After a successful jaunt up to Manchester for the UK National Coffee
Throwing Competition and Tamper Tantrum Live at Cup North this weekend, our
attention has turned fully to Paris. Known for its food, wine, and café culture, Paris’
specialty coffee culture has gone on a very visible journey from having
a practically non-existent specialty coffee scene, the
early development phase, and the
point at which Paris was recognized, on an international level, as having a
specialty coffee scene.
Today’s talk from the catacombs is a truly fascinating one, offering a
snapshot of the Parisian specialty coffee scene in 2012, right around the time
it was starting to gain traction. David Nigel Flynn’s talk, “Jus de Chaussette”
(“Sock Juice”), looks at the French culture of taste and of tradition, why
specialty coffee is so hard for the French to swallow, and ways in which
specialty coffee shops can frame the conversation in the way that doesn’t make
traditionalists defensive. There are some real pearls of wisdom in this talk
that, despite the fact that it is directly tied to a specific time and place, are
still incredibly relevant to our discussions of specialty coffee today.
We’re excited to bring this talk back for two reasons: (1) we’re
planning on visiting a tonne of shops next week and want to see how much of an
impact the introduction of “Jus de Chausette” has had on the French specialty
coffee scene and, (2) it’s making us ask ourselves, in light of recent, plentiful conversations about third wave stagnation, how much have we actually progressed since 2012?