How beer cracked France

Only a fool tries to guess exactly what awaits at a French karaoke bar. But on a Saturday night in Avignon, I wasn’t expecting to find a crowd of twentysomething hipsters drinking American-style IPA and singing “Mr. Brightside” and “Friday I’m in Love.”

France, in all its stereotypical glory, has always been a wine country. Edward Lear wrote no limericks about a “young man from Saint-Étienne, who liked drinking Old Speckled Hen” but things are changing. France has the most breweries in Europe and beer is now the most bought alcohol in supermarkets, though if you ask a middle-aged Frenchman why young people are embracing beer instead of burgundy, you are met with the most Gallic of shrugs and a “bof… je ne sais pas.”

So, why are they doing it? It is the same love of artisanal products that made wine king. Come Saturday morning, young locals still flock to the marché to buy fruit, vegetables, cheese and fish, despite organic food prices soaring. Beer bears out the immutability of this national characteristic. Almost 70 percent of the beer consumed in France is brewed there and small boutique brasseries are thriving in the traditional wine heartlands of Bordeaux and Provence.

Brasserie Bleue in Nice is a flourishing microbrewery, whose owner Daniel Deganutti singles out the philosophy of mieux consommer — trying to eat and drink in a more environmentally friendly way — as a key reason for their success. Craft beer made with local ingredients is a winner on two fronts because local sourcing means better-quality products and fewer food miles. For many young people, eating and drinking healthily is no longer just about the health of the individual, it is about the health of the planet too, and Deganutti’s clients, he says, happily “pay a premium to choose craft beer over cheaper and more ubiquitous industrial offerings.”

Another secret to beer’s recent success is that, in France, beer and wine are not as different from one another as they are in the US or UK. French beer drinkers like their beer fruity. At Brasserie Bleue, there are beers flavored with roasted hazelnut, peach, yuzu and even a vanilla stout. Familiarity does not breed contempt but love; by incorporating the most popular elements of wine into beer production, like the concept of “notes” or hints of flavor, craft brewers have found a veritable recipe for success.

They have managed to create uniquely French styles of beer. As ambrées and brunes prosper, so does vière, a novel drink made by fermenting a blend of wine must and beer wort. Marcel Séon, from viere.fr, explains that by combining “the fruity and tannic aromas of wine with the hoppy textures and flavors of beer” they have managed to create “a new gustatory experience that intrigues and attracts consumers.”

Fashionable drinking habits also have an inevitable effect on an increasingly online and globalized youth. In public and online, you must be seen to be drinking the right thing. The Apérol spritz dominated terrace bars in the summer of 2023, and Emma D’Arcy’s negroni sbagliato with prosecco brought a back-page cocktail into the mainstream. Now, in France, it is the turn of craft beer.

This trend is, in part, due to the increasingly positive perception of anglophone culture. Astonishingly, the world’s chicest people are beginning to look across the Atlantic for their definition of cool. Ask a French teen for their favorite musician and TV show and you’re likely to get Taylor Swift and Friends. So, with this cultural tsunami, cabernet sauvignon and Johnny Halliday are out and Charli xcx and chevaliers (1L) of beer are in.

When I visited the Brasserie La Lune, an eco-brewery in Bordeaux, it was buzzing with young people talking, co-working, and relaxing with a demi de rousse amber ale. For them, wine is drunk at home and beer at social gatherings. And, crucially, zero-alcohol options make beer a much more inclusive option for an age group (18-25) where almost a quarter of people avoid alcohol entirely. As Deganutti says, “the craft beer movement has brought new waves of creativity and innovation which have sparked the curiosity and interest of those not previously attracted to ‘classic’ beer.” It is now the de facto drink for the artisan-lover, the environmentally invested, the TikTok enthusiast, the American wannabe, and the teetotaler. In uniting those seemingly disparate groups, it has become a drink which brings young people together — France’s new most talked-about tipple.

My opening limerick was, perhaps ironically, nonsensical because conventional, commercially produced beer remains of little interest to today’s French youth. But, as Séon explains, “the beer market in France has evolved enormously in recent years and creations like IPAs and la vière have helped renew French interest in beer.” So, it is in its current artisanal, sustainable and non-alcoholic forms that beer has finally cracked France. I might more aptly have joked about “a young girl from sunny Marseille, who drank zero-percent IPA.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2025 World edition.