The Story Behind The Swampwater

Traditionally employed as a modifier in scant amounts, the early aughts cocktail renaissance taught us that Chartreuse also makes a hell of a base cocktail ingredient. But long before the Piña Verde and Chartreuse Swizzle came along, there was a simple, refreshing blend of Green Chartreuse, pineapple, and lime juice that the brand dubbed “The Swampwater.”

The Swampwater represents a strange intersection of two worlds: the kitschy, playful, often-maligned disco era of cocktails; and Green Chartreuse, the prestigious, hundreds-years-old, mysterious herbal liqueur made by Carthusian monks in the French Alps.

Obscure liqueurs like Midori, blue curaçao, and Southern Comfort were an integral part of cocktail culture in the 1970s and ‘80s, and Green Chartreuse’s legacy makes it a bit of an outlier in the disco liqueur canon. Nonetheless, Chartreuse’s U.S. marketing team changed the narrative for a brief moment by mixing it with pineapple and lime juice, and going all-in on a Swampwater-centric ad campaign.

This all came during a time when Chartreuse was experiencing a bit of a sales slump in the States. In a drastic pivot from the brand’s previous marketing tactics of playing up its monastic lineage and secret recipe, Chartreuse devised a plan to pitch a party-ready batched cocktail with a tipsy alligator as its mascot. The ads touted Swampwater as “an exciting new potion supercharged with 110 proof Green Chartreuse,” and urged readers to throw their own Swampwater parties, insisting that “many a match has been made while nipping our naughty nectar.”

Chartreuse even launched a Swampwater party kit as part of the campaign, which came with 12 branded Mason jars (the recommended serving glass for the cocktail), napkins, postcard invitations, and a “floor-sized Swampwater Party Game to play as you slurp.” The game required players to roll a set of green-tinted foam dice and navigate one of six mini alligators through a cartoonish swamp scene in a race to the finish.

Since that time, Chartreuse has found solid footing as a staple of cocktail culture, whether as a drink’s base ingredient or a modifier. As for the Swampwater, though, many modern iterations bear a slightly tweaked spec, especially given the original recipe’s inherent sweetness. Some up the lime juice, some add vodka to cut the cocktail’s flabbiness, and others toss blended basil into the mix. Feel free to toy with the template to make your own version of Swampwater — any way you choose to stir it up, the drink will have “more bang than a Wallbanger,” and one bottle of Green Chartreuse generally yields a full gallon of Swampwater.