This short post is about cocktail combined flavours of unique French liqueur Chartreuse, lemon juice and sparkling wine. There are two popular type of the liqueur – green and yellow, either of them is great in cocktails, and my story is about green Chartreuse, magnificent aromatic spirit with stunning strength of 55% ABV.
This factor is the cause why the liqueur has became base spirit for Chanteuse cocktail. Mixed with champagne and lemon juice, green Chartreuse offers complete solution in creating a cocktail with unique aroma and proper strength.
I’ve found this piece of state-of-the-art mixology at Married… with dinner blog and as far as I understand Anita and Cameron, a couple behind the blog, are the people who invented Chanteuse.
Previously I never made cocktails based on liqueurs so Chanteuse was the first. Also sparkling wine is rather new cocktail ingredient for me therefore it was a quite interesting experience to mix such unusual liqueur with a mixer of that noble origin. Unfortunately Champagne high prices limit it in use widely in cocktails, and I prefer to buy Italian sparkling wines, mostly dry, instead of Champagne.
As Anita wrote in her post about Chanteuse, Chartreuse and Champagne didn’t work by themselves so lemon juice or lime juice is needed to combine flavours properly. I fully agree, lemon sourness supplements Chartreuse very good and brings a lot of freshness as well. On the contrary, orange bitters look like optional component as it most likely risks being overpowered by Chartreuse.
Chanteuse
- 30 ml green Chartreuse,
- 15 ml fresh lemon juice,
- 3-4 dashes orange bitters (Angostura orange bitters),
- sparkling wine (Zonin Prosecco Brut).
Mix all ingredients except sparkling wine in Champagne flutes. Top with ice-cold dry prosecco or Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist (optional).
Green Chartreuse and lemon juice enjoy each other in a great partnership, but dry prosecco is a key component in the cocktail’s flavour. It adds another dimension to taste so liqueur’s spiciness and lemon’s tartness get delicate dry wine background as well as additional lightness thanks to wine’s carbonation.
Honestly, Chartreuse is a real winner here. The cocktail reveals all sides of its versatile bouquet while other Chanteuse ingredients help to discover flavours from more then hundred components used in the liqueur composition – anise, licorice, lavender, angelica, hyssop and many more.
That’s a nice aperitif and a teaser for everyone who will intend counting how many flavours human can smell simultaneously.
By the way, «chanteuse» is a French word means «female singer»…