Kir is one of France’s most popular traditional aperitifs and one of the few to have gained an international following. Named after Félix Kir (1876–1968), the priest who served as mayor of Dijon between 1945 and 1968, it is made with local ingredients: white Burgundy wine and crème de cassis. The latter has been inextricably linked with Burgundy ever since the phylloxera crisis pushed some wine producers to grow black currants, which were then made into liqueurs.
At the end of the nineteenth century, crème de cassis was a staple of French cafés and an essential ingredient of many mixed drinks. The Vermouth Cassis, for instance, was probably one of the most popular drinks of its time, but cassis was also mixed with Byrrh, gentian-based aperitifs, cognac, or white wine—the last being known as the Blanc Cassis.
It is often claimed that the Blanc Cassis was invented in 1904 in a Dijon café for mayor Henri Barabant. The recipe was probably older, but Barabant made the Blanc Cassis the official drink at the city’s receptions. Blanc Cassis was extremely popular all over France in the 1930s, but it took the election of highly respected French resistance veteran Kir for the drink to take its current name. Kir’s death in 1968 came at the very beginning of a two-decade period during which the drink named after him was in vogue internationally as a brunch drink and aperitif (the influential American food writer James Beard pronounced it the “favorite aperitif”).
Although the Blanc Cassis was probably initially made with any dry white wine, a standard Kir is built with cold Bourgogne aligoté wine. The Kir Royale is a variant made with crémant de Bourgogne, a local sparkling wine, or champagne. Outside of France, of course, the choices of wines used are rather more relaxed.
Recipe: Pour 15 ml crème de cassis into a wine glass, followed by 100 ml cold Bourgogne aligoté.
See also crème de cassis; France; and Vermouth-Cassis.
Beard, James. “New Tastings Give Tasteful Offerings to Wine Drinkers.” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 13, 1970, Food Guide, 2.
Gérard, Gaston. Le miroir du coin et du temps. Dijon: Edition des Etats Généraux de la Gastronomie française, 1959.
By: François Monti