4.8 from 33 reviews

The Original Verdant Lady (Green Chartreuse Cocktail with Gin & Mint)

Name: The *Original* Verdant Lady (Green Chartreuse Cocktail with Gin & Mint)
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons gin (such as Hendrick's) ((1 1/2 ounces) ); 1 tablespoon fresh, strained lime juice ((1/2 ounce) ); 1 ½ teaspoons simple syrup ((1/4 ounce) ); 1 teaspoon Green Chartreuse ((1/6 ounce) ); 4 large mint leaves, plus a sprig for garnish (optional); ice cubes

By Alanna Taylor-Tobin on Mar 9, 2016 (updated Apr 4, 2025) / 59 Comments Jump to Recipe

The Verdant Lady is a strong yet refreshingly complex cocktail made with gin, green Chartreuse, fresh mint, and lime in under 5 minutes. Shake the ingredients together with ice, strain, and serve it up. Sip, swoon, repeat.

refreshing and delicious Verdant Lady {Green Chartreuse Cocktail with Gin & Mint}

If you're looking for a cocktail made with gin and green chartreuse, you're going to fall for the Verdant Lady. It's stunningly herbaceous and crisp thanks to green chartreuse and a hit of fresh mint. Tangy lime juice offsets the sweetness from simple syrup,and gin complements these flavors beautifully.

A San Francisco bartender made this delicious drink for me back in 2007 and kindly let me write down her recipe. I tweaked the formula to my own taste and named it The Verdant Lady. Over the years, it's gained a bit of a cult following with Chartreuse lovers everywhere.

Today when you Google "Verdant Lady," loads of others pop up. She even has her own subreddit and a YouTube video! But this is the original recipe.

If herbaceous drinks are your thing, you might enjoy some other favorites on TBG such as Honey & Hearth (yellow chartreuse and bourbon cocktail).

Browse more delicious drink recipes here.

tall stemmed glasses of Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail}

The Birth of the Verdant Lady

I fell in love with this cocktail in 2007 when I first tried it at Alembic in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.

I asked the bartender for something similar but different to my usual beverage, The Mediterranean Homesick Blues, a light and fizzy gin cocktail kissed with cardamom, rose, and lemon, which I adapted here. She shook me up a creation of her own, strained it into a coupe, and garnished it with a mint leaf.

I took a sip: icy bits kissed my lips, fresh mint wafted cool and clean, and a bouquet of herbs and spices punched me in the kisser. It was the classiest cocktail I'd ever met.

I asked the name of the drink, to which she replied, "Femme Fatale." Fitting. Thinking I could simply look up the recipe online, I tumbled into a taxi and headed home. But the interwebs told a different story. There was no gin and chartreuse-based Femme Fatale to be found, only something sweet and fruity made with SoCo that was the antithesis of the drink I sought.

Luckily, we tracked down the bartender a second time, and again she shook up the most ambrosial liquid I'd ever tasted. And this time, she let me write down the formula on a coaster so I could recreate it.

After a couple of small tweaks, I dubbed it The Verdant Lady and shared it here on TBG over 10 years ago. It's become the most popular cocktail recipe on this site to date.

Ingredients

The Verdant Lady uses 5 ingredients.

Gin forms the base of the cockail. I usually use Hendricks's gin, which has a softer flavor profile than some other gins, but any gin will work.
Green chartreuse adds sweetness and complexity.
Simple syrup adds sweetness. You can easily make this by combining equal parts boiling water and sugar, stirring to dissolve the sugar and allowing the syrup to cool to room temperature or chill until cold. You can omit the simple syrup for a less-sweet drink.
Fresh mint shaken with the drink adds fresh flavor. I use regular spearmint, but you could try other flavorful mints instead. Or try using basil or tarragon for a different flavor hit.
Lime juice offsets the sweetness of the chartreuse and simple syrup. Be sure to use fresh juice. Lemon juice will work if you don't have lime; just add it to your taste since lemon tends to be more acidic and less sweet than lime.
Ice cubes get shaken with the drink ingredients, then strained, making the drink ice cold and flecked with shards that melt deliciously as you imbibe. If you prefer a softer drink, pour the Verdant Lady over a tall glass filled with ice and top it off with fizzy water.

Method

This drink is so easy to make in under 5 minutes.

hands and shaker Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail} — Combine the gin, green chartreuse, simple syrup, mint, and lime in a cocktail shaker.

shaking cocktail Verdant Lady — Add the ice and shake vigorously for 30 seconds.

bottle of Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail} — The ice and mint will break apart, flavoring and aerating the drink.

Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail} being poured — Strain the drink into a chilled coupe. I used some beautiful vintage glasses that a friend gifted me.

Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail} in glasses — Garnish with mint and serve.

What is Chartreuse? Yellow vs. Green

Chartreuse comes in yellow and green varieties. Green chartreuse is a bright green herbal liquor made by Carthusian monks in the Grenoble region of France since the 1700's. The spirit usually comes in wine bottle-sized containers and costs a fair sum. Yet the price is reasonable when you consider that 130 different types of herbs, spices, and botanicals go into making the naturally-colored libation. It tastes a little bit like old-school medicine, in a good way. Monk medicine. It has bittersweet notes of star anise, spices, and green herbs such as basil, mint, and tarragon. It tastes fresh and green, but warming and hearty at the same time, like a liqueur and bitters all rolled into one.

Yellow chartreuse has a similar flavor profile, but it gets sweetness and dilution from honey and saffron, which give it its warm hue. I've since shared a yellow chartreuse cocktail with bourbon and ginger, the Honey and Hearth, which is the cool-weather cousin of the Verdant Lady, perfect for sipping on a brisk fall day.

Both types of Chartreuse are often sipped on their own as a digestif, either chilled or at room temperature. But the green stuff, as I had learned, also pairs perfectly with gin, which ups the botanical ante, allowing the flavors to blossom. (If you're Chartreuse-curious, read this great article from Serious Eats, which will make you seriously thirsty.)

stemmed glass of Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail}

What else to do with Green Chartreuse Liqueur?

Now that I've got a bottle of chartreuse, I'm dying to finally try it in ice cream, truffles, and Verte Chaude: chartreuse hot chocolate, popular with the French après-ski crowd. I nibbled a piece of chocolate today with my Verdant Lady and the combination was surprisingly spot-on.

And I'm also looking forward to trying the Last Word Cocktail, another ginny Chartreuse number with Luxardo in the mix. Because a lady always needs to have the last word.

glass of Verdant Lady {Chartreuse, Gin & Mint Cocktail}

Bojon appétit! For more Bojon Gourmet in your life, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest, purchase my award-winning gluten-free baking cookbook Alternative Baker, or subscribe to receive new posts via email. And if you make this green chartreuse cocktail, I’d love to know. Leave a comment and rating below, and tag your Instagram snaps @The_Bojon_Gourmet and #bojongourmet.

4.76 from 33 reviews