Kir in the community

Delving into the history of a classic mixture of white wine and crème de cassis.

Kir was big in 1980s Britain but then it just seemed to disappear overnight. People stopped offering it at the fashionable South Bucks drinks parties I was dragged along to as a child. My parents still have some ancient bottles of crème de cassis in the garage gathering dust. I have a theory as to why it went out of fashion: wine got tastier. The kind of stuff my parents would mix with it were supermarket Muscadet or discount Chablis. Now Muscadet can be a fine and noble thing but it can also be thin and highly acidic. Adding blackcurrant liqueur is a great way to perk it up. Then New Zealand sauvignon blanc with its wild flavours of gooseberries, passionfruit, and yes, blackcurrants hit the shelves and suddenly the Kir seemed old fashioned. 

The drink originated in Burgundy. The story goes that Burgundy was full of blackcurrants and the wine wasn’t always that ripe so someone had the brilliant idea of combining them. Though in his book The Discovery of France historian Graham Robb has his doubt about whether this is true. He writes: 

‘the Dijon area was not particularly rich in blackcurrants until an enterprising cafe owner made an explanatory trip to Paris in 1841, noted the popularity of cassis and began to market his own liquor as a regional speciality’. 

So like most traditional drinks, the Kir is not as ancient as the folklore would suggest.

One place that was rich in blackcurrants was the US in the 19th century but the berries were found to contain a fungus that attacked a major part of the American economy, pine trees. Tom Morton has the story in his book Holy Waters: 

‘So the Federal Government passed drastic laws that led to the complete eradication of all Ribes [a species of blackcurrant, as in Ribena]... and by the 20th century, there were almost none left.’ 

There is still very little blackcurrant cultivation in America today. Morton refers to a Business Insider magazine with the startling headline: ‘99.9% of Americans have never tasted blackcurrant.’ The word ‘cassis’ is commonly used to describe wines made from cabernet sauvignon such as claret so this begs the question, have many Americans who use this term ever actually tasted a blackcurrant? 

Canon Kir liberating Burgundy

Funnily enough fresh blackcurrants aren’t that common in Britain either as something like 90% of the crop goes into Ribena. Being a higher civilisation, the French make a liqueur instead, called crème de cassis. Originally a mixture of wine and cassis was known as a Blanc de Cassis until the drink was popularised by a French canon called Felix Kir. A famous gourmand and drinker, he achieved fame during the war for his acts of resistance against the Nazi occupation. When the local dignitaries fled in the face of the German army, aged 63, he became de facto leader of the town of Dijon and, in the words of Fergus Butler-Gallie in his book Priests de la Resistance!, ‘set about making life as difficult as possible for the Nazis.’ Kir was involved with gun running, saved the town’s synagogue from destruction by suggesting the Germans use it to store military supplies and, by sheer force of personality, aided the escape of nearly 5,000 prisoners of war by pretending that they were required to help with local construction projects.

Eventually, the Germans cottoned on to Kir’s antics, Kir was arrested on a couple of occasions, survived an assassination attempt by French fascists, and had to flee. He returned though, riding a tank at the head of the liberating allied army. Butler-Gallie writes:

‘Wearing his priest’s cassock, his cloak billowing around him and his beret wedged firmly on his podgy head, Canon Kir made his return to the city from which, a matter of months before, he had only just escaped with his life.’

The blanc de cassis became known as the Kir in honour of this great Frenchman. Kir himself would have drunk his Kir with aligoté, the second white grape of Burgundy which makes rather neutral wines but the great thing about the Kir is that you can use pretty much anything: pinot grigio, Vinho Verde, unoaked chardonnay, or Picpoul de Pinet. Oddly enough Keith Floyd in the Burgundy episode of Floyd on France suggests that it should actually be made with red wine. 

The only thing is that it mustn't be sweet, oaky or have too much flavour. You can turn your Kir into a Kir Royale by using sparkling wine, Cremant de Bourgogne would be traditional, but any crisp dry sparkler would do. Prosecco won’t. You can spritz it up by adding ice, soft fruit like raspberries and a splash of soda water. Other fruit liqueurs work well such as Chambord or sloe gin. You could even use Ribena, though I am not sure Canon Kir would approve.