Record sale in sight for 180-year-old bottle of Chartreuse

One of the very first bottles of Chartreuse . The Aguttes auction house is auctioning this Tuesday a one-litre bottle of the famous liqueur produced in the massif of the same name, north of Grenoble. Dusty and misshapen, the bottle is said to have been produced between 1840 and 1860, at the very beginning of the marketing of this herbal alcohol. It is the “first known model of a bottle of Chartreuse produced in the monastery distillery” , according to the auction house’s expertise .

The Carthusian monks only began producing their famous liqueur in 1840, two centuries after being given the formula for a mysterious Elixir of Long Life by a Parisian nobleman. The recipe had landed a hundred years earlier at the monastery of Grande Chartreuse, in Isère, where an apothecary brother had developed the potion with 130 plant species. But the upheavals of the Revolution and the Empire delayed the exploitation of the recipe, which was kept under wraps.

Bought by the Carthusians from the widow of a pharmacist from Grenoble who had recovered it, the formula of the drink was able to be exploited. In the middle of the ^19th century, the monks developed a green chartreuse from the elixir, and launched the trade. "Liqueur made in large chartreuse" , already mentions the small label with the pearly outline of the model put on sale by Aguttes. The bottle is estimated between 15,000 and 20,000 euros. An "irregularly shaped bottle with an asymmetrical profile" , in "very thick and quite dark blown glass".

Also read: Why, despite strong demand, the monks decided to stop “producing more” Chartreuse

Among many great vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines, this Tuesday's sale includes two other lots of Chartreuse, including a yellow one, produced in Spain in the 1960s. This version called Tarragona is inherited from the period when the congregation was expelled from the monastery of Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse to take refuge in this Catalan port city. The 70 cl bottle is estimated at between 800 and 1000 euros.

The price of the star bottle of the auction could break a record. In 2023, a lot of two bottles of Chartreuse VEP was sold for 35,000 euros .