The Bottle I Can’t Bring Myself to Break Into

It's rare and special, and my weird mental block won't allow me to open and enjoy it.

I have a confession, a perennial source of personal shame: Whenever I’m in the possession of something consumable and rare—something for which there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever be able to acquire more of it—I tend to squirrel it away, untouched.

In the case of perishable goods, this means I sometimes end up throwing out whatever I’ve cherished, uneaten. In the case of a bottle, it means that my prized acquisition ends up in the back of my bottle library—not forgotten or ignored (in fact, I think of it much too often), but I can never quite make myself reach for it when I’m perusing my collection.

And no, there’s no opening it, taking a sip, and putting the rest away to save—having my boozy cake and eating it too, as they say. For as soon as you crack into most things—spirits no exception, and the herbaceous liqueurs I love in particular—the clock starts ticking on how long they’ll remain at optimal flavor. Once I open that bottle, it means that too soon, after a matter of only months, it’ll be much less enjoyable. To open it means that I’ve made the decision to eat my proverbial cake, so I can no longer have it, too. 

I’m not alone in feeling this way. Helen Rosner writes, far more eloquently than I ever could, in “Nothing Compares to Yuzu,” “I suffer terribly from what you might call a paralysis of wonder. When I become the custodian of something truly marvelous, notably beautiful, or a little bit rare, I worry so much about using it for a sufficiently special purpose that, more often than not, I fail ever to use it at all. My kitchen, in particular, is a graveyard of reverent neglect: a golden bottle of sunflower oil, pressed by monks in an ancient Georgian monastery, long past rancid; a little jar of barbecue sauce folded into my palms years ago by a grizzled pitmaster in Tennessee; a desiccated hunk of white truffle tucked in molding white rice; bags of international potato chips hanging on far beyond their sell-by dates.”

But when it comes to booze, I feel as though it’s just me, especially as I hear about or read reports of other people cracking open special things just ‘cause it’s Tuesday.

I’ve posted on Instagram about my inexplicable reluctance before, most notably in the case of one of WhistlePig’s The Boss Hog bottlings, and got DMs from various industry folks, mostly in all caps: “JUST DRINK IT!” and “DEFINITELY CRACK IT OPEN!” and “DON’T JUST STARE AT IT!” (In the case of that particular bottle, I did crack into it not long after. A mild furor had arisen regarding the use of a Filipino cultural icon on its cap; as my personal form of restitution, I took my bottle over to my Filipino best friend’s apartment, and we opened it together. It was, of course, delicious.)

I have several rare and special finds that I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to drink, but at the moment, my guilt is centered around one particular bottle I’ve had for a year. I’ve promised various people (hello, friends!) pours once I open it. Whenever that is.

I’m ostensibly waiting for the perfect special occasion to open it up. But somehow that occasion never seems to come. What, exactly, would even constitute an occasion special enough to merit cracking into it? My brain refuses to inform me.

Allow me to tell you a little about this bottle, so that you, too, can understand how special it is.

At about this time last year, I was in Paris for a nearly-two-week-long trip. I knew what kind of souvenir I wanted to bring back: the liquid kind.

I’ve fallen deeply in love with Chartreuse. For the uninitiated, it’s an herbal liqueur made in the French Alps by monks that comes in yellow and green forms, plus older, rarer, pricier versions of each, and, rarest of all, blends of various types. It’s the literal elixir of the gods, a culty drinks-world favorite that has skyrocketed in price and cratered in availability in the past few years.

Its rarest varieties are available only in France, and I would be staying just a few blocks from a store widely considered to be the best-stocked retailer of the prized liqueurs. (Since my trip, Chartreuse itself has opened a store in Paris, but it didn’t exist a year ago when I was there.)

I scoured Caves Bossetti’s website, looking for bottles in the center of the Venn diagram of “bottles not available in the US,” “bottles that seem interesting,” and “bottles I can afford.” There were three: Cuvée des MOF (yellow, created in collaboration with French sommeliers), Cuvée des Fous de Chartreuse (a blend of yellow and green, created for what is apparently a Chartreuse fan club; how do I join?), and Liqueur du 9e Centenaire (a blend of unspecified things, created to celebrate the founding of the Carthusian order 900 years earlier). I ruled out the MOF: A good friend had recently brought back a bottle from Paris and I’d had a taste; it was lovely, but I wanted something that others didn’t have. That left the other two bottles.

The store itself made it immediately clear which spirit it specializes in. Its front windows were crammed with (empty) bottles of various styles and vintages of Chartreuse: a number of bottles from when production was moved to Tarragone, Spain, the oldest from 1904; a shimmering silver bottle of Episcopale from 2003; an undated bottle of “Chartreuse Orange”(?!).

Near the front door was a freestanding glass cabinet with similar bottles: old and rare ones, empty, and also full ones for sale. I spotted the MOF, along with more standard bottlings that were available back home. There was an empty spot where a bottle should have stood; I could see a handwritten tag laying on the bottom of the shelf in its place: on it was written 9e Centenaire and its price. There was no sign of the Fous de Chartreuse bottle. 

A tall, slim sales clerk approached. “Do you have either of these, please?” I asked, pointing at the bottles on the store’s website I’d had open on my phone. He shook his head dismissively. The Fous de Chartreuse wouldn’t arrive until autumn, he said, and “we are waiting for the 9e Centenaire to arrive.”  

And then, with a scowl, he immediately walked out the door of the shop, leaving me standing there in front of the case.

I waited. And I waited some more. He did not return.

I had questions, mostly along the lines of How soon, exactly, are you expecting it to arrive? I’m in town for another week; do you think you’ll get it in before then? And also: What just happened?

I inspected each vintage bottle in the case. I walked around the store, trying to see if there was an alternate stash of Chartreuse I’d overlooked. Eventually, I heard the sound of typing coming from the back of the store, and followed the sound. A larger man with a gray beard was sitting in an office behind an open door, clearly doing some bookkeeping.

“Excusez-moi, monseur,” I said in my Duolingo French. “S'il vous plaît, j'ai une question.”

He came out and looked around, presumably for his tall, thin, colleague. Seeing he was gone, he fixed his eyes on me. “Le Neuf Centenaire,” I began, gesturing toward the glass cabinet.

“Ahhhh…” He took a breath, and then cascaded forth a deluge of description, in perhaps 70% French and 30% English, that I couldn’t follow. It was something about a mix of yellow and green and VEP green and VEP yellow of different years, plus florid descriptive words for which Duolingo had not prepared me. He directed his sermon to the heavens, as though praising God himself for having created such an exceptional liqueur.

“It sounds delicious,” I said, switching to English. “When will you have it?”

He again started in on a description in French that I again couldn’t follow. He paused to take a breath, and I cut in and tried again. “S’il vous plaît, quand…do you expect it?”

He looked at me, not comprehending my English, and I didn’t know enough French to know future tense for the question. Feeling as though it would be rude to get out my phone to translate, I decided to go simpler. “L'avez vous? Do you have it?”

He walked over to the display case and looked at where the bottle should have been, its price tag laying flat on the glass shelf, and seemed surprised it wasn’t there. And then he, too, walked out the door of the store.

Not again, I thought.

I waited.

Several agonizing minutes later, he walked back in—with a box tucked under his arm!

“Je suis excité!,” I exclaimed, a little too loudly. “Merci beaucoup!”

He walked over to the register and stood there typing on the keypad for what seemed an excessively long time. This was no ordinary sale.

“This is my personal bottle,” he said to me, likely to explain that he had to take the time to enter the SKU into the POS system; he couldn’t simply scan the barcode. My eyes grew wide as I realized what was transpiring.

While he was typing, the tall man returned to the store and, seeing me and seeing the box, frowned and seemed to mutter something quietly. “C’est bon,” my savior told him.

He finished on the terminal and slid a printed receipt and a pen toward me for my signature. I signed. He turned the pen over so I could see it was Chartreuse-branded, and slid it back to me. Souvenir swag!

He put the box containing my coveted bottle in a plastic bag, and then asked me, “Do you smoke le marijuana?”

“Not often,” I said, then immediately realized it was the wrong answer. “But sometimes, yes.”

“Ahhh!” he said, and showed me a Chartreuse-branded lighter and a small tin before placing them, too, in the bag and thrusting it toward me. “You will enjoy.”

So anyway, I’m still not entirely sure what’s actually in this bottle; a little of everything, it seems. The internet isn’t helpful; even the official Chartreuse website says only “This special cuvée was first created in 1984 by the Carthusian Fathers to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the founding of the Carthusian Order in 1084 by Saint Bruno. … To create this blend liqueur, the Carthusians have selected liqueurs with different aging profiles. With great aromatic subtlety, it is characterized by a perfect balance between vegetal power and floral delicacy.”

Tim Master, the director of spirits at Frederick Wildman, the company that distributes Chartreuse in the US, recently confirmed: “It is indeed a blend of all types after it comes out of the barrels. The monks select the best-tasting to make this particular blend.”

Estelle Bossy, a fellow Chartreuse fan and the beverage director at Le Rock, also has a bottle of the 9e Centenaire—she’s opened it, because she’s not crazy, unlike me—and very generously gave me a small pour a couple of months ago at a gathering of Chartreuse nuts. Of course it was spellbindingly delicious, and yes I want more, and yes I know I could provide this for myself. And still.

Tim tells me that the bottle should soon be available here. You’d think I’d find this sufficiently reassuring, but I do not: As of a few months ago, the MOF is now available here, too, technically. But how many bottles of it do you see on the shelves at Astor? The MOF is highly allocated, as the 9e Centenaire will surely be as well: You’re not likely to be able to get your hands on one in any practical, realistic sense.

Perhaps I should simply return to Paris and pick up more there! A great idea. Except that the 9e Centenaire isn’t even on Caves Bossetti’s website any longer. Maybe it’s available at the new Chartreuse store? There’s no guarantee: That store doesn’t provide its retail availability online, and it would be an expensive gamble to take. The Chartreuse distillery itself is in the French Alps, a region I'm not likely to visit soon.

So until the day I’m guaranteed to be able to replace this special bottle once I drink it, I’ll probably keep waiting, and admiring my bottle, with its monastic illuminated label with metallic embossed lettering. And its seal, still intact.

**

Do you have a bottle you’re inexplicably saving, too? I don’t ask this for ~HASHTAG-ENGAGEMENT~. I genuinely just want to know I’m not the only crazy one with this mental block against opening special bottles. Comment or send me a DM on Instagram and tell me what your special bottle is. Please let me know I’m not alone in this.

**

The Sidecar

Chartreuse isn’t the only spirit to have its own specialty store in Paris. I was delighted to stumble upon A'Rhûm not a ten-minute walk from Caves Bossetti. The selection is vast; the salesperson was knowledgeable; I wish I’d had more time in town and/or a much stronger liver.

Also, happy early Chartreuse Day (May 16) to those who celebrate. In 1605, the order was entrusted with a manuscript containing a recipe that eventually became today’s Elixir Vegetal, and in the European date format…well, you get it. That date won’t see me cracking open this special bottle, at least not this year, but I’ll certainly be celebrating with the more commonly available green stuff.