To the Chartreuse Mountains we go!

Adding Bonal to your cocktails at-home repertoire

Several years ago when I was working at Oleana I was introduced to a French aperitif that has now become a staple in my liquor cabinet at home. The liqueur is Bonal Gentiane-Quina, often simply referred to as Bonal.

Bonal reigns from the Savoie department in southeastern France, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. The original Bonal distillery was just south of the city of Chambéry, the largest city in the department sitting at the foot of the French Alps.

Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, 📸 from Haus Alpenz

The creative mind behind this spicy, earthy aperitif was a man named Hyppolite Bonal who was sent to live with the Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse Monastery when he was just 12 years old in 1838. Of course, the Grand Chartreuse Monastery is famous for its creation of the herbal liqueur, Chartreuse, which monks began whipping up in 1737. The monastery and its monks, located just north of the city of Grenoble and nestled deep in the Chartreuse Mountains, are said to have been given the recipe for an “elixir of long life” as early as 1605. For the next 132 years, the monks tweaked and toyed with the formula until eventually settling on a recipe of 130 herbs, plants, and flowers from the region—including several secret ingredients that still remain a secret to this day—all combined in a wine alcohol base. In 1840, the monks amended what is the “Elixir Végétal de la Grande Chartreuse,” and created a milder version based on the original called Green Chartreuse (110 proof) and a sweeter version called Yellow Chartreuse (80 proof).¹

So, our boy Hyppolite grows up to become the Abbey’s doctor and after studying medicine and pharmacology, moves to the neighboring village of Saint Laurent du Pont to work as a pharmacist. Lucky for us, Hyppolite liked to go on walks in the Chartreuse Mountains and given his profession, he started to collect and test a lot of the wild plants and herbs in the area to see which had digestive or medicinal qualities.

All of this led him to create his namesake wine in 1865—Bonal!

When you think about it, it was almost lucky happenstance, or the right place at the right time, that Hyppolite decided to take his meandering, contemplative walks in this area where he found flowers and plants like hyssops, arnica, thyme, lemon balm, and peppermint. Many of the same ingredients in Chartreuse, made their way into Hyppolite’s white wine-based mistelle (a mistelle base is when alcohol is added to the juice of crushed grapes instead of allowing fermentation to produce alcohol).

So what is Bonal? It’s an infusion of gentian, cinchona (quinine), and a variety of herbs from the Grande Chartreuse mountains. The thing with many liqueurs and amari, especially those hailing from France and Italy, is that these 100–400-year-old recipes are still a secret with their exact ingredients and measurements carefully kept out of the public domain.

At this point, perhaps you are saying to yourself, “Okay cool, thanks for letting me know the ingredients, but what the fuck is gentian and cinchona?

Gentian is an herb, the root of which is used in medicines and is actually one of the most common bittering agents used in cocktails. If you have ever shaken Angostura bitters into your Old Fashioned—that dominant flavor is gentian. Who would’ve thought that you would get such bitterness from a beautiful strikingly blue-hued flower?

As for chinchona, this element comes from the bark of cinchona trees, which was originally discovered by the Quechua, a people indigenous to Peru and Bolivia. The Quechua found that when mixing the ground bark of the chinchona tree with sweetened water, it produced tonic water. The Jesuit missionaries to the region get their hands on this stuff, bring it back to Rome, and before you know it, quinine (which is the unextracted form) came into widespread use as a preventative for malaria and eventually making its way into tonics and aperitif wines.

All this talk about Bonal, but what does it taste like and how can you use it—right?

Bonal comes in at a midweight of 32 proof. Its dark amber and reddish-brown color might turn you off at first and make you think about the last time you were dumb enough or drunk enough, to take a shot of Jager. But don’t let that deter you! It has a slight menthol scent, akin to an alpine amaro, but it’s much more delicate and approachable. On the nose, it’s cherries and orange, ginger, and spice, with a licorice earthiness that comes through on the palate as well.  Its taste is bittersweet but milder than you might have imagined on first whiff.

Traditionally, Bonal has functioned as an aperitif served neat with a lemon twist, giving it its nickname “ouvre l’appétit/key to the appetite.” However, spritz season is nearly upon us and the few 70–80-degree days we’ve been teased in Boston, have had me thinking about new drinks to serve up in the coming months.

So here are three Bonal-inspired cocktails/aperitifs, tested and gabagool-approved. They’re all pretty simple to make and I’ve included suggestions on brands and styles when appropriate. I’ve started out with a nice easy-going Bonal Shandy, followed by a Bonal Spritz that will make you really feel like you’ve made an adult beverage, and ending with a more spirit forward, let’s get down to business Bonalgroni.

Shandy²

1.5 oz Bonal

1 oz fresh lemon juice

4 oz dry hard cider

+Serve it in a pint glass

La Première³

1.5 oz Bonal

1.5 oz Blanc Vermouth (I always use Dolin Vermouths so in this case I would suggest the Dolin Blanc Vermouth de Chambéry )

2-3oz Angostura bitters

Soda Water

+Serve it in a rocks glass with ice with a lemon twist

Bonalgroni⁴

1 oz gin (Two great options here— you could go with a classic dry London gin like Bombay or Tanqueray—or you could add another layer of complexity with a gin like Drumshanbo’s Gunpowder Irish Gin with Sardinian Citrus)

1 oz Bonal

¾ oz Lillet

4 dashes Eucalyptus bitters

Lemon twist

+Add the gin, bonal, lillet, and bitters in a cocktail mixing glass. Fill that glass with ice and stir. Strain it into a rocks glass with ice or straight up in a coupe with a lemon twist.

SALUT AND ENJOY!

1. Haus Alpenz, Bonal Gentiane-Quina

2. Rebekah Peppler, Apéritif

3. Peppler, Apéritif

4. David Lebovitz, Drinking French