WTN: chartreuse
James Harbeck
chartreuse
How would you describe the colour chartreuse?
I mean without saying “It’s the colour of Chartreuse.” Come on. Not that many people have a bottle of it at home. Let’s see – how does Wikipedia describe it?
Chartreuse (US: /ʃɑːrˈtruːz, -ˈtruːs/, UK: /-ˈtrɜːz/, French: [ʃaʁtʁøz]), also known as yellow-green or greenish yellow, is a color between yellow and green.
Oh, come on. If you were trying to convey the essence of it to someone, what would you say? “Like a highlighter that retired to the south of France to write novels” perhaps? If it were a person, you could say that it’s the exact opposite of, um, any of the kickboxers in Kings of Combat (or, for that matter, the colour scheme on their promo posters). If it were algae, well, Wikipedia is here to help you with the “In nature” section of its “Chartreuse (color)” article:
Yellow-green algae, also called Xanthophytes, are a class of algae in the Heterokontophyta division. Most live in fresh water, but some are found in marine and soil habitats. They vary from single-celled flagellates to simple colonial and filamentous forms. Unlike other heterokonts, the plastids of yellow-green algae do not contain fucoxanthin, which is why they have a lighter color.
Uh, thanks? That won’t help you describe the colour to someone. I guess you could buy them a bottle, if you can find one – the supply train is becoming as ineluctable as the recipe, which, supposedly, is known to only three people at a time, all of them monks of a notoriously solitary, peaceful, and taciturn order (they mix the 130 herbs in the monastery and send them to the distillery in big bags).
But then a bottle of which kind? You see, there’s more than one kind. Generally speaking, there are two, green and yellow, but there are other varieties too, such as the MOF kind I have a bottle of, which is yellowish but not a reference yellow. (To be clear, the yellow of yellow Chartreuse is called chartreuse yellow. The green of green Chartreuse is called chartreuse.)
But then, say you get a bottle of green Chartreuse and pour a glass of it: is that really the chartreuse of, say, a vase or a scarf or an office divider? No it is not. For one thing, definitions vary widely; look at Wiktionary, for instance, and you will see the HTML chartreuse as RGB #7FFF00 and the much dimmer Pantone “bright chartreuse” as RGB #B0BC4A. But whatever you take it as, the real thing will always seem lighter. It’s pellucid, after all, unlike the recipe, the definition of the colour, and, for that matter, the origin of the word Chartreuse.
It’s not that they don’t know where the liqueur got its name. It’s made by the monks of Grande Chartreuse Monastery (or, now, by their hired distillers). They are monks of the Ordre des Chartreux – or, in English, the Carthusians. Their monastery is in the Chartreuse Mountains, north of Grenoble. (Are the mountains Chartreuse in colour? Parts of them, sure; they’re covered in vegetation, after all. See for yourself. But the colour is named after the liqueur.)
So are the mountains named after the monastic order? No, the converse. Bruno of Cologne started the order in the Chartreuse Mountains in 1084, at the site of the current monastery. The English name Carthusians is based on a Latinization of the place name: Ordo Cartusiensis. Their monasteries are called chartreuses in French, but in English they are called charterhouses. Why? Because English speakers looked at chartreuse and said “um, charter-house.” I’m not kidding.
The French novelist Marie-Henri Beyle, who went by the Scandinavian-sounding pen name Stendhal, wrote a book in 1839 called La Chartreuse de Parme, which in English is The Charterhouse of Parma. And, fittingly, it does not take place in a charterhouse. In fact, the only time one is even mentioned is on the last page – the protagonist ends up there. Also, no one in the book drinks Chartreuse.
They could have, to be sure; it had been available since the 1600s. But if they had, it wouldn’t be the green Chartreuse we know now; that was first made in 1840. So was the yellow kind. The original Chartreuse was stronger (at 69% ABV! Green Chartreuse is 55% ABV, and a little goes a long way in a cocktail; yellow Chartreuse is 43%, but doesn’t taste like it, so watch out) and was a slightly deeper version of the green, more 1910-era than 2010-era, décor-wise. Also, in case it matters to you, the monks haven’t been continuously in the monastery since 1084; they were expelled more than once (generally to Spain) and returned thereafter, most recently after World War II. The buildings of the monastery don’t date all the way back to the origins either – avalanches have guaranteed that.
Ah, yes, avalanches. From the mountains. The Chartreuse Mountains. So how did they get their name? From a village in them, Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. And how did it get its name? It is an ancient Gaulish name (Chartreuse, I mean, not Saint-Pierre); it may trace to the tribe of the Caturiges, who also gave their name to the nearby town of Chorges.
And what does Caturiges mean? It traces to Celtic roots catu- ‘combat’ and riges ‘kings’. So, yes, you may have guessed it: Kings of Combat.
Please send comments, replies, and suggestions for words to taste to me to ja...@harbeck.ca.
Feel free to pass this on to friends. If you've received it as a forward, feel free to join the Word Tasting Notes email list at http://groups.google.ca/group/word-tasting-notes .
Visit my blog at http://sesquiotic.wordpress.com .