What happens when you find yourself in 1084 amongst a group of men in the Chartreuse Valley in the French Alps?
You went there for complete solitude, with a vague hope of meeting your god. There was no sex involved (allegedly), and you wore extremely uncomfortable habits that allowed the wind to chill your nether regions out of existence.
And to top it all, you have to endure this penance day in, day out because the Roman church has deemed your body sinful and unclean.
Your leader, Bruno from Cologne, aims to establish a monastery. This monastery later became the main base for the Carthusian Order.
Bruno, for better or worse for the poor sods he left behind, was called back to Rome in 1090 and never returned.
The Order he left behind was formidable – it endured almost unlike anything else in European history.
The monks continued living a life of devotion and discipline through the centuries, with no reform being made.
Research documents I’ve looked at call it extraordinary. I think it’s a kind of bloody-mindedness in the most positive sense.
No matter your views on the religion, you have to admire the Carthusian monks’ strong determination.
To push through such adversity under almost impossible conditions – we are talking the 11th century after all – has to be commended.
Monks being monks, in order to deal with such harsh bodily-denying disciplines, they resorted to concocting, under the guise of medicine (nudge nudge, wink wink), their own highly inebriating alcoholic beverages; specifically, Chartreuse.
No one knows exactly when it first appeared. The historical records are purposefully vague about the details.
However, it didn’t emerge from nothing. Chartreuse is part of a group of regional French spirits, including Armagnac, Calvados, and Kirsch.
Each one comes from a deep understanding of the place. This knowledge has grown over centuries thanks to steady advances in distillation technology.
So what’s this got to do with foraging and plants? One ingredient in Chartreuse is garden angelica. Its root, stem, seeds, and leaves are all used as flavouring agents.
The monks extracted an essential oil from the dried roots. The roots hold volatile aromatic compounds. These are what give Chartreuse its strong, herbal, and slightly sweet character.
The oil does more than add flavour. It also acts as a natural preservative. It’s anti-microbial and antioxidant. So, it’s both practical and aromatic.
My plant mentor, Frank Cook, often spoke of using analogue plants. If you have garden angelica nearby, you’ll also find wild angelica. It shares sweetness but has a slightly stronger bitter taste.
If you enjoy making tasty, quaffable herbal elixirs, think about which plants are often grown in gardens. You can then look for similar plants in the wild.
In this example, wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris) would usurp garden angelica (Angelica archangelica).
If you enjoy a bit of bootlegging, I hear Portuguese alembics are great for this. You might want to experiment with these wild analogues while making your mind-bending drinks.
Unfortunately, due to my past debauched lifestyle, I can no longer drink alcohol.
These days, the strongest substances I ingest are coffee and a little nicotine when I sneak a vape while my sweetheart isn’t watching.