Early French brandy trade is usually associated exclusively with foreign demand. Indeed, first eaux-de-vie appeared in the south-west of France in the seventeenth century primarily to satisfy the needs of the Dutch. However, by the end of Louis XIV's reign a large and expanding domestic market has emerged, with Paris taking up to a half of total output of the Charente distilleries. Eighteenth-century Parisians not only appreciated spirits and were regularly drinking them, but also played an important role in the shaping of our own alcohol consumption culture.
By the middle of the century, there was a wealth of public drinking places in Paris: nearly 3,000 in all, or roughly one for every two hundred inhabitants. Trade in alcohol represented one of the main economic functions – sellers of drink outnumbered all other individual occupations. Their retail networks were sophisticated and complex, while the introduction of new kinds of liquor led to creation of distinct institutions in which these beverages were sold, as well as the development of novel ways of alcohol consumption.
Wine always remained essential: reports from early eighteenth century indicate that more than 600,000 hectolitres of it were imported into French capital every year. The city’s enormous thirst for wine was filled through an elaborate supply system, with wine being brought practically from all over the country (but mostly from the Loire Valley, Champagne, and Burgundy).
View of the customs office for wines and spirits at the entrance of Paris, from the Registers of the State Council (1739)
The vast demand of the Parisian market was served in various ways. Sometimes vignerons delivered their product themselves. As the preferred means of transportation in those days was by water, boatmen from the Loire River and the Briare Canal were contributing to the city’s supply by occasionally taking on a few barrels here and there. But the bulk of the wine coming into Paris was brought by members of the wine merchants’ guild.
Wine merchants worked through contacts that they had in wine-growing regions. Many of them originated from such regions themselves and relied on family networks to do business. Sometimes they used agents, or commissionaires. By the eighteenth century, the commissionaires have become sufficiently independent and often made purchases on their own account, acting as intermediaries between the growers and the merchants.
By law, wholesaling and retailing of wine had to be kept separate from each other, so these two types of activity were practiced by different types of sellers; the state also distinguished between retail outlets based on the conditions under which the wine was sold. The most ancient of the French drinking establishments was the taverne – a drink shop selling by the pot (that is, to take away). Wine purchased in those shops was to be taken home and consumed in the family with its normal meals. In the fifteenth century, there appeared a new kind of retail outlet, the cabaret. Unlike the tavern, the cabaret enjoyed the right to seat customers and serve food.
Interior view of the cabaret 'Au Tambour Royal' (18th century). Collection de Vinck 1235, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris
This for a long time was the cause of jealousy by the taverniers, who eventually began to demand the same rights as the cabaretiers. When in 1680 the request of the former to be allowed the provision of seating for their clients (in return for paying higher taxes) was granted by the government, legal distinctions between taverne and cabaret gradually disappeared. According to judicial records, as early as the 1690s the word ‘taverne’ had largely vanished from popular vocabulary. In their daily vernacular, eighteenth-century Parisians used the term ‘cabaret’ to refer pretty much to any establishment that sold wine and offered a place, with tables and chairs, in which to drink it.
The last quarter of the seventeenth century saw the emergence in Paris of another drinking institution: the guinguette. Although similar to taverns in that they also sold wine, guinguettes offered a rather different kind of entertainment. First of all, guinguettes were located in the Parisian outskirts and therefore could offer wine for a half or even a third of its cost in cabarets. Ever since the government had begun to tax wine entering the French capital, many tavern keepers moved away from the city centre and re-established themselves just outside of the tax boundary. As the wine tax increased over the course of the eighteenth century, the growing disparity between the retail price of wine inside and outside Paris made the guinguettes very popular. As a result, by the middle of the century they became so common in the areas north, east, and south of the city that the contemporaries sometimes had the impression that no one lived there except wine sellers.
View of the exterior of 'Au Tambour Royal' (18th century). Collection de Vinck 1237, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris
The cheap wine wasn’t the only factor attracting urban customers to guinguettes. Since these venues were located outside the city, they had space for much larger rooms and sometimes even gardens. The guinguettes had music and encouraged dancing inside and outside. Known as places of fun and debauchery, they quickly became the symbol of popular culture, capturing the imagination of visitors and Parisians alike. Tourists and rich bourgeois made special trips to the suburbs to see the notorious guinguettes (and occasionally to get robbed). Not so numerous as the traditional taverns, the guinguettes still had considerable importance in the pastime of the eighteenth-century labouring classes. When just before the Revolution the government jeopardized many of them by extending the city’s tax boundary, this has caused riots and provoked violent attacks on taxmen.
Both cabarets and guinguettes had dubious reputation among high society and were considered to be criminal, dangerous places. Drunken orgies that were taking place there often ended in disorder and police had to intervene frequently. Eighteenth-century essayist Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote that when “a brawl erupts [in a cabaret] from the effects of adulterated wine, then swearing and fighting come together; the guard would run in, for without it this dancing scum would kill each other to the sound of a violin”.
Disturbance at Ramponneau’s (1758). Collection Hennin 8915, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris
Mercier called cabarets ‘disreputable’ and warned his readers against going there. He described them as “the receptacle of the dregs of the populace, the beggars’ lot”. In one of those, he witnessed a bunch of poor people, with children, who came in noisily, threw change on the table and asked for wine:
They drank twenty-two pots, plus four bottles of eau-de-vie, to which they added a few more pints. Going through the affairs found on the street, they distributed them among each other and then set off back into the streets with their children and their dogs, no doubt to try and sell the stuff.
It is noteworthy that eau-de-vie is mentioned among the libations consumed by vagrants in the paragraph above. Indeed, drinking distilled alcohol neat in recreational purposes initially became popular with the lowest strata of the French society. It was also customary to give eau-de-vie to soldiers before sending them into battle: a celebrated physician Louis Lémery wrote in 1702 that this “did not produce a bad effect”. Soldiers, therefore, became habitual brandy drinkers – as were porters at the city’s market, Les Halles. They too got accustomed to drinking brandy on a daily basis, diluting it with water – another means of dealing with the high taxes on wine.
A Street Porter, Edmé Bouchardon (1737-1742). The Print Collector/Heritage-Images
Soon after its introduction in Paris in the end of the seventeenth century, a taste for spirits spread among leisured classes, as well. However, members of the urban elite did not consume eau-de-vie neat – because of the primitive technology, brandy was still quite rough in those days. As commented by Lémery:
Inflammable spirits have a slightly pungent and often empyreumatic taste, which displeases a lot of people. To remove the disagreeable taste, several compositions have been invented, which have been given the name of ratafia and which are nothing more than eau-de-vie, or spirit of wine, flavoured with a mixture of different ingredients. Many sorts of it are made in France which are known for their great taste, like cherry ratafias, ones made with peaches, apricots, Muscat raisins, orange and citron zest, cloves, kernels, and numerous others.
He even gives an example of one such flavoured eau-de-vie coming specifically from the environs of La Rochelle:
From Île de Ré a spirituous liqueur is brought called Fenouillette, which is now coming into use. It takes its name from fenouil [fennel], although it tastes more of anis than of fennel.
But even though some of the brandy intended for ‘polite’ consumption came into Paris with its original taste already manipulated, most of it was flavoured on the spot. This was usually done by the city’s limonadiers, lemonade sellers who apart from making their namesake product engaged in the production and commercialization of various other beverages, such as orangeades, juleps, frangipani water, orgeats, sorbets, etc.
Habit of a Cabaretier, Habit of a Limonadier, Habit of a Grocer, Nicolas Ier de Larmessin (ca. 1687). Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Even though, as we have seen, on occasion eau-de-vie could have been purchased in regular taverns, different types of drinking establishments usually specialized in different kinds of alcohol – based on distinctions between guild monopolies. And while the privilege of selling wine belonged to the guild of wine merchants alone (who very often had control over retailing by offering credit to cabaretiers), the right to trade brandy in Paris in the seventeenth century was shared by limonadiers, master distillers, vinegar makers (vinaigriers), grocers (épiciers), and brandy vendors (vendeur d’eau-de-vie).
Limonadiers were granted the right to sell eau-de-vie along with those who had been doing this historically (apothecaries and grocers due to brandy’s medicinal values and their access to spices which it was often infused with; vinaigriers since it was usually wine that has gone bad that was distilled in the first place) because many of the concoctions made by them contained spirits. These included liqueurs and ratafias, as well as different preserves and confections made with exotic comestibles such as citrus fruits, almonds, cacao, cinnamon, vanilla, various aromatic herbs, and, of course, sugar.
In 1676, limonadiers were united with the older guild of brandy distillers, creating a new corporation of ‘Master Distillers of brandy, & of all other waters, & Merchants of brandy, & of all kinds of liqueurs’. They vigorously defended their trade in flavoured spirits: in less than two years after the establishment of their guild, they managed to successfully lobby for a parliamentary resolution suspending permission for street vendors of eau-de-vie to sell brandy compounded with any ingredients including sugar. From then onwards all mixed drinks were available only from limonadiers’ shops.
Brandy seller, Anne Claude Philippe de Caylus (1737). Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
These shops, in which well-to-do Parisians enjoyed various spiced and sweetened spirit-based liqueurs, eventually came to be known under the name of ‘café’. This was because the exclusive right to trade coffee in Paris was assigned to limonadiers – which is not at all surprising given that the black substance from the Orient was seen as an exotic alimentary novelty not dissimilar to other stimulants already sold by this guild, such as chocolate and tea (all of these beverages were grouped in one single category called ‘hot liqueurs’).
Of course, coffee played a crucial role in cafés’ unique identity and its exoticism and stimulating qualities undoubtedly added to their appeal, but it was the increasing popularity of spirits served by these establishments that made them thrive. In fact, when it just appeared in France, coffee was not quite to Parisians’ taste. Patronized mainly by foreigners, the first coffee house (opened in 1672 by an Armenian called Pascal) didn’t do that well. It was other drinks on offer such as various eaux-de-vie, sweet liqueurs, and fortified wines that ensured the success of cafés. What also helped was that while the law permitted grocers, brandy sellers, and vinegar makers to only sell strong alcohol in little cups to be consumed at their counters or on the-go, cafés were allowed to serve it at the table (once again, the question of seating seems to have been as important as what was sold). The café in France, therefore, began as an establishment for the sale of liquor to seated customers – mostly wealthy and discerning ones.
An anonymous author claimed in a pamphlet in 1700 that ‘polite society‘ attended cafés on the pretext of drinking coffee while in reality it was to indulge in alcohol. This seems to be the case throughout the eighteenth century, which is confirmed by an account book of the Café Suédois from the 1770s: entries show that although some customers ordered coffee on its own, most ordered spirits – liqueurs, punches, apricots and peaches in brandy – with coffee on the side.
Café 'Procope' in 1743, Louis-Marie Bosredon (1840)
Spirits and coffee were, more often than not, ordered together in cafés because it was believed that the ‘essential salts’ in both substances shared certain medical properties. They were considered to affect the body in similar ways, stimulating the nervous system and spurring creativity. At the same time, coffee was credited with counteracting drunkenness produced by alcohol. The association of limonadiers’ guild with coffee therefore played to their advantage in that they were able to offer both a popular drug (spirits) and an antidote to its side effects.
In general, when members of the eighteenth-century urban elite consumed distilled alcohol, they were enticed not so much by its inebriating qualities but rather by the wide-ranging powers attributed to spirits, ranging from positively affecting mental abilities to provoking and regulating appetites. As this was the age of Enlightenment with its faith in rationality and its enthusiasm for practical and utilitarian matters, consumption of liqueurs was looked at through the prism of a larger debate over the relationship between mind and body and the role played by food and drink in the operation of reason.
Like other major European cities in the eighteenth century, Paris was fascinated with knowledge. Bookshops, cabinets of curiosities, scientific demonstrations spread around the city. Reading and learning became fashionable and were embraced by everyone who had any pretentions to politeness. People were curious about the nature, production, and composition of various foodstuffs, and the effect that they had on the body. In turn, the expanding world of printing allowed literate, wealthy, health-conscious Parisians to continuously familiarize themselves with the cutting edge of academic scholarship regarding the matter.
In this enlightened world, mixed drinks offered by limonadiers in their cafés were the pinnacle of inventiveness and artisanal endeavour in that they combined iatrochemical know-how with the ability to create tasteful and enjoyable delicacies. Contemporaries saw them as objects of knowledge and products of skilled work, which transformed ingredients such as brandy, sugar, fruit, flowers, seeds, spices and other aromatics into fine liqueurs. The art of manipulating flavours was compared with chemistry and liquorists were credited with considerable scientific expertise.
View of a liquorist’s workshop in Jacques-François Demachy, L’art du distillateur liquoriste (Paris, 1775)
According to the eighteenth-century treatise describing the trade and published by the Royal Academy of Sciences, limonadier’s laboratory (which was typically a back room of the café) was usually supplied with “some thirty aromatic spirits, twenty to twenty-four essential oils; the same oils dissolved to saturation in spirit of wine; around thirty tinctures”. It also specified that such laboratory should always have a supply of basic brandy of three types: one plain, one with a certain quantity of sugar suitable for the category of liqueurs called ‘essences’, and a third containing sugar syrup in quantities sufficient to create an oily consistency, the basis for the category of liqueurs known as ‘oils’. Using these ingredients, the limonadier could quickly recreate any liqueur following the formulas published in specialized literature – much like today’s mixologist is composing in his or her bar various well-balanced libations based on recipes found in cocktail books.
The comparison becomes even more relevant when we consider that the eponymous lemonade was actually made not just with citrus fruit, sugar, and water, but very often with brandy, too. Other popular liqueurs – for example, Rossolis, Populo, or Oil of Venus – combined essences of spices such as aniseed, cinnamon, coriander, long pepper, musk, or amber with brandy, sugar, and water. If we throw into the equation the fact that limonadiers held an exclusive right to sell iced drinks, we can conclude that eighteenth-century Parisian cafés were indeed direct precursors of modern-day cocktail bars.
Interiors of a café in Jacques-François Demachy, L’art du distillateur liquoriste (Paris, 1775)
As had been noted, for the ‘polite society’ liqueurs came to signify not only pleasure and tastefulness, but also science and modernity. Drinking them was an act of demonstrating knowledge and connoisseurship, a way of showing one’s enlightened condition. Liqueurs were the epitome of perfection and the symbol of civilizing process. But they were also a luxury product and as such attracted the attention of those who were not among the ranks of the elite but still had polite aspirations.
Eighteenth-century economic growth fuelled by transatlantic trade permitted more and more Parisians to enjoy higher living standards and increased income, especially for the urban middle class. These middling sort consumers were the main source of the demand for new and luxury goods that fulfilled their desire for individuality and upward mobility.
Because eighteenth-century elites legitimated their status through the possession of enlightenment and through the consumption of products which displayed this possession, drinking spirituous liqueurs was, as we saw, made distinctive among them. So, when the emerging bourgeoisie began to actively emulate the consumption patterns of ‘polite society’, liqueurs and flavoured eaux-de-vie (which had a relatively low price in comparison with other luxury products such as garments, jewellery, or furniture) became an essential part of their attempt to live aristocratic lifestyle.
The Establishment of New Philosophy: Our Cradle Was a Café (ca. 1779). Collection de Vinck 4152, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Limonadiers were providing not just the drinks but also the space: their shops were very different to cabarets in terms of decoration. None of the latter could be called elegant or grand: their interiors were generally very simple, vulgar, often shabby. Cafés, on the other hand, symbolized splendour, good taste, and sophistication. Their décor signalled the kind of clientele the owner was seeking to attract – more refined and upper-class. Rooms were always opulently furnished: there were crystal chandeliers, expensive tapestries, and marble-topped tables, while the mirrors on the walls – very common in cafés - could alone be worth more than the entire furnishings of most cabarets.
The café therefore created an entirely different ambience in an effort to appeal to a specific and select audience. Originally it was meant to manifest the elite’s desire for social exclusiveness. But although cafés were initially conceived by their proprietors as sites for socialization of the honnêtes gens, eventually they became places where sons and daughters of merchants and artisans mingled with their social superiors, being bonded with them by joint partaking of compound alcoholic drinks.
Interior of the Café de Manouri, Jacques Treton de Vaujas (ca. 1775). Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Paris during the Ancien Régime had a wide diversity of drink shops, each serving something slightly different. An eighteenth-century Parisian had the option of consuming wine at cabarets or at guinguettes just outside the city, eau-de-vie at brandy shops and from street vendors’ counters, and various liqueurs and flavoured spirits at the café. All of these establishments shared similarities in offering a place to gather but also had significant differences that distinguished one type of institution from another.
Primacy of wine was still evident, but it started to be challenged by new kind of alcohol, namely distilled spirits. Although the import of spirits into Paris was far less than that of wine (around 15,000 hectolitres in the 1710s and a little more than 20,000 hectolitres towards the end of the century), brandy consumption was rising steadily. Some of the wine brought into the city was also distilled within its walls – vinegar makers, grocers, apothecaries, master distillers and limonadiers were all licensed to do so.
It was the latter guild that made the consumption of distilled spirits, in the form of liqueurs, very popular first among the ‘polite’ consumers and later among larger part of the population. Eighteenth-century urban middle class came to be increasingly fond of brandy-based flavoured beverages offered in limonadiers’ cafés because conspicuous consumption of such drinks was a valuable aid to their enlightened self-presentation and hence allowed them to lay claim to gentlemanliness and high living.
Alexandr Gorokhovskiy
©2024
Bibliography and further reading:
Thomas Edward Brennan, Public Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris. Tome 7 (Amsterdam, 1783).
Louis Lémery, Traité des aliments (Paris: J.-B Cusson & P. Witte, 1702).
Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992).
Jacques Savary des Brûslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce, d'histoire naturelle et des arts et métiers (Geneva: C. & A. Philibert, 1742).
Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy, Histoire de la vie privée des Français depuis l'origine de la nation jusqu'à nos jours. Partie I, Tome 3 (Paris: Ph.-D. Pierres, 1782).
Alfred Franklin, Dictionnaire historique des arts, métiers et professions exercés dans Paris depuis le treizième siècle (Paris: H. Welter, 1906).
François Fosca, Histoire des Cafés de Paris (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1934).
E.C. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris (Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 2012).
Jacques-François Demachy, L’art du distillateur liquoriste (Paris, 1775).
M. Déjean, Traité raisonné de la distillation, ou La distillation réduite en principes: avec un Traité des odeurs. (Paris: Nyon fils & Guillyn, 1753).