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herbaltropicalrefreshing

Chartreuse Swizzle

Green Chartreuse, pineapple, lime and falernum swizzled with crushed ice — a herbal tiki drink with a liqueur as its base.

Difficulty
medium
Prep time
4 min
Strength
18% ABV
Glassware
Collins glass or swizzle glass
Base
liqueur led
Serves
1

Related drinks

Ingredients

  • Green Chartreuse
    45ml
  • Pineapple juice
    30ml
  • Fresh lime juice
    23ml
  • Falernum
    15ml

Garnish: Mint sprig, Grated nutmeg

Scale for a party

Method

  1. Add the Chartreuse, pineapple juice, lime juice and falernum to a tall glass.
  2. Fill the glass two-thirds full with crushed ice.
  3. Swizzle: hold a swizzle stick or bar spoon between your palms, push it to the bottom and spin it back and forth while moving it up and down, until the outside of the glass frosts.
  4. Top up with more crushed ice to a mound, and garnish with a mint sprig and a grating of nutmeg.
Compared with the IBA specification

The International Bartenders Association lists this drink among its New Era. Its specification is a standard for training and competition — one reference, not the only right way to make the drink.

CocktailHQ

  • 45ml green chartreuse
  • 30ml pineapple juice
  • 22.5ml fresh lime juice
  • 15ml falernum

IBA

  • 45 ml Green Chartreuse
  • 30 ml Fresh Pineapple Juice
  • 22.5 ml Fresh Lime Juice
  • 15 ml Falernum

IBA ingredients as published at iba-world.com, retrieved 29 October 2026.

Allergen information

None of this recipe's ingredients, as commonly made, is associated with the fourteen major allergens.

Products vary, and this describes ingredients rather than the bottles you use — check every label. It is not a guarantee that a drink is suitable for anyone with an allergy. How this is worked out

Your version

— private notes, kept on this device

Change a measure, note what you changed and why. It stays in this browser — it is not sent to CocktailHQ, not counted by analytics, and not shown to anyone.

Your measures
How you rate your version

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Crushed ice

    Household swap: Ice cubes in a clean tea towel, bashed with a rolling pin.

  • Swizzle stick

    Household swap: A bar spoon or chopstick spun between your palms.

Glass and ice

Crushed ice, packed and mounded

Crushed ice chills fast and melts fast, so the drink lengthens as you drink it — which is what a julep or a tiki drink is built for.

Cubes would melt slower and leave it stronger and less cold.

About 113ml poured over the ice

The recipe's collins glass is typically 350–450ml.

Workable:
rocks glass, highball glass, wine glass
Unsuitable:
coupe glass, nick & nora glass, martini glass, champagne flute

Needs a glass of about 188–225ml brimful.

How this is worked out
  • A drink with no ice needs a little of the glass left empty — about a tenth — so it can be carried without spilling and has room for aroma.
  • Filled to the top with cubes or packed crushed ice, roughly half to three-fifths of a glass is left for the drink.
  • A drink built in the glass dilutes from the ice already there, so its melt water is not added on top.
  • One large cube takes up roughly 65–125ml, from a sphere to a 5cm cube.
  • Glass capacities are brimful and vary by maker — your own glass, measured with water, is the figure to trust.

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Green Chartreuse

    Best substitute: Yellow Chartreuse

    This is the base in this drink.

    Quantity: Same amount, and 5ml less falernum

    Flavour impact: Sweeter, softer and more honeyed, with less herbal bite.

    What changes

    Yellow Chartreuse moves the drink a long way — more sweetness, less bitterness, less intensity and less strength. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.

    Sweetness ↑
    The drink will land sweeter, which also makes it read as less sharp and slightly heavier even though nothing else changed.
    Bitterness ↓
    Losing bitterness makes the drink rounder and more approachable, and takes away the structure that stopped it tasting like squash.
    Intensity ↓
    A milder ingredient gets buried by whatever else is in the glass, and the drink loses the thing it was named for.
    Strength ↓
    Yellow Chartreuse is 40% ABV against 55%. A weaker bottle makes a softer drink — genuinely pleasant, but a different drink from the one written down.
    Character
    Both are herbal, and you lose vegetal, intense and medicinal-sweet, and you gain honeyed, saffron and gently sweet. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Cut the syrup or sugar back — start by halving it and taste before adding any back.
    • A dash of bitters restores some of the backbone without changing anything else.
    • Increase the measure, or accept a gentler drink and reduce the components competing with it.
    • Pour a fraction more, or shorten the dilution slightly, to keep the shape of the original.
    Moderate confidenceMakes a different drinkBecomes a variation

Make it better

  • Swizzle until the glass frosts on the outside. That is the sign it is cold and diluted enough to drink.
  • Fresh pineapple juice makes a frothier, brighter drink than carton juice.
  • Green Chartreuse is expensive and sometimes rationed. Yellow Chartreuse makes a sweeter, softer version.
  • Adjust sweetness gradually and taste as you go — it's easy to add more syrup, impossible to take it out.

Rescue this drink

Too strong
Not swizzled long enough. Keep going until the glass frosts, and top with more ice.
Medicinal
Add 5ml more pineapple to round the Chartreuse.
It separates in the glassgeneral guidance
A built drink with several ingredients relies on the pour to mix it, and denser components — syrups, purées, juice concentrates — sink. Give it one full stir from the bottom up with a bar spoon before garnishing. If it separates again while standing, it wants building over more ice rather than more stirring.
Too weak or waterygeneral guidance
Add a splash more of the base spirit rather than extra mixer. For stirred or built drinks, over-dilution from ice is the usual cause — try a shorter stir or fewer, larger ice cubes.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.

Make ahead & storage

Make to order

Make this one to order — it is built on crushed ice, which cannot be prepared ahead. You can still measure and group the ingredients in advance, which is most of the work.

Fresh lime juice:
Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.

Make it lighter

As written, about 2.6 UK units at roughly 18% ABV once diluted. 2 of six ways to lighten it work for this recipe. Units are an estimate of what is in the glass, not advice about drinking.

  • A smaller serveSupportedabout 1.8 units, 18% ABV

    Every measure at two-thirds. The balance is untouched because the proportions are; the only trade-off is a smaller drink — use a smaller glass so it doesn't look stingy.

    • 30ml Green Chartreuse
    • 20ml Pineapple Juice
    • 15ml Lime Juice
    • 10ml Falernum
  • A longer serveSupportedsame 2.6 units, 10.8% ABV

    Spirit, citrus and sugar topped with soda is how a sour becomes a Collins or a fizz — a well-trodden route. Note: the same alcohol in more liquid — weaker per sip, not fewer units.

    • 45ml Green Chartreuse
    • 30ml Pineapple Juice
    • 23ml Lime Juice
    • 15ml Falernum
    • 75ml Soda Water
Not recommended for this drink: reverse the ratio; split the base with a lower-strength modifier; give it the spritz treatment; replace part of it with an alcohol-free bottle
  • Reverse the ratio. There is no wine-strength modifier — vermouth, sherry or Lillet — to swap measures with.
  • Split the base with a lower-strength modifier. The recipe has no wine-strength modifier to move measure into, and choosing one for it would be writing a new drink.
  • Give it the spritz treatment. There is no distilled spirit at the base to swap for sparkling wine.
  • Replace part of it with an alcohol-free bottle. No bottle in this recipe has an alcohol-free counterpart in the catalogue, and we won't name one we haven't written up.

Or make something lighter by design: Green Tea Swizzle. All lighter drinks

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

sweet, sharp, light — a sour-structured drink served over crushed ice.

Sweet

Dry → Sweet

Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.

What drives it: Falernum — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Sharp

Soft → Sharp

Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.

What drives it: Fresh lime juice — supplies the acidity.

Faintly bitter

Gentle → Bitter

A bitter edge you would only notice if you looked for it.

What drives it: Green Chartreuse — provides the bitterness.

Light

Light → Rich

Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.

What drives it: Green Chartreuse — adds most of the weight.

Bold

Delicate → Bold

Bold. This drink is the loudest thing on the table.

What drives it: Green Chartreuse — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Fresh herbLeads

    From Green Chartreuse

  • Citrus peelLeads

    From Fresh lime juice, Falernum

  • MintLeadsBefore the first sip

    From Mint sprig

  • Baking spiceLeadsBefore the first sip

    From Falernum, Grated nutmeg

  • Anise

    From Green Chartreuse

Aromas marked as sitting above the drink reach you before the first sip — skipping that garnish changes the drink more than its size suggests.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — open one for the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet
    Likely cause
    Falernum is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut falernum by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced.
    The trade-off
    That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds — overshoot and the drink tips into sour.
    Falernum: how it behaves
  • It's too sour
    Likely cause
    Fresh lime juice varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
    What to change
    Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
    What that does
    Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight.
    The trade-off
    Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry instead. Small additions, tasting between each, are slower but cheaper than a rebuild.
    Lime Juice: how it behaves
  • It's too strong
    Likely cause
    Green Chartreuse dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and the proportion of spirit to everything else is the point of it.
    What to change
    Give it a minute on the ice before drinking, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. For a lasting change, pour a smaller measure of the base and keep the rest of the spec the same.
    What that does
    Alcohol presence drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.
    The trade-off
    Go too far and it stops being the drink it was: spirit-forward drinks lose their character faster than long drinks do when watered.
    Building in the glass: what it does to a drink
  • It doesn't smell of anything
    Likely cause
    The aroma you are missing is probably mint and baking spice, which sits above the drink rather than in it — skipping or under-expressing the garnish removes it entirely.
    What to change
    Express the peel over the surface with the skin facing the drink, then drop it in. Herbs go in the glass, not on the side.
    What that does
    Aroma arrives before flavour does, so the whole drink reads as more intense without a single measure changing.
    The trade-off
    The oil does land in the drink, though — an over-expressed peel adds a faint bitterness to the first mouthful.
    Garnish techniques
  • It tastes one-dimensional
    Likely cause
    With 4 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a drink this simple is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
    What to change
    Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
    What that does
    More going on at the same strength and sweetness.
    The trade-off
    Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one — and a better bottle costs more.
    How the Tiki family is built
  • The garnish is all I can taste
    Likely cause
    The grated nutmeg sits right under your nose, so it arrives before the drink does. Ground spice is very concentrated, and a heavy grating coats the whole surface.
    What to change
    Grate once or twice, from a height, over half the surface rather than all of it.
    What that does
    The garnish frames the drink rather than replacing it.
    The trade-off
    Too little and the drink loses its first impression — the garnish is doing a real aromatic job here, so ease off rather than leave it out.
    Garnish techniques
  • The ice melts too quickly
    Likely cause
    Crushed ice has an enormous surface area, so it is meant to melt — but a half-filled glass of it, or ice that was already wet, turns the drink to water in minutes.
    What to change
    Pack the glass to the top and mound more on as it settles. Crush the ice just before serving and keep it in the freezer until then.
    What that does
    The drink stays at its best for longer before the last third goes thin.
    The trade-off
    More ice in the glass means a little less drink fits, and a large cube chills more slowly at first.
    The ice guide
  • The garnish wilts before I serve it
    Likely cause
    Mint sprig loses water at room temperature, so a garnish cut or picked well ahead looks tired by the time a round goes out.
    What to change
    Keep sprigs standing in cold water in the fridge, like cut flowers, and garnish each drink as it is served.
    What that does
    A garnish that looks fresh and still gives off its aroma.
    The trade-off
    Garnishing at the last moment is one more step per drink during service — set the garnishes out in order before guests arrive.
    Garnish techniques

Something else wrong? Open this drink in the Recipe Doctor.

Taste profile

Sweetness
3/5
Sourness
3/5
Bitterness
1/5
Strength
3/5
Fruitiness
3/5
Freshness
4/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate only
Calories
225 kcal
Sugar
20 g
Carbohydrates
21 g
Alcohol units (UK)
2.64
US standard drinks
1.48
ABV
18%
Serving size
146 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~145 kcal from alcohol, ~80 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 169–281 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Assumes green Chartreuse at 55% ABV with about 25g sugar per 100ml, falernum at 11%, and about 30% dilution from crushed ice.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Yellow Chartreuse Swizzle

    Yellow Chartreuse in place of green.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A built build: a sour-structured liqueur-led-based drink, served over crushed ice — clean in the mouth.

Sour-structured

Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.

  • Base

    Green Chartreuse

  • Modifier

    Pineapple juice

  • Sour element

    Fresh lime juice

  • Sweet element

    Falernum

Drinks built this way are collected as the Tiki family.

Technique

built

Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.

The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.

What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.

Also involves swizzling.

Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →

Dilution

In the glass, as you drink

Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Over crushed ice

Collins glass or swizzle glass · 190ml

Crushed ice chills and dilutes faster than cubes and keeps doing both while you drink, which is exactly what a drink built on strong flavours wants.

Texture and aroma

CleanMint sprig

Nothing here thickens or aerates the drink — it is as light in the mouth as the liquid itself.

These components are doing aromatic work: you meet them at the nose before the first sip, and they shape how everything underneath reads.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Chartreuse Swizzle

Created by Marcovaldo Dionysos in San Francisco in the early 2000s; added to the IBA's New Era list.

Matches the IBA spec: 45ml green Chartreuse, 30ml pineapple, 22.5ml lime and 15ml falernum.

Family

Tiki

Two or more rums · two or more citrus · an aromatic sweetener (orgeat, falernum) · crushed ice.

1980 onwardOther modern classics drinks →

On drinks history

Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.

History and culture →

Try this next

  • Rum Swizzle

    You may like this because it shares a tropical-forward profile with the Chartreuse Swizzle, but uses rum instead of liqueur-led.

  • Queen's Park Swizzle

    You may like this because it shares a refreshing-forward profile with the Chartreuse Swizzle, but uses rum instead of liqueur-led.

  • Fernandito

    You may like this because it shares a refreshing taste profile with the Chartreuse Swizzle.

Use up your ingredients

Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

How far a bottle goes

Drinks per bottle, which bottle runs out first, batching — and the cost, at your own prices.

Recipe confidence

A recent drink with a known creator and a stable spec.

High confidence