Selling a cocktail, and by extension, the spirits contained within it, requires a level of commitment to fantasy. You’re selling not only a specific mixture of liquids but also the idea that a drink has the power to make someone feel a certain way. Cocktail recipes often ask the drinker to imagine a setting that the drink will transport them to. Take, for instance, the Verte Chaud, aka Green Chaud, a simple mixture of hot chocolate and green Chartreuse that is widely regarded as an authentic après-ski cocktail, capable of transporting the drinker with its warm, herbal profile to the French Alps with a single sip. But is the Verte Chaud truly a beverage that people in the French-speaking world actually request after a long day on the slopes?
A quick search of the internet will reveal a plethora of mostly U.S.-based cocktail bloggers making evidence-free statements, like, “The Verte Chaud has been around for as long as Chartreuse and hot chocolate has been around” or heralding it as a “long-standing après-ski drink in the French Alps.”
“The French, they’re very provincial,” says David Lebovitz, author of Drinking French and a full-time Paris resident. He goes on to explain that the French have a “love-hate relationship with creativity” and often are hesitant to tinker too much with traditional ways of drinking or using ingredients.
Actual French bartenders seem to share this sentiment. Margot Lecarpentier, founder of cocktail bar Combat in Paris, describes the mindset as such: “In France, I always tend to think that childish drinks twisted with booze kind of freak people out. It’s like smoking strawberry cigarettes. 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 biggest city close to the distillery, and [Verte Chaud] was on a few menus.”
“It’s not a ‘real’ drink, in the sense that it was not dreamed up organically one day by an inspired Alpine bartender eager to offer an intriguing après-ski moment, but it’s not entirely fantasy either; there is the skeleton of an authentic lineage.”
Despite a general sense of dubiousness around the drink, the Verte Chaud, was indeed invented by French people—just probably not a bartender. According to Tim Master, vice president of spirits for Frederick Wildman & Sons (the company that distributes Chartreuse in the United States), the Green Chaud was a drink pushed by the French sales team in the 1980s. Vintage bottles from this period even have the recipe printed on the back label, under the name Chartreuse Chocolat. According to Masters, “It just seemed to work.” He credits pastry chefs for first combining chocolate and Chartreuse, a likelihood supported by Lebovitz, who recalls working at Chez Panisse in the ’80s and ’90s. At the time, he says, they “were trying to do French things,” and were inspired by a dessert recipe from French chef Madeleine Kamman for a Bavarian custard made with white chocolate and Chartreuse.
The French marketing team’s efforts did seem to pay off. Cocktail historian David Wondrich’s extensive archives contain a 1984 clipping from the Welsh newspaper, Glamorgan Gazette, suggesting to readers to add a dash of green Chartreuse to hot chocolate for a “special winter warmer ... favored by many skiers.” Nine years later, a recipe showed up in food writer Mary McGrath’s column in the Toronto Star, in which the drink is described as a way to welcome grown-ups home from the slopes. In the early 2000s, Bon Appétit published a recipe for hot chocolate with Chartreuse adapted from the late Patrick Clark, executive chef for New York’s Tavern on the Green in the late ’90s.
From there, it’s possible that Tim Master may have had a role to play in cementing the image of the Green Chaud as a classic après-ski drink in the minds of stateside bartenders. In the 2010s, he started holding outdoor events featuring Chartreuse and hot chocolate at New York City’s Plaza Cultural, a public park in the East Village, a tradition that continues to this day. Early iterations saw prominent local cocktail bars such as Booker and Dax, PDT, Pouring Ribbons and Mayahuel pouring Chartreuse drinks alongside warming mugs of Green Chaud, even enlisting the help of ice sculptor Shintaro Okamoto to carve ice in the shape of the French Alps. “I can’t say for sure that those events kicked it off,” Master says, but it’s not hard to imagine the drink seeping out into the zeitgeist once in the hands of the bartenders who showed up to those events.
As a bartender, I’ve always felt pressure to value authenticity and originality while at the same time constructing a cocoon of fantasy around an industry that, at its core, sells a harmful substance under the guise of a good time. The case of the Green Chaud presents somewhat of a conflicting narrative: It’s not a “real” drink, in the sense that it was not dreamed up organically one day by an inspired Alpine bartender eager to offer an intriguing après-ski moment, but it’s not entirely fantasy either; there is the skeleton of an authentic lineage. Just because some marketing people helped shepherd this drink into existence, does that make it any less authentic? And does that even matter? Perhaps after a certain amount of time, questions about authenticity become less and less urgent. After all, this isn’t the first time the industry has embraced a cocktail dreamed up by the Chartreuse marketing team. Swampwater, anyone?
