Chartreuse vs. Fernet: Which Is the Better Digestif to End Your Epic Holiday Feast?
The meal is over, the night nearly done. Your host, sensing the need for a digestif, offers up one last drink. “You devil!” you think. There, staring at you, a choice between the herbal liqueurs Green Chartreuse and Fernet-Branca. Both are legendary nightcaps, touted for their medicinal powers and abilities to ease your body at the end of an epic feast. Experientially, the two couldn’t be more different, but for the fact that they’re both refined and punchy and devastatingly delicious ways to conclude the evening. And you can pick only one.
MADE BY More from Robb Report
Actual Carthusian monks  Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images |
MADE BY An actual Italian count, Niccolò Branca  Clemente Marmorino/Imageeconomica |
MADE SINCE 1737 | MADE SINCE 1845 |
DUBIOUS ORIGIN STORY The recipe is known as the Elixir of Long Life, allegedly given to the Carthusian monks by a marshal of King Henry IV’s artillery in 1605. The monks worked on | DUBIOUS ORIGIN STORY It was made by the Branca family but formulated, they claimed, by Dr. Fernet, a 100-year-old Swedish chemist who almost certainly never existed. |
NUMBER OF BOTANICALS 130-plus | NUMBER OF BOTANICALS “27,” with the real number closer to 40 |
ABV 55% | ABV 39% |
HOLLYWOOD CAMEO Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof: “Chartreuse! The only liquor so good they named a color after it.”  Maximum Film /Alamy Stock Photo | HOLLYWOOD CAMEO Michael Caine in The Dark Knight Rises: “Every year, I took a holiday. I went to Florence, there’s this café, on the banks of the Arno. Every fine evening, I’d sit there and order a Fernet-Branca.”  Bryan Bedder/Getty Images |
SURPRISING POPULARITY For all the French digestif culture, Chartreuse’s biggest market is the United States, thanks largely to the resurgence of cocktail bars. | SURPRISING POPULARITY Beloved in Argentina, where the national cocktail is Fernet and Coke. |
FANS SAY IT TASTES LIKE Incomparable herbaceous complexity and depth; the best liqueur ever made. | FANS SAY IT TASTES LIKE Deep, bright and herbaceous bitterness with a long peppermint finish. |
HATERS SAY IT TASTES LIKE A garden on fire; an angry and aggressive forest. | HATERS SAY IT TASTES LIKE Boiled wood chips; pre-Hippocratic medicine; an after-dinner mint in hell. |
WHAT IT COSTS $60 | WHAT IT COSTS $35 |
IF YOU DID WANT IT IN A COCKTAIL The Last Word, high proof and explosively delicious. Equal parts gin, lime juice, maraschino liqueur and Green Chartreuse.  Stock Adobe | IF YOU DID WANT IT IN A COCKTAIL The Toronto, the perfect last drink on a cold night. A couple ounces of rye whiskey, a teaspoon of simple syrup and a half ounce of Fernet-Branca.  Alex Casas/Stock Adobe |
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