Oh, the people you’ll meet and the food and drink you’ll taste when you leave the main roads in Normandy! Is your destination Deauville, Honfleur and the Flowered Coast or is it Caen, Bayeux and the D-Day Landing Beaches? Either way, let’s veer off at Pont l’Evêque for several tastes of Pays d’Auge, Auge Country: cheese, beer and apple brandy. Second in this three-part series, beer (and cider).

Cidre–(hard) cider—is a pleasing, inexpensive, low-alcohol beverage that marries well with certain cheeses. Geography makes that especially true in Normandy since the region, known for its semi-soft cow cheeses, grows 60% of France’s cider apples. The tartness of cidre brut (cider with low added sugar) suits the strong nose of washed-rind Pont l’Evêque or Livarot, and it can also accompany Camembert de Normandie, while the latter and cidre demi-sec (semi-sweet cider) can also make for worthy companions at the end of a meal.

Within Normandy, Pays d’Auge—Auge Country, a swatch of rural greenery between the Flowered Coast (Honfleur to Cabourg) and Lisieux—is prime territory for apple orchards. The apples are used to make Cidre Pays d’Auge, one of a handful of cider appellations in Normandy, as well as Calvados Pay d’Auge, a double-distilled apple brandy.

So having visited Jérôme and Françoise Spruytte to learn about farm-made Pont l’Evêque cheese, a local-minded traveler might stop in at a Pays d’Auge cider producer or any grocery or beverage shop to pick up a bottle of cider to enjoy with a baguette and a square of Pont l’Evêque before seeking the picture postcard picnic spot: a seat by an apple tree with a Norman cow grazing nearby and a half-timbered house in the background.

But wait: Is that a microbrewery in the village of Le Breuil-en-Auge, a few miles from the Spruyttes’ farm? Yes, indeed: Sagesse.

We’d been center of the village of Le Breuil earlier in the afternoon for a lovely lunch at Le Dauphin, where Chef Mathieu Le Guillois prepared a prettily plated meal of refined, fresh fare. Now we backtracked to Sagesse, the brewery/taproom just across the street. With all due respect to local cider producers, we entered Sagesse to discuss craft beer with owner Nicolas Vieillard. Sagesse is the French word for wisdom so it seemed a sensible thing to do.

There’s a sociological study to be made of friendly microbrewers who formerly worked in IT and now have long beards and brew beer named with references from film and literature. I’d met Nicolas seven or so years ago when he was a clean-shaven Parisian suburbanite brewing in Maisons-Laffitte. He and his wife Valérie, who designs the labels, moved to Le Breuil-en-Auge in 2018. (The beard grew out during Covid lockdown.) He’d now gone native, so to speak, by brewing a range of quality organic craft beer mostly using Norman malts and French hops, to be enjoyed in a rustic taproom (open Thurs.-Sat. from 4pm) in this Norman village, population 1000—or purchased in shops in Normandy.

What beer to choose for our pairing?

Nicolas says that he particularly likes pairing the range of his beers with a variety of young and aged Neufchâtel, the heart-shaped cheese produced in the northwestern portion of Normandy. But conceding to my point that we were in Pont l’Evêque and Livarot territory, he suggested a bottle of La Reine des Plages, a light lager, to accompany a younger Pont l’Evêque, and La Fiancé du Pirate, a crafty red, to accompany a more aged Pont l’Evêque. Personally, I took a liking to L’Imperatrice, Sagesse’s stout, which would pair best with a Livarot, a stronger cheese.

The taproom is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 4-9pm. Earlier or on other days, you can try ringing the bell at the brewery, and if someone answers you might plead gently with that person to sell you some bottles to go. Otherwise, the village grocer (closed Sunday afternoon and Monday) sells Sagesse, as do many other grocers and beverage shops in the region.

As I mentioned above, you can then seek out the picture postcard picnic spot by an apple orchard. But having veered off from a pairing of cheese with cider, you might deviate from that cliché to head over to Lac Terre d’Auge, a lake that also lends itself to summer swimming just outside of Pont l’ l’Evêque.

Sagesse, 4 Rue André Druelle, 14130 Le Breuil-en-Auge, 06 30 56 65 89. Taproom open Thursday, Friday and Saturday 4-9pm.

Le Dauphin, 2 rue de l’Eglise, 14130 Le Breuil-en-Auge. 02 31 65 08 11. Closed Sunday dinner, Monday, Wednesday dinner.

Official tourist information about this portion of Pays d’Auge can be found here.

Return to Part 1 of this series: Cheese: Jérôme Spruytte’s Pont l’Evêque.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

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Here are five phenomena to watch for on the streets of Paris this summer.

1. Hot dogs
All you need to know to follow food trends in Paris is that banks will lend money to potential purveyors of food and drink whose business plans show that they’ll purchase relatively inexpensive products that are easy to decorate (high mark-up), easy to serve (low staff), easy to eat or drink (high traffic), offered in small settings with little, no or uncomfortable seating so that people won’t linger (low rent, high turnover).

The restaurant consulting firm Gira Conseil came out with a study in early 2014 finding that hamburgers have gone from representing one in ten sandwiches sold in France in 2000 to one in two sandwiches sold in 2013. Le burger is therefore old news.

It’s now le hot dog (pronounced ut dug), le chien chaud, that’s been gaining street cred. The Marais is the quarter that’s currently barking the loudest with stands such as Mosaique, 56 rue du roi de Sicile, and Kraft Hot Dog, 15 rue des Archives, a stone’s throw from Gucci et al., but if looking to nip at a dog with the word “French” in it, cross the rue from the Marais to Gabe, offering “French quality hot dog,” at 83 rue Turbigo (metro Temple; closed Sun.). French quality, perhaps, but Gabe’s garnished saucisses (pork, beef or chicken, service on decent rolls), sandwiches and salads are all named for parts of New York, along with a Jersey salad that would, however, never make it at the shore.

2. Beer
The word on the street is: guzzle. Even eating a hot dog can be too complicated when you just want to sit out with a tall can of beer and a bag of chips. While craft beer made its mark on the alcoholscape of Paris several years ago, industrial beer has conquered the street. Beer drinking while standing outside bars became common earlier in the century, but beer drinking is now so prevalent outside of cafés and bars and at picnic areas, street benches and sittable ledges that one wonders if wine is now taboo for anyone under 40. (Beyond that one enters the confusing nether-age of life in Paris.) At some picnic areas the only people seen with a bottle of wine are the tourists and the classier drunks. There’s so much drinking outdoors these days that picnickers are no longer asked to drink responsibly but to pee responsibly.

3. Shorts
For a short while Parisian men, unsure about the fashion value of shorts, wore capris in the city. Flashing ankle and a bit of calf, they took their first timid steps toward what Americans and Brits have long thought of as summerwear. Les parisiennes were only slightly more favorable to shorts in the city in the past, though they always had skirts to lift to tan their legs on a sunny café terrace. Then, a couple of years ago, shorts started to come out of the closet, as reported here.

Now, en masse, Parisians, men and women, have understood that summer doesn’t stop at the edge of the city and that tourists, as shabbily dressed as they are (I know you’re proud of graduating from Georgia Tech in 1986 but you couldn’t find anything else to pack?), may have had a point about wearing shorts all along. Shorts may not have conquered every quarter of Paris, but this is the summer that they became common streetwear for men. Women, perhaps sensing competition from the men in the shapely leg department, are now marching by in short shorts. Anything goes as far as footwear: sandals, espadrilles and especially flat white-soled sneakers, whether sockless or with peds socks and footie liners. But no need to tell you how to dress in summer, you’ve known all along. Just don’t forget the sunscreen.

4. Pregnant women

In 25 years in Paris I’ve never had so many visibly pregnant women on the street. Why am I so susceptible to pregnancy sightings? Three possibilities:
1. The warm, dry weather in Paris since late May lends itself to wearing light fabrics that reveal baby bumps.
2. I’m going through something hormonal that I’d rather not analyze.
3. There was an actual spike in the number of winter 2014-2105 conceptions in Paris.

I’m betting on #3. Something societal is afoot. Did the terrorist attacks of January bring couples closer together and amplify their sense of the importance of family? Did constant news last winter of economic “crisis” make couples want to stay at home more? Are City Hall’s family-friendly policies intended seeking to keep breeders in Paris actually bearing fruit? I don’t know, but I’m guessing that September-December 2015 will break recent records for the number of births in Paris.

5. Parisians
One might think that the increasing net worth of Parisians would lead them to disappear longer, but paradoxically Parisians are more visible in their city this summer. Or perhaps not so paradoxical for those who can now afford to come and go between trips to Sicily and to friends in the southwest, between a week with parents in Normandy and a week on the coast of Croatia, between two weeks in the American west and another week on the coast of Brittany. Furthermore, increasing net worth can mean increased work obligations. When you’re working on opening a new hot dog stand in September you’ve got to be in Paris in August to oversee the renovation of the old flower shop. And who wants to travel when in August you’re expecting in September? Or when your mate is expecting? Put your feet up, cherie, I’ll go out to get you some ice cream, he says as he heads out in shorts to treat himself to a hot dog and beer.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post 5 Phenomena on the Streets of Paris This Summer appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Tell a Parisian that you’re heading south into deep France, la France profonde, and, after warning you that you’ll miss Paris after one day, he’ll eventually concede that one can eat well there, mention some magnificent chateau or landscape and finally confess that he has fond memories of once visiting with a friend or lover or cousin. But tell him that you’re headed to the deep France of the north and he’ll look at you with complete bewilderment. His only recollection of France’s northern border is likely to be a collective memory of German invasions.

So when I told friends in Paris that I was going to the French Ardennes, an area that accompanies the Meuse River as it pokes into Belgian forests just west of Luxembourg, I got nothing but a blank stare followed by a stunned “Pourquoi?”

Actually, one friend had been Charleville-Mézières, capital of the French Ardennes. “There’s a beautiful square there,” he said. Still, he thought I needed a better reason to go.

I did: beer. For three days I would set out to meet producers and purveyors of craft beer in the area.

But before taking a swig I had to deal with the ghost of Arthur Rimbaud.

Arthur Rimbaud: the Runaway, the Poet, the Explorer

As familiar as I am with the (sparkling) winegrowing area of Champagne-Ardennes, I’d never been to its northern reach, the French Ardennes and its capital Charleville-Mézières, even though it’s just a 2-hour train ride from Paris’s Gare de l’Est station, with a quick change at the Champagne-Ardenne station (near Reims), or an hour’s ride from Reims.

In addition to the aforementioned “beautiful square,” this small city/large town with a population of 50,000 (73,000 with its suburbs) is best known as the hometown of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), a beloved poet of French adolescents.

On a pedestal in the park in front of the train station, a bust of Rimbaud, forever young, indicates the titles of his most famous poems (Bateau Ivre, Voyelles) but refers to him as an explorer in Africa. Rimbaud’s sketchy portrait photograph is used to promote sights and businesses throughout town, exploited for a glory that he would have denied it. Rimbaud fled Charleville at the age of 17, running away from the family home for Paris, where he flirted violently with poets and drank excessively. For several years he returned periodically, mostly against his will, before definitely turning his back on the town at the age of 21.

Coming from a culture that doesn’t know the cult of Rimbaud—young poet in search of freedom—I didn’t intend to write about him along with beer, my primary quest on this trip. But speak with tourist officials and Rimbaud is immediately evoked: the Rimbaud Museum in a former mill over the river; La Maison des Ailleurs (The House of Other Horizons or Elsewheres), the home that he fled; a walk outlined in young Arthur’s footsteps, and his tomb in the family plot of the city cemetery, a half-mile from the Place Ducale—for though Rimbaud stayed away, his remains were returned.

The house where he lived as an adolescent, now La Maison des Ailleurs, stands across the street from the Meuse River. Arthur lived here with his mother and siblings; his father was largely absent during those years.

I didn’t come looking for Rimbaud by the river; I came to find the river itself; I like river towns. I stood across the street from Rimbaud’s house for a good 20 minutes watching water and people go by. It was yet too early in the afternoon to pursue my beer explorations. I had no intention of going inside the house because I’m generally insensitive to the interiors of the homes of artists and especially writers. The more telling view is always outside.

The stone, curtainless House of Other Horizons looked forgotten, forlorn. No one came or went. It appeared to have more ghosts than visitors. I imagined a local association of preservationists and professors fighting to have it classified as a historical monument. I imagined the smirk on the face of the government accountant looking at the budget line for the house from which a young man ran away. I imagined someone at the ticket desk engaged in a game of speed solitaire so as to avoid thoughts of fleeing herself. I felt sorry for the place and for the imagined ticket seller. So I crossed the street and went in.

I wanted the woman at the ticket desk to be happier to see me, a visitor—from afar, no less—, but that was wanting too much. I had an immediate glimpse into Authur’s flight since I was tempted to do the same.

Fully prepared to be let-down upon entering the empty little rooms upstairs, I instead felt inspired by the near-void. Here in the House of Elsewheres, where I was the only visitor, the rooms were empty only in the sense that they lacked furniture and fabric. In their place they presented through sparse images, indecipherable maps and faded walls an invitation to travel. Here, I felt that desire to be away—not necessarily from here but simply to be away, to travel, to discover—to be a part of something else—to be embraced by accomplished poets, to stretch his freedom, to partake in rowdiness, to create poetry, to find soul mates, to find lovers, to create a life, to work in other lands—to explore.

Rimbaud’s most famous poem, Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat), is a 100-line chef d’oeuvre written in 1871 when Rimbaud was 16 years old, shortly before his departure for Paris. It is the tale of a drunken, driving, rudderless and eventually sinking boat. Rereading it that day, like visiting the house adolescence, didn’t make me want to be 16 again, but it did make me aware of the troubled pleasure of being away from the familiar. I loosely translate four of its lines:

Now I, boat lost in the tendrils of coves,
Thrown by the storm into the birdless air,
I whose drunken carcass coast-guards and merchant ships
wouldn’t have fished from the water…

Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses,
Jeté par l’ouragan dans l’éther sans oiseau,
Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses
N’auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d’eau…

Sometimes when traveling we see something, do something, hear, smell or taste something, and we feel a sense of absence or regret—of a person, a place, an age, an activity. Yet sometimes we feel not absence but our own life forces, our own drive to discovery and realization. Here I missed nothing, no one, a most wonderful travel feeling—all is present, all is to come. I liked Rimbaud’s house because I sensed not his presence but his departure, his longing at once solitary and in search of brotherhood. The house was indeed an invitation to elsewheres, which is precisely where I went.

And there I found beer.

Beer bars by the river: Le Baratin and a barge named Mawhot

I returned to the river several times over the next 36 hours. There, along with the absence of Rimbaud I discovered the presence of two notable beer joints.

Two hundred yard to the left of the Rimbaud Museum (the old mill over the Meuse), beyond Rimbaud’s house, I could tell from the moment I walked in to Le Baratin, that I was likin’ whatever was being served on tap at this happy home of craft beer where I was greeted by an eclectic selection of music and firm but friendly owner-barmaids. The evening program can vary from live music to DJ to social events. That evening the DJ was into hoppy and heavy-beat rock ‘n’ roll. The B-52’s’ Rock Lobster played as I was invited to try Agent Provocateur, a nice blond ale brewed in Belgium with American hops by a Scot (Craig Allan) living in Picardy. The music made me want to move my feet. I took my beer for a walk. “Everyone had matching towels…,” went the song. Everyone also had grey-free hair and wrinkle-free smiles.

I liked Le Baratin, but I especially liked the elsewhereness and more age-appropriateness of a barge (péniche) named Mawhot (or simply Le Péniche), about 200 yards on the opposite side of the Rimbaud Museum. For beer-lovers and fans of unusual venues filled with a wide cast of characters and offbeat barman-owners, Philippe Boudard’s beer bar barge Le Mawhot may by itself be reason to visit Charleville-Mézières.

Philippe Boudart, captain of this bar-barge since 1997, looks like Hugh Jackman pouring beer at a 20th–anniversary celebration of the first X-Men, both dangerous and lovable. He and his barge are legendary in Charlie-M’s beer-drinking circles. I stood up to the tin bar in the hold of the old grain barge and introduced myself to Boudart as a traveler in search of a beer education.

“Four Belgians, two Germans and an Irish,” he told me as though he might launch into a long joke. But it was no joke; those were his beer selections for the evening, representing each of the major types of beer, he said. I allowed myself to be introduced me to a dark and aromatic St. Bernardus, from Watou, Belgium, weighing in at a stealthy 10%.

Boudart is a man with great knowledge and firm opinions, though it wasn’t always clear which was which, as is the case with the best mentors. He is a goldmine of information/opinion about the European history of beer and its geographical, technical aspects and religious aspects. Though originally from the Ardennes he doesn’t feel that it’s his duty to up-speak local beer.

Boudart puts down no one but fools. I made the mistake of mentioning the craft beer craze in Paris, and that was enough to set him off on a discourse of authenticity. “I’m a fundamentalist,” he said, berating Paris barmen for cutting the head off their beer. “All they know is fads. The clients [here] have their own opinion on beer. They don’t follow fashion… I serve real beer.” He then gave me a quick lesson on the Trappist beer tradition in the Ardennes, explaining the proximity of Cistercian (Trappist) monasteries producing beer within the enclosure of their abbey walls.

The barge is named Mawhot. Mawhot, Boudart explains, is a legendary giant lizard that lives in the Meuse. When you see him partially that’s good news; when you see him in full that’s bad news.

“Have you seen him lately,” I asked?

“He’s right behind you,” he said.

I turned to see a drawing of lizard eyes peering out from a swamp.

I also saw a man who immediately clinked my glass and told me that we must rejoice in being strangers/foreigners. He was Belgian, it turned out, and drunk. I was reminded of Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat and of Rimbaud himself, having run away from Charleville, an aspiring poet, getting wasted. But Mawhot the bar(ge) is steady under Boudart’s watch, and beer-time for me ended exceptionally cheery and well and somewhat poetic on the deck.

(A French video introduction to Boudart’s beer-barge can be seen here.)

Arthur’s Table and The Squinting Pig

The owners of the restaurant Le Cochon Qui Louche (The Squinting Pig), between Boudart’s barge and the Place Ducale, the town’s central square, have two apparent passions: a desire to share homey fresh cuisine and an interest in second-hand junk/treasures. Regarding the cuisine: tomato soup, goat cheese and chorizo in a fried filo pastry, cucumber and carrot salad; mussels and fries, stewed beef and carrots; crème brulée. Regarding the second-hand items: On the wall outside, the pig (cochon) sign from an old butcher shop; on the walls inside, multiple pigs, boars and brass instruments along with an old squash racket, a great corkscrew, a Mannequin Pis and much more. In this homey restaurant with the atmosphere of a subdued pub, gentle service and a gentle bill complete the picture.

Re-cue Mawhot Le Péniche the following evening before a fabulous meal at La Table d’Arthur (as in Rimbaud). On the ground floor, Arthur’s Table is a handsome wine bar with a nice brasserie menu, yet the greater find is in the vaulted basement, where a finer menu is served. There’s a breezy buzz here, smooth, efficient service (a kind explanation when needed, withdrawal when not), a well-selected and reasonably priced wine list with an emphasis on organic and biodynamic grapes… and quality cuisine—bistronomy at its best. A wonderfully balanced restaurant. If in Paris, every guidebook in the world would be singing its praise, you’d need to reserve a month in advance, you’d pay twice the price or more, and things would go downhill from there. In Charleville, well, you won’t find many guidebooks about Charleville-Mézières—lucky us.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Continue to The French Ardennes, Part 2: Charleville-Mézières: Place Ducale and the Bare-Ass Casserole
Jump to The French Ardennes, Part 3: The Meuse, Sedan, More Beer and the Big Boar

Addresses and other information, in order of appearance in this article

Charleville-Mézières Tourist Office
4 Place Ducale
08102 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. 03 24 55 69 90
Open Mon.-Sat. 9:30am-12:00pm and 1:30-6:00pm, until 7pm in summer. Also open Sunday in summer.
www.charleville-mezieres.org/indexpc.php

Le Baratin
25 Quai Arthur Rimbaud
08000 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. 06 75 73 05 95
Open Mon.-Sat. 5:30pm-3am. Occasionally live music on Friday.

La Péniche a.k.a. Le Mawhot (Philippe Boudart)
Barge on the Meuse, Quai Jean Charcot
08000 Charleville-Mézières.
Tel 03 24 44 54 35
Open Wed.-Sun. 5pm-1am.

Au Cochon Qui Louche
31 Rue Victoire Cousin
08000 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. : 03 24 35 49 05

La Table d’Arthur
9 rue Pierre Bérégovoy
08000 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. : 03 24 57 05 64
Open for lunch and dinner Thurs.-Sat., also for lunch Mon. and Wed.

The post The French Ardennes, Part 1. Charleville-Mézières: The Runaway Poet, Great Beer Bars and the Giant Lizard appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’m glad then that I’d made it my destination — rather, part of my destination as I set out to explore the Ardennes area of France for a taste of local beer, local cuisine, local characters and local history — because entering the ducal square on a bright May day immediately opened my sense of the rewards of visiting this far-flung corner of France.

I also felt quite connected with the history of Paris, the city I’d left to rail this way, since the Place Ducale, begun in 1612, was designed by Clément Métezeau, brother of Louis Métezeau, who is attributed with the design of the Place des Vosges, begun in 1605, in the capital’s Marais district. With their regular repetition of brick and stone, with slate roofs and sidewalk arcades, the two squares have much common, though Charleville’s is more open and cosmopolitan. It was designed as the hub on a new town created by decree of Duke Charles de Gonzague, count of Rethel, whose family (the Gonzagas) came from Lombardy. Charles had a palace in Mézières, a strategic site of ancient origin nearby along the Meuse River. His was a border town, a small economic center between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire, and Charles dreamt of creating within the nearby loop of the river an ideal city nearby, centered around a great square from which the town would radiate in straight lines, which were generally absent from earlier, medieval towns.

The “new and incomparable city,” as Charleville was soon called, would soon eclipse Mézières and neighboring towns as an economic powerhouse in the region. Three hundred fifty years later, in 1966, Charleville merged with four neighboring administrative districts, including Mézières, creating Charleville-Mézières.

The tourist office is on the Place Ducale. With one’s hands full of maps and brochures, one naturally follows the sun when selecting a seat in a cafe or restaurant beneath or in front of the arcades of the square, whether to study the map or to watch the Carlomacériens, as local inhabitants are called, go by.

The French Ardennes may be beer country due to its lack of vineyards and its affinity with Belgium, but a traveler can feel guilty traveling in France and ignoring wine. We’re in a region called Champagne-Ardenne, a rather schizophrenic name that, brandwise, now sounds to me like Wine-Beer. One of the town’s main call of ports for wine is Eric Arnaud’s wine bar Le Concept, in the southeast corner of the square.

Arnaud is originally from Reims, meaning from champagne country. He worked as a chef while refining his wine knowledge and is now the only master sommelier in Ardennes as well as president of Champagne-Ardenne’s regional division of a French national sommelier association called the Union de la Sommellerie Française. In 2011 he opened Le Concept, an easy-going lunch- and dinner-serving wine bar, on the Place Ducale. Though removed from the setting and stature of the kitchen that he once oversaw in Reims, the food is fine that Arnaud prepares in a narrow kitchen space behind the bar counter, but the wine’s the thing.

At aperitif time a plate of Ardennais cheese and/or cold cuts must be nice, but I’d come for lunch. Curious about cacasse, a traditional Ardennais potato-and-onion casserole with a roux of flour and lard, that’s what I ordered. The dish comes in two main versions, the cascasse à cul-nu, literally the “bare-ass” version, and cacasse culottée, literally the “knickered” version. There’s a veritable cult to cacasse à cul-nu in the Ardennes, in part, I found, because people simple enjoy saying the term, which sounds both slightly childish and slightly offensive (cul=ass, nu=naked, caca=caca). But above all, in a region relatively poor in culinary offerings (some cheese, some cold cuts, some sausages, lots of potatoes) it’s roots go deep. As with many local dishes in France, cacasse has peasant origins and has earned over time a strong cultural power on all lines of the economic spectrum. With enough means on a given day a family might have been able to add sausage or bacon to their cacasse, thereby dressing it with meat. The version I relished for lunch was clothed with thickly sliced bacon (lardons).

It was hearty, tasty and might have been well accompanied by beer, but here I was in a wine bar. Since the Ardennes is without vineyards, one is obliged to travel for a wine choice, and leaving my fate in Mr. Arnaud’s hand he returned with a caramel-colored red from the Jura, near Switzerland, an Arbois Poulsard “Grande Réserve” 2005, a fruity wine of lesser-known terroir that’s fine to share with a friend. And as I was sitting there, one showed up.

A new friend, that is: Bernard Giraud, journalist with the regional paper L’Ardennais and great “defender of the products and recipes of terrior and conviviality,” to quote the man. Giraud lives in Sedan, just to the north (see Part 3 of this article). In 1991, he told me, following his own admission to a fraternal order of Belgian beer lovers, Giraud began to see the interest and pleasure of defending local gastronomic heritage wherever its homeland may be. He is now a member or brother or knight in 16 different fraternal orders.

In 2004 Giraud created Ch-M’s Festival des Confréries, an annual celebration of such brotherhoods (sisters welcome). This joyful, convivial event takes places over a weekend in early May, which happened to be when I was visiting. At first glance it might appear that you have to be fond of tripe and lard and rabbit cooked in beer to appreciate the festival, but the true pleasure of the event is taking part in the human hokiness of meeting French, Belgian and Ardennais ambassadors of traditional gastronomy who are so passionate about such dishes that they’re willing to travel to Charleville-Mézières and don colorful velvet robes and floppy hats to prove it.

Giraud is also the vice president of the French Counsel of such Fraternal Orders (Conseil Français des Confréries), an organization created in 2006 in Orléans, in the Loire Valley. According to Giraud, there are about 700 confréries in France, about half of which belong to the Counsel. Confréries were corporations in the Middle Ages, and again that corporative (meaning business) spirit is still clearly visible in the large wine confréries (one of the most famous is the Conférie des Chevaliers du Tastevin in Burgundy). Though some confréries have strong ties with producers, particularly in the wine sector, and thus actively promote their products beyond the locality, most of the gastronomic brotherhoods simply maintain the tradition of local cuisine against changing eating habits. In any case, where there’s a confrérie there is hearty, well-fed, well-imbibed fun, and Charleville-Mézières’s Festival des Confréries honors the concept with good humor, simplicity and lots of cacasse.

It’s rare to see someone under 50 years old wearing one of these robes. It’s the type of local tradition in France that Arthur Rimbaud would have fled, but one man’s flight is another man’s arrival. I saw it as a fun, family event, with each association manning a booth where one can learn about, taste and purchase their products, from rabbit in beer to rabbit pate, from tripe to black pudding, from nougat to dandelion dishes. There’s quite naturally a brotherhood of cacasse à cul-nu lovers. Under the food tent on the square for the celebration there was a monster-size party dish of that naked local favorite, with knickers available on the side.

Charleville-Mézières has a more joyful, magical and renowned festival, one that celebrates marionette theater. Marionettes, rather than gastronomic brotherhoods, are actually the city’s great contemporary call to fame. Every two years in September (next time: Sept. 18-27, 2015), the World Festival of Marionette Theaters draws 150,000 spectators to venues both inside and outside. The National School of the Marionette Arts is here as well as the headquarters of the International Marionette Union, a resource center for marionette practitioners. Around the corner from the Place Ducale, an automat called The Great Marionettist marks the hour daily from 10am to 9pm with a dozen tableaux.

In a moment of nostalgia during the day I had bought a post card, an object as old fashion as cacasse and rabbit pate, to mail across the ocean. The post office, I saw on the map, was a few blocks away, a slight detour on my way back to the hotel for a pre-Mawhot rest. Across the street from the post office was a café and beer bar, Le Vert Bock. I could have used the café more than the beer, but I wanted to end the afternoon on a headier note in keeping with my quest. So I went in, ordered a glass from a tap with a name I didn’t know, and voilà, another bar, if not beer, that I can now recommend on the beer trails of the Ardennes.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Continue to The French Ardennes, Part 3: The Meuse, Sedan, More Beer and the Big Boar
Return to The French Ardennes, Part 1: Charleville-Mézières: The Runaway Poet, Great Beer Bars and the Giant Lizard

Addresses and other information, in order of appearance in this article

Charleville-Mézières Tourist Office
4 Place Ducale
08102 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. 03 24 55 69 90
Open Mon.-Sat. 9:30am-12:00pm and 1:30-6:00pm, until 7pm in summer. Also open Sunday in summer.
www.charleville-mezieres.org/indexpc.php

Le Concept (Eric Arnaud)
37, place Ducale
08000 Charleville-Mézières
Tel.: 03 24 22 57 03
Open Wed.-Sat. noon-2pm and 6:30pm on through the evening, also Tues. evening.

Festival des Confréries, held annually in early May.

World Festival of Marionette Theaters, held in Charleville-Mézières every two years in September. Next time: Sept. 18-27, 2015.

Le Vert Bock
20 rue du Théâtre
08000 Charleville-Mézières
Tel. 03 24 35 06 64
Open Tues.-Fri. 8am-9pm, Sat. 9 :30am-9pm

Hôtel Le Dormeur du Val (Best Western)
32 bis rue de la Gravière 08000 Charleville Mézières Tél. : 03 24 420 430
www.hotel-dormeur-du-val.com
My hotel during this 2-night, 3-day visit to the Ardennes was the Hôtel Le Dormeur du Val, 150 yards up the tracks from the train station. It’s a friendly place with a playful semi-industrial design, sometimes successful (the bathroom), sometimes not (the reading light poking you in the head). The street itself is quite though occasionally you can hear the SNCF rail company’s 3-tone intro and an announcement from the train station: Le train en provenance de Sedan et en destination de Champagne-Ardenne rentre en gare, voie une. The hotel, 4-star by category and 3-star by spirit, is convenient for those arriving by train and remaining for a night or two, as I did. I enjoyed the quirkiness and convenience of the hotel. From here, as from the train station, it’s a 10-minute walk to the Place Ducale, which is the heart of the town.

The post The French Ardennes, Part 2. Charleville-Mézières: Place Ducale and the Bare-Ass Casserole appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

From Charleville-Mézières, capital of the Ardennes, I drove north, following the loops of the Meuse River on a misty May morning. The winding corridor sticks like a bedspring into Belgium’s southern border. Though the weather didn’t lend itself to photo-ops promised the tourist brochures, I nevertheless had a wonderful sense of meandering otherworldliness as I crossed and re-crossed the Meuse at the riverside villages of Joiny-sur-Meuse, Bogny-sur-Meuse and Monthermé, driving slowly and stopping frequently to take in the grey yet inviting view.

I was on the lookout for a café by the river that morning but at Monthermé a sign for a little bar called Le Palais de la Bière (The Beer Palace) on the opposite side of the road reminded me of my quest for beer joints, so I went in.

It was rather insular bar, the kind of place where, in the movies, a stranger walks in and everyone stops talking. But no one stopped for the simple reason that no one had started. I said “Bonjour Messieurs-Dames” to the six people inside and, turning friendly enough, they all responded “Bonjour Monsieur.” Four men and a woman stood at the bar (one beer, one juice, two coffees, a white wine) while an older man sat at a table nearby (coffee). The mistress of the Beer Palace was arranging glasses behind the counter. I stood at the counter and ordered coffee. The place was strangely quiet without being ominous, as though they/we were all waiting for something to happen.

And it did.

A roundish fellow in his comfortable 30s walked in. I’d seen him outside as I’d parked the car. A thin older man had been berating him on the sidewalk. The term “sad sack” had come to mind; I thought that he might be a slow-moving public employee being given some tough love by his employer. Here though he appeared taller, more confident. He shook hands with all of the men, including me, kissed the female client and went behind the counter to kiss our host. His presence lifted everyone’s expression. He joked politely, commented on how he’d heard that this one was having trouble installing a new door, how that one’s dog had been barking again through the night. He remarked that the one female client must have fallen in love since he hadn’t seen her in a while. He accused our host behind the counter of being too beautiful. We travel as witnesses or as strangers but are often aware that we don’t quite belong. Here, though, it was impossible not to feel a part of the scene. I’d come to the right place. Conversation flowed.

I asked the man standing next to me which road I should take to the top of the hill.

“Haven’t been up there in a while,” he said. He asked the man on the other side of me if he knew. They talked about the hill as though it were another country, speculating about distances and weather. Finally the friendly fellow whom we’d all come to count on said: “You go the intersection about 200 meters that way then wind around until you come to a little inn. Then turn left.”

On a given morning—a Thursday it was—Le Palais de la Bière in Monthermé may well be one of the best beer bars in France, even though only one in six was having a beer and I have no idea what kind they serve.

It was a grey, misty day, still a view to remember… I share here my photo, with nothing to envy of the promise shot provided by the tourist office.

The map was inviting me to continue north to Deville, Laifour and Revin so as to eventually step on the Belgian border just past Givet, but I had a beer call to make further south in the more central portion of French Ardennes.

Woinic and Ardwen

Little did I know as I drove from Bogny-sur-Meuse to the center of the department of Ardennes that I was more or less following in the trails of Woinic, the wild boar that is the symbol of the department of Ardennes.

Standing 33 feet high, 46 feet long, 16 feet wide, and therefore the world’s largest boar sculpture, Woinic was completed in late 1993 following an 11-year labor of love by artist Eric Sleziak, who created the mammoth pig in a hangar in Bogny. The department acquired Woinic in 2008 and the sculpture was moved to its current position with great fanfare (and lots of cut overhead wires) for inauguration at the entrance to the natural regional park of the Ardennes from the plains of Champagne on the emblematic date of 08-08-08.

The trademark Woinic, which belongs to the department of Ardennes, is the object of various licenses, including its designation as an 8.08-degree “triple” beer produced by the brewery Ardwen, located in Launois-sur-Vence.

Created in 2006 and producing about 2100 hectoliters last year, Ardwen is too large to be considered a microbrewery and is in fact the largest brewery in the department, still it’s quite small. Geoffrey Stevenin took over as the brewmaster here in 2012 at the age of 22 and works with one assistant. In 2014, to celebrate its eighth year of existence and its 1000th brew, Ardwen began producing its eighth type of beer, an amber-colored triple called Obscure which uses four types of hops and four types of malt, a celebration of beer making. Ardwen is available mostly in bottles and is sold though large distribution channels throughout Champagne-Ardenne region, principally in the Ardennes.

Founder Daniel Guerin, who previously worked in agriculture, said that he founded the brewery “out of love for the department of Ardennes.” He lauded the local spring water (otherwise sold in bottles under the Cristaline brand) and Launois-sur-Vence’s position in the heavily agricultural center of the department as reasons for selecting this location to produce Ardwen beer.

“The French have managed to maintain variety in their cheeses as the Belgians have in their beer,” Guerin pointed out. But while the beer-making tradition of France went dormant with the human and territorial destruction of First World War, he explained, the beer-drinking tradition continued, particularly in non-winegrowing zones such as this. So there was a ready thirst for the revival of beer-making in northern France, as the regional success of Ardwen shows.

Attached to the brewery is Ardwen’s brassserie-restaurant, the occasion to try several small glasses of their beer over lunch. (Don’t forget to appoint a designated driver, please.)

Sedan

Sedan sounds like an old car to American ears. To Kansans in particular it also sounds like the hometown of famou clown Emmett “Willie” Kelly. But to the French, and perhaps to Germans as well, Sedan calls to mind the site of the overwhelming Prussian siege that brought about the capture and fall of Napoleon III in 1870 and opened the way to France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

At the center of the former military stronghold of Sedan, now with a population of 20,000, stands a fortress (château fort), much of it a remnant of the 15th and 16th centuries, the largest of its type in Europe. One enters its thick walls through a cool damp tunnel and into a museum that reveals the development of artillery through the centuries. It’s an impressive stop on the trails of military explorations in northern France, but while a fortress can certainly hold its own as an attraction for traveling families and soldierly visitors, I had beer on my mind.

Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort

La Sedane, a local brand of beer, is brewed across the street in the vats at the back of the Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort (Craft Brewery of the Fortress), under the brewmastery of Jean-Christophe Viot.

Viot began making home brew in 2005 and took over producing the La Sedane beer in 2008. The microbrewery now produces about 600 hectoliters per year, with about 60% being sold in bottles.

Despite the presence of brewing vats in the back, this isn’t a bar but rather a restaurant serving homey dishes such as calf’s head, calf’s knuckle, grilled meats, moules frites, sauerkraut and meat, and the boudin blanc from Habyes (a traditional white, i.e. bloodless, pork sausage that’s very much at home in the region) served with fries that I enjoyed with a glass of triple (a malty high-fermentation pale ale). Due to the Belgian influence to its beer production, triples are more commonly consumed along France’s northern border that further south.

I have no regular affection for either boudin blanc or triple beer. They do grow on you though. The French Ardennes grow on you. Walk around the corner to the pub Le Roy de la Bière (The King of Beer) and that’ll grow on you too.

Le Roy de la Bière

Lionel Passe reigns here as the third-generation owner, along with co-owner Annette, his ex-wife. In 1943, during the German occupation, Lionel’s grandfather Robert purchased what was then called Le Grand Bar Ardennais. Lionel’s father Michel took over in 1951, at the age of 21, and renamed it Le Roy de la Bière five years later. Lionel claims with pride that his father’s bar was one of the first in France to serve Guinness in the 1960s. With a pool table already installed in the back since his own father’s time, Michel looked to the British Isles for further inspiration, adding a dart board, a wide selection of beers on tap, dark wood and a red British telephone booth. Lionel, a commanding publican, took over the taps in 1990 at the age of 35. He set my glass on the table in the back (I now had a designated driver) and stated that he operates the first true pub in France.

Adding to its wide selection of craft and other beer, in 2013 he enlisted Jean-Christophe Viot at the nearby brewery to produce the bars 70th-anniversary brew, Le King’s Beer, using a combination of three hops: American, Czech and French. The Sedan brewery also produces Passe’s signature Passe Stout. The table on which my King’s Beer sat was once a door at the prison of Sudan. Nearby, old photographs show the room as it was during his father’s tenure. And among the historical paraphernalia and signs there’s a notice from the German Commander in Chief of the Army during the Occupation asking residents to “abstain from rash actions, sabotage of any kind and passive or even active resistance against the German army.”

Passe is the kind of large, voluble, initially wary but inevitably welcoming personality that one hopes to meet in a local pub. One might also meet his ex-wife Annette, co-owner, though Annette is more ready to retire and would like to sell the pub. Passe told me that he’d like to keep working the 80-hour weeks required to run the place but they’ve nevertheless put Le Roy de la Bière up for sale. “It’s tough to find a buyer because banks won’t lend money for bars,” he says, “including to me to buy her out, and for now that suits me fine.”

There are stories to be told here but I leave them for travelers to discover on their own—that’s part of the pleasure of visiting a watering hole such as this. You might then swallow enough of those stories to end up buying the place and settling in for the long run.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Return to The French Ardennes, Part 1: Charleville-Mézières: Beer, the Run-Away Poet and the Giant Lizard
Return to The French Ardennes, Part 2: Charleville-Mézières: Place Ducale and the Bare-Ass Casserole

***

Tourist information for the Loops of the Meuse and its affluent the Semoy
Monthermé Place Jean-Baptiste Clément, 08800 Monthermé
Tel : 03 24 54 46 73
www.meuse-semoy-tourisme.com

Le Palais de la Bière
70 rue Pasteur
08800 Monthermé
Tel. 03 24 53 06 31

Ardwen (Brewery and Restaurant)
20 avenue Roger Ponsart
08430 Launois-sur-Vence
Tel. : 03 24 35 46 50
www.ardwen.fr

Office de Tourisme de Sedan et Pays Sedanais
35 Rue du Ménil
08200 Sedan
Tel. : 03 24 27 73 73
www.tourisme-sedan.fr

Brasserie Artisanale du Château Fort and restaurant
45, Promenoir des prêtres
08200 Sedan
Tel : 03 24 53 13 52
Open Tues.-Sat. noon-2pm and 7-10pm and Sun. Noon-2pm.
Bière La Sedane (Jean-Christophe Viot)
www.biere-sedan.fr

Le Roy de la Bière (Lionel Passe)
19 Place de la Halle
08200 Sedan
Open 10am-2am Tues.-Sun.

The post The French Ardennes, Part 3: The Meuse, Sedan, More Beer and the Big Boar appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

By Kate Robinson

“I’m a fan of beers that are facile à boire, that you can drink the whole evening,” Daniel Thiriez said with a wry smile as he introduced the latest creation of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez.  (Brasserie means brewery in French.) He’d been invited by the owners of Paris’s new craft beer bar La Fine Mousse to present his various brews, including his latest, La Petite Princesse, a pale gold, low-alcohol beer brewed in collaboration with the Austin-Texas-based Jester King brewery. The crowd at La Fine Mousse was in for a special treat that evening. “You’re probably the very first people in France to taste this on tap,” he said.

Until recently, opportunities like this to meet craft brewers or discover beers outside of the Heineken-AB-InBev-Kronenbourg industrial triumvirate on tap in Paris were few and far between. But the Great Beer Desert finally has an oasis: La Fine Mousse, the first bar in Paris to seriously specialize in craft beer. Located on a discreet corner of the 11th arrondissement one block from the heart of the lively Oberkampf neighborhood, La Fine Mousse, roughly translated as “The Delicate Head [of Beer],” offers a revolving selection of 20 craft beers on tap and nearly 150 bottled references, as well as a program of brewery nights, brewing classes, and tastings—all proof that good beer is making its comeback in Paris and in good company.

From couch to counter

Romain Thieffry, Cyril Lalloum and Laurent Cicurel, the trio behind the counter at La Fine Mousse, which opened in September 2012, are also behind Les Soirées Maltées, a Paris-based organization that has been bringing craft beer fans and brewers together since 2010. Their diverse backgrounds did not include experience in the bar or restaurant industry, but they shared a love of good beer and the frustration of not having a place to enjoy it.

“With Les Soirées Maltées, we discovered that there were many difficult-to-find craft beers in France and no bar, even in Paris, that represented the diversity and quality of French breweries,” says Romain. So the three beer-lovers, together with Simon Thillou, owner of the beer shop La Cave à Bulles near the Pompidou Center, decided to create a place dedicated to good beer.

The craft beer revival in France is recent, but the country’s dormant affinity for a good brew goes back a long way. At the end of the 19th century, soon after Pasteur demystified fermentation and long before Americans started putting their own spin on European brewing traditions, France was home to 2,827 large breweries, and thousands of small local operations peppered the country’s northern regions.

At the time, beer and wine were happy tablemates: both were products of strong local industries with deep connections to the land. But the early years of the 20th century were not kind to traditional beer-making. Many village breweries were run by men who ended up fighting and dying in the world wars, which left fewer people to carry on the tradition of craft beer. In the absence of strong local breweries, the industrial giants found an easy foothold. By the mid-1970s, only 23 breweries were operating in France.

It would be the mid-nineties before the first French craft breweries appeared and another decade or more before the public started taking notice. Today there are nearly 500 breweries in France—that’s more than there are in Belgium. While many limit themselves to a small locally-distributed production, altogether they reflect beer’s enormous diversity. Before the recent revival of craft beer, however, as wine continued to evolve in quality and diversity, beer in France followed an inverse curve of standardization and homogenization. From there, it was easy for wine sympathizers to cast beer as a second rate drink. In fact, much of the advertising for wine focused on reinforcing the wine-is-good-beer-is-bad dichotomy.

As a result, many French people were left with the impression that French beer was unfit for anything but guzzling on the couch while watching a football (soccer) match—and definitely not worthy of “tasting.” However, the brew-bashing may actually have supported beer’s transformation from maligned second-choice into a sought-after beverage in its own right that remains accessible even as it grows in prestige.

“People are afraid of making mistakes with wine and this has made it inaccessible and intimidating,” says Romain. Because beer lost the battle for preeminent national beverage, it still has a friendly, guy-next-door kind of approachability that makes it easy to get into. “People don’t have any complexes when it comes to beer.”

Raising the bar

La Fine Mousse is a friendly little bar where the uninitiated rub elbows with seasoned professionals. Having themselves evolved from beer enthusiasts to connoisseurs to mini beer geeks, as Romain puts it, the owners are as attentive to the novice as they are to the most accomplished brewer. “We tried to break the stereotypes with this bar,” explains Romain. La Fine Mousse has nothing in common with a typical zinc-inflected brasserie (in addition to meaning brewery, brasserie also means a large café-restaurant that naturally serves beer), nor is it a wood-paneled beer den. It’s a stone-textured place with subdued modernity that reflects both the terroir of craft beer and the demands of an urban clientele.

From the row of glistening taps to the rustically modern concrete bar to the custom-designed cold room and draft system, everything in La Fine Mousse has been thoughtfully chosen to create an environment conducive to discovery that reflects the exceptional beers available. “We want people to discover different styles and different breweries, to wake up their sense of taste and change their perception of beer. There’s real work and craftsmanship behind it and there are now excellent products out there,” Romain explains.

La Fine Mousse also wants to overturn the stereotype that a craft beer is an expensive beer. “We set out to prove to people that they can drink an excellent, high-quality product at the same price as an industrial beer,” says Romain. Most craft beers here cost 3.50€ to 7€ for un demi (a 25 cl glass of beer), about the same price as a Heineken at many bars and cafés in Paris. Bottles run 6-10€ plus some exceptional higher-priced beers from select brewers throughout Europe.

A chacun son goût – To each his own

The clientele at La Fine Mousse is as diverse as the beer on tap. From the elderly couple looking for a beer they tasted in Flanders to the group of women starting an evening out to the beer geek regulars who know every brew on the menu, La Fine Mousse has something for everyone. And half the fun of an evening at the bar is figuring out what exactly that something is.

The statement “I’d like a beer” triggers a series of questions to identify what you’d really like: Dark or light? Fruity or floral? A touch acidic? (In French or in English if you prefer.) “Some people find it a little disconcerting at the beginning because most of us aren’t used to making a choice about beer, like we would naturally with wine,” explains Romain.

Nevertheless, he says, most people get hooked once they begin to get a sense of the variety of tastes that beer can have. “They see very quickly that this beer is more flavorful than what’s usually available. Once they get into the game they’ll come in and say, ‘I want something that’s not too bitter, with a hint of fruit, a little bit of spice’—and when we find the beer that fits their taste and aromatic profile, they’re enchanted.”

A beer near you

Romain sees the current interest in craft beer as part of a more general shift toward a “consume less, consume better” attitude, one that’s making people more receptive to a new way of thinking about beer. “We have so many good breweries [in France] that are making an incredible diversity of beer with a real savoir-faire,” says Romain. “Someone will try a beer and say, ‘Wow, this is excellent, where’s it from?’ When we tell them Paris or another region they know, the response is often ‘I had no idea.’”

That’s not too surprising considering that the craft beer revival in France is still quite young. “I was the only one in Esquelbecq when I started 16 years ago,” Daniel Thiriez explained to me during the evening dedicated to products of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez. Esquelbecq is less than 10 miles from the Belgian border in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The village once had five breweries and more than 50 estaminets (the name for traditional northern pubs), but no beer had been produced in the village for 50 years by the time he moved into the former Brasserie Poitevin in 1996.

But Daniel Thiriez is no longer alone. While statistics show the decline of the French beer industry in general, the smallest breweries are maintaining double digit growth. In the last 15 years, the craft beer movement has produced some excellent breweries, including at least six in and around Paris.

Part of the charm of craft beer is that it starts out local somewhere. Rather than go through big distributors, the team at La Fine Mousse goes directly to most of the brewers. That might involve traveling a few hours from Paris to a beer fair or brewery or making a quick trip to Bagnolet, 15 minutes from the city center.

“There are talented brewers all around us,” says Romain. His advice to anyone interested is to go out and meet them. “Find the brewers in your area. They will be thrilled to show you what they’re doing. That’s what local is all about. You’ll see real craftsmanship at work, you’ll smell the grains that go into it, and you’ll drink a beer with the person who made it.”

The cream of the crop

Of France’s nearly 500 breweries a growing fraction are exceptional. Romain and his colleagues hunt down these liquid gems and offer them a wider audience. They decided from the beginning that French beers would represent half the menu at La Fine Mousse. Most of the other half are European brews though some come from overseas. “When we made our list of what we wanted to see on tap and in bottles, we realized that half were already French. We didn’t have to force to find them and that was a really nice surprise,” says Romain.

With so many good beers in France and elsewhere, choosing what to keep isn’t easy. Deciding on a selection of eclectic and refined flavor profiles accessible to both the inexperienced drinker and confirmed beer amateur means making some sacrifices. Stout, I.P.A., cervoise, barley wine and lambic are among the styles that circulate regularly through the 20 taps. “We made it a priority to have a truly diverse selection of breweries and styles,” explains Romain. “We might have 15 different styles of beer on tap so we rotate them frequently to feature different styles, but also different breweries and different styles within the same brewery.”

The beer that binds

There’s a strong spirit of exchange and innovation associated with craft beer and it’s one that La Fine Mousse actively supports. The bar already plays host to beer tastings, guest brewery nights and even beer-making classes with My Beer Company, a microbrewery just beyond the edge of Paris in Levallois. The bar and its owners are bubbling over with curiosity and passion which comes across in the attention they lavish on clients and the beers they serve. “There are still so many breweries that demand to be known,” says Romain.

The many small breweries appearing all over the country are redefining beer as a local product of quality. La Fine Mousse and a handful of other bars and beer shops are finally giving people a place to discover them, proof that wine isn’t the only drink worth ‘tasting’ anymore.

La Fine Mousse, 6 avenue Jean Aicard, 11th arr. Tel. 09 80 45 94 64. Metro Saint Maur or Ménilmontant. Open daily 5pm-2am. Cold cut and/or cheese plates can be ordered after 7pm. See the bar’s site for special events.

Other notable craft beer bars in Paris

Brewberry, 18 rue du Pot de Fer, 5th arr. Tel. 01 43 36 53 92. Metro Place Monge or Censier-Daubenton. Open Mon. and Tues. 3-9pm, Wed.-Sat. 12:30-11pm, Sun. noon-9pm.

Le Super Coin, 3 rue Baudelique, 18th arr. Metro Jules Joffrin or Simplon. Open Tues. and Wed. 11am-midnight, Thurs.-Sat. 11am-2am, Sunday 4pm-midnight.

Beer shops in Paris with a wide selection of craft beers
La Cave à Bulles, 45 rue Quincampoix, 4th arr. Tel. 01 40 29 03 69. Metro Les Halles, Rambuteau or Chatelet. Open Tues.-Sat. 10am-2pm and 4pm-8pm; closed Wed. Owned by Simon Thillou, co-owner of La Fine Mousse.

Bieres Cultes, 14 rue des Halles, 1st arr. Tel. 09 81 98 93 32. Metro Chatelet. Open Mon. 5-8pm, Tues.-Fri. 1-8pm, Sat. noon-8pm. Also stores in the 17th and 18th arrondissements.

Chop’In, 45 rue de Gergovie, 14th arr. Tel. 01 45 42 93 71. Metro Plaisance or Pernety. Open Tues.-Fri. noon-8pm, Sat. 10am-8pm.

La Moustache Blanche, 16 rue des Tournelles, 4th arr. Tel. 01 75 57 15 06. Metro Bastille. Open Tues.-Thurs. 11am-8:30pm, Fri. noon-9:30pm, Sun. 2-8pm.

People’s Drug Store, 78 rue des Martyrs, 18th arr. Metro Pigalle or Abbesses. Open daily noon-midnight, until 2am Fri. and Sat.

© 2013, Kate Robinson  for publication in France Revisited

Kate Robinson is originally from the Pacific Northwest and has lived in Paris since 2004. A freelance writer and editor, she also organizes the reading series “Pause on the Landing” for the Paris literary journal Upstairs at Duroc.

Interested in organized beer and wine touring in the spirit of France Revisited? See here.

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