yellow -89
⏳ Drinking Window
Fully mature and drinking exceptionally well now; its high alcohol and sugar content allow it to remain stable and continue evolving indefinitely under proper cellar conditions.
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Dark chocolate desserts, artisanal blue cheese, or served neat as a digestif alongside roasted almonds.
✨ Technical Specifications
The legendary 'Tarragona' Chartreuse represents one of the most fascinating chapters in spirits history. Following their expulsion from France in 1903 due to anticlerical laws, the Carthusian Monks established a distillery in Tarragona, Spain, where they continued to manufacture their secret elixirs. Even after returning to France, production in Spain continued until the Tarragona distillery finally closed its doors in 1989. The Yellow (Jaune) expression from the final production era of 1982–1989 is a masterpiece of monastic distilling, crafted from a secret recipe of 130 botanicals macerated in grape spirit and aged in oak casks. Naturally colored with saffron, this historic liqueur is celebrated for its softer, honeyed, and intensely aromatic profile, showing notes of anise, citrus peel, thyme, and warm spices that have evolved beautifully over decades of bottle aging.
🍾 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.