Selling cocktails, and by extension the spirits they contain, requires a certain degree of fantasy. You’re not only selling a specific mixture of liquids, you’re also selling the idea that the drink has the power to make someone feel a certain emotion. Cocktail recipes often ask the drinker to imagine the place the drink will take them to. Take the Welt Show, also known as the Green Show, for example. A simple mixture of hot chocolate and green Chartreuse, it’s widely known as an authentic après-ski cocktail and can transport drinkers to the French Alps with its warm, herbal profile. bite. But is verte chaud really the drink that francophones actually want after a long day on the slopes?
A quick search of the internet reveals a number of cocktail bloggers, primarily based in the US, making unsubstantiated statements such as “Vert chaud has been around for as long as chartreuse and hot chocolate have been around.” I understand this. This is an après-ski drink that has been around for many years in the French Alps. ”
“The French are very provincial,” says David Lebowitz, author of The French. drink french Lives full time in Paris. He went on to explain that the French have a “love-hate relationship with creativity” and are often reluctant to tinker too much with traditional ways of drinking and using ingredients.
Actual French bartenders seem to share this sentiment. Margot Lecarpentier, founder of Parisian cocktail bar Combat, explains the idea: It’s like smoking a strawberry cigarette. It’s awkward,” she says. But that doesn’t mean she’s never encountered the combination of chartreuse and hot chocolate. “When I visited Chartreuse, I was in Grenoble, the largest city near the distillery. [Verte Chaud] It was on some menus. ”
“It’s not a “real” drink, in the sense that it wasn’t something spontaneously dreamed up one day by an Alpine bartender eager to provide a glamorous après-ski experience, but it’s not entirely fantasy either. There’s a real pedigree skeleton there.”
This drink, Verte Chaud, has a generally dubious impression, but it was certainly invented by the French. Just probably not a bartender. Tim Masters, vice president of spirits at Frederick Wildman & Sons, the company that sells Chartreuse in the United States, said Green Shaw was a drink pushed by French sales teams in the 1980s. Vintage bottles from this period have a recipe printed on the back label with the name “Chartreuse Chocolat.” “It seemed to work,” Masters said. He believes pastry chefs were the first to combine chocolate and chartreuse, a possibility backed up by Lebowitz, who recalls working at Chez Panisse in the ’80s and ’90s. At the time, they were “trying to do something French,” he says, and were inspired by French chef Madeleine Kamman’s dessert recipe for Bavarian custard made with white chocolate and chartreuse. .
The efforts of the French marketing team appear to have paid off. Cocktail historian David Wondrich’s extensive archive includes a clipping from a Welsh newspaper from 1984. glamorgan gazette, “a special winter warmer favored by many skiers,” suggests readers add a little green chartreuse to their hot chocolate. Nine years later, the recipe was published in food writer Mary McGrath’s column. toronto star, In it, the drink is described as a way to welcome adults back from the slopes. In the early 2000s, Bon Appétit has published a recipe for hot chocolate using chartreuse, adapted from a recipe by the late Patrick Clark, who was executive chef at New York’s Tavern on the Green in the late 1990s.
From there, Tim Masters may have played a role in cementing Green Show’s image as a classic après-ski drink in the minds of American bartenders. In the 2010s, they began hosting outdoor events featuring chartreuse and hot chocolate at Plaza Cultural, a park in New York City’s East Village, a tradition that continues to this day. In early versions, well-known local cocktail bars like Booker & Dax, PDT, Pouring Ribbons, and Mayael poured chartreuse drinks while warming mugs of green chaud, with the help of ice sculptors. Shintaro Okamoto Carve the ice into the shape of the French Alps. “I can’t say for certain that that event was the trigger,” Master says, but it’s not hard to imagine that the drink would have found its way into the zeitgeist once it found its way into the hands of bartenders who once showed up at the event.
As a bartender, I’ve always felt the pressure to value authenticity and originality while building a cocoon of illusion around an industry that essentially sells harmful substances under the guise of a good time. . Green Chaud’s case presents a somewhat contradictory story. It’s not a “real” drink, in the sense that it wasn’t something that an inspired Alpine bartender, eager to provide a glamorous après-ski moment, spontaneously came up with one day, but it’s a completely fantasy drink. not. There’s a real pedigree skeleton there. Just because some marketers were instrumental in the creation of this drink, does that diminish the credibility of this drink in any way? And does it matter? Perhaps, after a certain amount of time, questions about authenticity become less and less urgent. As it turns out, Chartreuse Marketing this isn’t the first time the industry has adopted a cocktail created by his team. Numazu, anyone?
