“Dealer’s choice with Chartreuse.” That was Cody Pruitt’s order at New York’s best cocktail bars for a long time. And he’s pretty sure that it yielded his first encounter with the Champs-Élysées at Death & Co. over a decade ago, probably made for him by Joaquín Simó. Of course, through the haze of memory, it’s hard to be sure. Plus, says Pruitt, “that was not the only cocktail I had that night, for sure.”
The Champs-Élysées is a brandy-and-Chartreuse sour that appears in Drinks Long and Short by Nina Toye and A.H. Adair, which was published in London in 1925. Like all recipes in the entertaining manual, the spec yields six servings, calling for three large measures of brandy and one of the ever-potent Chartreuse (green, we assume), along with sweetened lemon juice and a mere dash of Angostura bitters. Given the Champs-Élysées’ period of origin, Cognac base and inclusion of an iconic French liqueur, the drink bears a family resemblance to a Sidecar.
At Libertine in New York’s West Village, where Pruitt is the managing partner, the bistro’s beverage program is focused on French wine and spirits made by small producers. The cocktail menu is short, focusing on their (very Frenchified) versions of the Martini, Negroni and Old-Fashioned. Pruitt knew he wanted a Chartreuse Sour on the menu, but he “didn’t want to translate a Last Word to French.” With such a brandy-driven program, turning to a historical recipe that already included both Cognac and Chartreuse made the most sense. The research paid off: The Champs-Élysées has been jockeying to be the second most popular cocktail at Libertine, behind ever-popular Martinis.
Though Pruitt appreciates the original Champs-Élysées, he always felt there was a lack of clarity in its overall flavor. “I’ve always loved the cocktail, but I had kind of struggled with finding, well, a delicious version of it,” he says. So he set about making it his own, and the resulting recipe diverges heavily from the original.
First off, he tackled the base spirit. Though Libertine carries many fine Cognacs, Pruitt just didn’t feel that the famed French brandy delivered the richness this drink needed. Texturally, they tended to be too thin, and they contributed too much acidity to the cocktail. Instead, he turned to Cognac’s Gascon cousin, Armagnac. “Armagnac has a little more robustness, a little more roughness around the edges,” says Pruitt. “You can temper [it] with various sweeteners, modifiers, as well as the Chartreuse itself.” He’s used two expressions from Pellehaut, the Sélection and the Réserve, and he says both expressions work beautifully in the cocktail.
Another big change that Pruitt decided to make was switching the Chartreuse from the green rendition to the yellow one. (To be fair, neither the 1925 recipe nor the one published later in the Savoy Cocktail Book specify green, but most modern bartenders assume green was used in these early versions.) This revelation came about through a surprising drink development process—Pruitt had originally attempted to turn the Champs-Élysées into a milk punch, to which, he says, green Chartreuse was not well-suited. “I found the green ended up leaving a bitterness and a harshness to it,” and he liked the way the honey notes in the yellow Chartreuse worked with the milk. Though he eventually abandoned the milk punch concept and decided instead to return to a more traditional variation on the Champs-Élysées (i.e., a shaken sour), he kept the liqueur.
Pruitt didn’t want to change the lemon as the main source of acidity, but he wanted to add another source of acid, as well as flavor. Pineapple skewed tropical, and grapefruit would have been too bitter. “I wanted to add something that was clearly an acidulating element, but that I could also back up with a little more floral notes,” he says. He realized that yuzu, a current culinary darling, had the perfect level of “florality” to play off the Chartreuse. Pruitt makes a syrup with equal parts pure yuzu juice and cane sugar to introduce that flavor to the drink.
Finally, the bitters. Pruitt’s Champs-Élysées features Libertine’s house NOLA bitters, which are made by combining two parts Creole bitters with one part Angostura. The former delivers cherry, quinine and anise notes while the latter delivers classic bitter baking spices.
Pruitt loves that the Champs-Élysées is approachable enough to act as a gateway to exploring the whole range of products from Chartreuse. Often, guests who enjoy the drink “end up looking at our selection of Chartreuses, which is fairly substantial, including the fruit liqueurs,” he says. He also appreciates that the drink is perennial—a necessity for a menu that doesn’t change often and on which the Champs-Élysées is the sour—there’s nothing about the drink that ties it firmly to any one time of year. “It’s a Sidecar for all seasons,” says Pruitt.
