The Slow Rise of Craft Cocktails in Paris

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/t-magazine/food/craft-cocktails-paris.html

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In her new book, “The New Paris: The People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement” ($30, amazon.com), the writer (and T contributor) Lindsey Tramuta documents the creative and cultural shift she has witnessed in the city in recent years. Below is a passage on the rise of craft cocktails there.

To say that cocktails are a new phenomenon in Paris is to overlook a culture of distilling liquors dating back to the 1800s, one that gained greater traction more than one hundred years later during American prohibition, when newly unemployed bartenders came to Europe in droves and landed in some of the continent’s best hotel bars. Then, there is the importance of two iconic bars that popularized the American-English cocktail tradition in the 1920s — Harry’s New York Bar and the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz Paris, renowned in equal parts for its creative cocktails, its literary and artistic clientele, and its star barman, Colin Peter Field, who revived the bar in 1994 after it went dormant in the mid-seventies. The Englishman and longtime expat in Paris has been called the “LeBron James of liquor, the Matisse of martinis, the Yves Saint Laurent of gimlets,” but he is, above all, instrumental to Paris’s presence on the cocktail map. It is a result of his skill and advocacy of bartending that the Ministry of Education began offering a formal degree in 2011 — a Meilleur Ouvrier de France program for barmen — meant to bolster the profession.

However, to trace the democratization of craft cocktails as drinks accessible to all, we have to look to 2007 and focus on a trio of bon vivants with a vision — a vision whose impact reverberated widely and rapidly, ushering in a scene that was once relegated to luxury hotels and executed poorly by no-name bars. Romée de Goriainoff, Olivier Bon, and Pierre-Charles Cros of the Experimental Group (EG) were a bellwether to Paris nightlife and the first to move cocktails beyond their traditional codes in hotel bars with their first and most famous bar, the Experimental Cocktail Club. They offered prohibition-era tipples, using top-shelf ingredients and liquors that Parisians wouldn’t find in their local supermarket or corner store (no more Absolut! no more Jack Daniels!) and concentrated their efforts entirely on taste. Hard spirits, more popular at the turn of the century, became the foundation for their cocktails.

They weren’t interested in replicating classic martinis, mojitos, and cosmos (although they wouldn’t refuse to make them if customers insisted). Instead, they pulled from what they learned, tasted, and experienced in Montreal, New York, and London, each with established cocktail cultures, in the early 2000s as young, impressionable, and most importantly, curious students. They wanted an environment that spoke to their generation — less formal and stuffy, more approachable — and drinks made with good products and offered at price points they could afford (ten to fifteen euros). They sourced the best-quality spirits and fruit, made their own syrups and bitters, and worked with the right designer to create an entirely new image of the cocktail bar. “Friends told us we were crazy, that Parisians didn’t drink cocktails, they drink wine!” says Bon. But all of that changed within six months of opening their first bar, and they’ve never looked back.

From their contribution emerged an entirely new cultural cachet. Beyond a well-edited and masterfully executed menu, the Experimental boys knew how to create atmosphere. Their first space and those that have followed — Prescription Cocktail Club, La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, Beef Club, Fish Club, the Grand Pigalle Hôtel (their first foray into the broader world of hospitality), and Night Flight in the Hôtel Bachaumont — have a unique look and feel, with exacting standards of decor, and are big on mood with intimate lighting, laid-back tunes, and plush furnishings made for late-night lingering. “They brought a wave of fresh air to the city and [the Experimental Cocktail Club] opened on a dead side street off of the rue Montorgueil, which changed the neighborhood. And they gave us a modern cocktail culture: good drinks, quality spirits, fresh ingredients, and a fun environment,” says Carina Soto Velasquez, the first employee and manager of the Experimental Cocktail Club.

They mastered their craft and have set their sights beyond French borders: the EG style can now be found in New York, London, and Ibiza, with more projects to follow. But perhaps their most enduring impact is the talent who graduated from their bars to launch their own unique spaces and concepts with a passion and creativity on par with that of the city’s best chefs.

Velasquez is perhaps the most well-known Experimental Cocktail Club alum, having left to start a mini empire of her own with Americans Josh Fontaine and Adam Tsou. Their company, Quixotic Projects, is the force behind Candelaria, the city’s first Mexican taqueria. With its unmarked cocktail den specializing in agave spirits, the restaurant-bar has consistently been recognized as a must-visit destination by Tales of the Cocktail and World’s 50 Best Bars, which ranked it ninth in 2013, the highest showing for a French cocktail bar. They spun gold out of Candelaria’s success and went on to open Glass in 2012, a rock ’n’ roll cocktail bar in Pigalle inspired by the New York bars in which Fontaine and Tsou had worked years prior; then the seafood-and-cocktails small-plates restaurant Le Mary Celeste in 2013; and Hero in 2015, a Korean-inspired canteen with inventive cocktails near the once-seedy Strasbourg Saint-Denis neighborhood. More than cocktail creators, the three have proven themselves crafters of experience: Each of their locations has strong good-times vibes and an environment that keeps locals sidling up to the bar.

Velasquez told me that one advantage to launching in the wake of an economic crisis was that longevity depended on exhibiting creativity in spades, and Quixotic Projects certainly excelled in that area. Only the people with the strongest ideas and the gumption to fight for them would find success. “Hospitality, gastronomy, and bartending have been part of French culture for ages. Today, we’re seeing a renaissance of artisanal professions that had been banalized for far too long,” she remarked.

What’s behind the movement? In her book Paris Cocktails, author Doni Belau sums it up beautifully. “Take the locavore movement, the artisanal quest, the DIY urge, and an ever-increasingly sophisticated palate. Combine that in a cocktail shaker with hundreds of specialized small-batch products made in France, garnish with passion and artistry, and you’ve got the Parisian craft bar movement.” And it makes sense. After all, the movement wasn’t created in a vacuum; it came on the heels of a food movement that flipped dining and consuming on its head. “In France, we’re lucky to have all the best products (it’s one of our biggest strengths!) and it allows us to be super creative. And because we make our own syrups, we can talk to clients knowledgeably about what’s really in each drink,” Café Moderne’s owner and award-winning head barman Ahmed “Mido” Yahi, a self-taught mixologist who learned by letting his palate guide the way, told me over drinks in his bar. “Today, you can offer a tarragon-ginger syrup or a foie gras cocktail and guests won’t think it’s weird because flavor experimentation is more widely accepted, in both food and drink. Bars are basically like restaurants at this point; they use extremely fresh products.” Even better, he’s excited by the idea that today’s adolescents will grow up into an existing cocktail culture that is celebrated. “I already get fathers who come in with their eighteen-year-old sons for meatballs and cocktails; it’s awesome. Family bonding certainly isn’t something you’re likely to see in a nightclub!”

More than ever, Parisians are more curious and willing to try new things, with a little guidance from the experts. “With Candelaria’s South American spirit, we, of course, incorporated tequila and mezcal in particular, neither of which had a market in Paris before we opened. Now, we sell more Del Maguey than anyone else in continental Europe,” Fontaine says. Because of that openness, there are fewer limits for the barman. Amaury Guyot of the whiskey-centric bar Sherry Butt and Dersou, for example, tailors his drinks to his partner Taku Sekine’s dishes, many of which rotate daily according to the ingredients available from small purveyors.

When it comes to educating the cocktail-curious, a few people and places have made their mark on the industry, including Joseph Akhavan. As part of the team that opened Mama Shelter, the first of the Starck-designed boutique hotels, in 2008, and then as key recipe developer at La Conserverie, Joseph was part of the craft cocktail movement’s first wave in Paris. But he’s earned high marks in more recent years for his rum den and grilled cheese bar Mabel, located in the Silicon Sentier, the 2nd arrondissement’s tech hub, which he runs with his partner, Samantha Sanford. “We wanted to break the codes of rum bars, which are usually tropical or tiki themed. We take it somewhere different,” Akhavan told me as he prepared a drink for me to try. And it was certainly easy to do with a toolbox of more than 120 references and an intense passion for the product. Their goal was to make clients see rum as a more noble product, one that could be as interesting and versatile as any other spirit, especially in cocktails. “Rum has often been associated with ‘cheap’ brands and still is, perhaps because of what you can find in supermarkets or at clubs. When you have a bad experience with a spirit, you rarely go back to it.” And as a result, Akhavan and Sanford offer Routes des Rhums, a menu option where guests can try three different rums from the same region and taste their complexities firsthand. As part of the anti-rum contingent for most of my adult life, I can speak from experience that Akhavan has a talent, not merely for persuasion (“you can’t say you don’t like it if you don’t try it”) but for targeting his recommendations. He knows his product, he understands the subtleties in flavor that emerge from his drinks, and he rises to the challenge of concocting a drink that will please even the most amateur of palates.

The development in the cocktail scene that I’ve been most excited about, though, is the return of products sourced closer to home. Globalization has made access to products from all over the world much easier, and that’s particularly true in the bar world. To fight the uniformity in offerings, bartenders have begun looking inward to tell stories with their drinks.

Leading the way in the revivalist category is Sullivan Doh, a young mixologist and Ferrandi graduate who gained experience at two of the city’s best bars—Prescription Cocktail Club and Sherry Butt—who took his penchant for Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados and ran with it in a big way at Le Syndicat. His focus? All French spirits. “The market was full of cocktail bars when Romain Le Mouëllic, my business partner, approached me about opening my own bar. I knew it was going to take a strong, sustainable concept,” he told me. Featuring everything from absinthe, Pineau des Charentes, and vermouth to Picon and Suze on their menus, bartenders like Doh are raising their glasses to once-forgotten spirits. “The whole world knows or at least has heard of French alcohols and liqueurs and associates them with savoir faire and quality. And yet they’re not at all popular in France,” said Doh, who was inducted with his partner into the Compagnie des Mousquetaires d’Armagnac (Armagnac Musketeers), a prestigious club whose members do their utmost to promote Armagnac.

That’s especially true for Cognac, the French luxury spirit par excellence, which is consumed largely beyond the region where it is produced. According to the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac, nearly 98 percent of the country’s Cognac production is exported outside of France, primarily to the United States, the UK, and Asia. Knowing this, Doh and his partner wanted to galvanize Parisian drinkers around French heritage products. Their mission is even woven into their name: Le Syndicat: Organisation de Défense des Spiritueux Français. French spirits, they insist, are steeped in history and reflect the identity of France and its regions. Faced with the influx of foreign concepts, shops, and products, it’s becoming even more important to preserve and honor what the country does best. And the wider cocktail audience took notice: In under a year, Le Syndicat was nominated for Best New International Bar in the Spirited Awards (given by Tales of the Cocktail) and then one of six Bars to Visit in 2016 by Spirits Business magazine.

I asked Doh how he sees the changes in the industry, since the Experimental Group put craft back on the map, and he described the evolutions in waves. “The second wave began in 2011 with Candelaria, which brought something fresh and unique to the scene. Then followed Sherry Butt, Little Red Door, Dirty Dick, Glass, and a number of really excellent bars that pushed cocktails further via specialization in 2012.” But 2014 saw the pivotal shift; a “tsunami,” according to Doh. “So many bars opened, each as good as the one before it — Baton Rouge, A La Française, PasdeLoup, Lulu White, CopperBay. Cocktails aren’t about trend anymore; they’re a way to express creativity and innovation. They’ve set the standard for what will come next.”

Affordable craft cocktails may have been slow to sprout in Paris, but the individuals driving the scene today have drastically changed the city’s nightlife and have more than lived up to the city’s reputation as a top-tier cocktail destination.