Honeyed herbs from the yellow Chartreuse, bitter-fresh grapefruit and a dry gin backbone. The drink is pale gold, crisp and quietly complex.
1½ oz
London dry gine.g. Tanqueray · Gordon's · Beefeater · Bombay Sapphire · Sipsmith
½ oz
yellow ChartreuseBuy on Amazon →
½ oz
grapefruit juice freshly squeezed
¼ oz
lemon juice
¼ oz
simple syrup
Garnish: Grapefruit twist · Ice: Served up, no ice
Cloister
Dry and herbal with honeyed sweetness, bitter grapefruit and bright lemon. Medium to strong.
The Cloister looks and tastes like a pre-Prohibition classic, but it is younger than it seems. It is usually traced to Thomas Mario, the food and drink editor of Playboy, who published it in a Playboy bar book in the early 1970s. The name refers to the Carthusian monks who make Chartreuse in their monastery in the French Alps.
For decades the drink was little known. It found new fans during the craft cocktail revival, when bartenders began to use yellow Chartreuse more widely. Its structure is a classic sour, with the liqueur adding both sweetness and herbal depth, and grapefruit giving it a sharper, more bitter edge than lemon alone would.
It looks like one, but it was published in the early 1970s by Playboy food and drink editor Thomas Mario.
Honeyed, herbal and floral, softer and sweeter than green Chartreuse.
You can, but the drink loses its bitter freshness; add a little more syrup if you do.
The perfect sound
A quiet moment of herbal calm in a monastery garden.
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