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what:
French herbal liqueur
where:
Le Rostand
6 Place Edmond Rostand
Paris
when:
early spring
character:
Chartreuse is, for reasons beyond the obvious, the emerald jewelry of the
bar. It is green, yes; but then all sorts of things are green in color—green
ties and green dresses and green cashmere holiday sweaters—yet none
are quite so curiously green, so intriguingly green, so beguilingly green
as the emerald. Perhaps because it is so rare. Perhaps because it is so
striking. Perhaps because its effect is so difficult to balance (to wear
emerald jewelry is to inevitably become the woman with the emeralds).
Yet there is something undeniably haunting about the emerald. Something
old; something lingering; something almost disturbing about its shape-shifting
beauty. Because of this one is advised to use it only in small doses—a
tiny ring, perhaps, or as accompaniment to other jewels. Many will find
it irresistibly beautiful. Many more will find it too intense, too eccentric,
too startling. Yet none will miss it, none will forget it, none will be
able to look for very long at-, or very long away from this most intoxicating
of jewels.
tastes like:
An old, delicately
preserved love letter to your grandmother. Not from your grandfather.
pairs nicely with:
Dubious intentions, walking old city streets at midnight following a long
rain, and walking old city streets at midnight following a long rain and
a glass of Chartreuse; painted slag glass lamps; ‘Isabella, or the
Pot of Basil’ by Keats, and Isabella and the Pot of Basil by
John White Alexander; any deco lamp with a statuette holding a globe-shaped
glass shade; Lady Chatterley, Madame Bovary, Clarissa Dalloway, and the
entire Marchmain family; Tiffany Style stained glass lamps in general, flipping
through old postcards in an antique shop and finding one addressed to someone
with your name, in the city you live, postmarked fifty years (to the day)
before you were born, with a hastily written message warning you by all
means do not to take that upcoming trip to Paris, and Edith Wharton’s
“The Eyes,” as read by Ralph Cosham.