It can be intimidating for outsiders to order drinks in France, from worries about pronunciation to fears of choosing the wrong pairing. But there’s an easy way to come off as an expert. Just say, with your very best French accent, “Un Picon, s’il vous plaît.” Any decent server will know that you’re talking about Amer Picon, the connoisseur’s choice.
Even if Amer Picon is not listed on the menu, it’s almost guaranteed to be stocked behind the bar: an 18% ABV, sharply bitter liqueur, made with orange, gentian, and cinchona. In production since 1837, this legendary brand of amer—meaning “bitter” in French, and which counts as its own category of spirits—is widely consumed in France, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country, as well as in some parts of Belgium.
At Café St. Éloi in Houtquerke, France, not far from the Belgian border, an area historically known as French Flanders, 88-year-old Gisèle Coudeville says she’s been serving Picon all her life. Before she took over in 1958, the café was owned by her parents, and by her grandparents before them.
On the door of the 17th-century brick building, you can’t miss the illustration made by a local artist: a portrait of Coudeville, a big smile on her face, with the bottle of Picon that made her reputation and has brought her clients every day since.
Don’t be surprised when your order arrives. Unless you specify that you want it neat—a weird request, to be honest—your Picon will be served as a mixed drink, a type of boilermaker made with a small shot of the spirit—the amount varies, which changes the color, but generally around 1oz—and a larger amount of beer, usually 8oz of Pale Ale or Lager, though Coudeville admits that she has a thing for Picon with white wine.
Drink it as it is, or add some lemon syrup, Cointreau, grenadine, or whatever your imagination requires. You just got yourself a Picon-Bière, as well as a Certified French Person badge.
Even if it’s not as famous as it was a century ago, Picon-Bière is having a comeback, and it remains an icon of French drinking culture. Whether they drink it or not, everyone in France is familiar with it, but not so much with its history, despite its deep connections to France’s past—from its origin, rooted in colonialism, to its importance within the working class.
Owned by Diageo since 1995, Picon was bought by Campari Group in May 2022 for 119 million euros, or about $130 million. The new owner shared its plans to make Picon-Bière as “sexy”—its word—as a trendy spritz cocktail. At the time, Bob Kunze-Concewitz, Campari CEO, said that despite the brand being “asleep and dusty,” it had great potential for international sales.
The brand still has a strong consumer base and makes a consistent revenue (around $23 million in 2021), selling 80% of its production in France, with the remaining 20% in neighboring Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg).
For now, don’t bother looking for it across the Atlantic: Picon hasn't been imported to the United States for decades, supposedly because it contains calamus, a plant banned as an ingredient by the F.D.A. since 1968.
Mark Maynard, professor of English at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and director of the documentary “Piconland,” believes that Picon actually disappeared in the States far earlier, due to Prohibition, after which it apparently never returned. His movie explores Nevada’s culture of Picon Punch, a cocktail created by Basque immigrants in the late 19th century, which is nowadays made without its namesake ingredient.
Another reason for the drink’s disappearance, he says, might have been because of increased tariffs on imports to the U.S. But it’s difficult to gather accurate information on the matter, and on whether Picon ever contained calamus, as that ingredient is not mentioned on the label today.
Some U.S. producers have made their own versions, like Torani Amer in San Francisco, where Picon Punch is said to have been created.
But if you want the real deal, you’ll find it in France. Just go to any café, bar, or restaurant to spot a bottle somewhere on a shelf behind the counter—even in fancy places, despite Picon being strongly associated with the working class.
Many brands have tried to recreate its success with their own version of “amer bière.” (Sommer, from Alsace, is the second most famous brand in France.) None were ever as successful as Picon, which became a generic term for this type of orange-flavored liqueur: Even if it’s not Picon, it’s a Picon.
He’s on every bottle, printed right on the label: A man riding a white horse, holding a bottle of Picon. But this is not just any man: It’s a 19th-century French colonial soldier from Napoleon’s army. Some even say it’s Gaétan Picon himself, the drink’s creator.
Enlisted in the colonial conquest of Algeria in 1830, Picon became an infantry horseman in Skikda, known as Philipeville by the colonists. There, Picon founded his first distillery in 1837, while under the command of Maréchal Vallée.
Like many things that have to do with the brand, this story should be taken with a pinch of salt. Other articles from Picon’s time claim that he joined the occupying army as Vallée’s personal chef.
Even the reason why he invented what he first called Amer Africain, or “African Bitter,” isn’t the same if you read an article from 1909 or one from 1884. The first claim, which you’ll find most often, is that Picon came down with a fever, as most soldiers did in colonial Africa, due to the heat, the nondrinkable water, and unknown viruses.
According to this first version of the origin story, Picon used memories of his grandmother’s healing recipes to make his own medicine: an infusion of orange zest, gentian, and cinchona, in the form of an herbal tea that later became a bitter liqueur with 39% ABV.
The other origin story claims that Picon invented his Amer to replace absinthe, an herb-infused spirit that was widely consumed in colonial Algeria. Picon tried to drink absinthe in order to fit in, the newspaper shared, but it made him sick.
Both of these supposed origins set up the same narrative: Thank God Gaétan Picon was there to bring a proper drink to such an awful place, whether that was in order to save the noble colonists from death by various local diseases, or to stop the unhealthy habit among the barbarian natives of drinking absinthe.
In that way, the success of the Picon distillery was used to support French colonization in Algeria and in other colonies, where the bitter liqueur was also exported to colonial troops.
Posters telling the story of Gaétan Picon served as propaganda for France’s Algerian conquest, where we’re told that, “Il était bien temps que la France mis de l’ordre là-bas.”
Translation: “It was about time for France to establish order down there.”
The bitter liqueur continued to be shared even after Picon left Algeria in 1872 to open his first distillery in Marseille, changing the product’s name from Amer Africain to Amer Picon. The drink was still viewed through the lens of hygiene, and as a way to bring healthy products to countries deemed unhealthy.
An article from 1905 makes a remarkable claim: “Apart from any commercial consideration, there is an interest, the social scope of which will not prevent any thoughtful mind from spreading in our African colonies, in Central America and in South America, a healthy product, whose consumption is indisputably beneficial.”
By 1909, Picon & Compagnie, then owned by Picon’s son and his five sons-in-law, had opened four new distilleries across France and four more in other European countries. (Unsurprisingly for the time, the owners were all men, despite several of his daughters also wanting a seat at the table.)
Today, the drink is still produced in France and Italy. If the label on every bottle tells you the story of Gaétan Picon, it does so without mentioning that he was actually a colonial soldier in an occupied foreign country, while still showing the man in his colonial uniform.
That said, someone from the original drawing is missing today. Made by the French illustrator George Scott for the brand's 100th anniversary in 1937, the original image once included an Algerian woman, her face covered, being carried away by the soldier.
Obviously, it would be seen as wildly inappropriate for a label to include such an image today, as her representation nurtures a racist and sexist narrative. Her clothes don’t even fit with what local women were wearing at the time, making her an inaccurate, fetishized version of what French people thought Algerian women looked like.
What was once a huge part of the brand’s storytelling has been subtly erased in such a way that Picon still conveys a sense of history and tradition, without telling the whole story to its consumers.
Being one of the most prolific French distilleries at the beginning of the 20th century and a massive symbol of success—Gaétan Picon was made a member of the National Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit, in 1878—Picon has tried almost everything.
Picon mixed with seltzer, lemon, mint, grenadine, curaçao, you name it. In the 1930s, you could even find a recipe for Picon Chaud—a “hot Picon,” made with boiling water and sugar cubes, intended to soothe a cold—in brochures aimed at skiers.
By the 1960s, the brand had several different products to its name. In addition to the classic bottles of Amer Picon, the company also produced Pastis PEC, echoing Ricard and other makers of the traditional aniseed aperitif. A Muscat wine flavored with orange and gentian, Picon’s Pikina seemed to be mostly marketed toward women. Curaçao-Picon, their own version of a triple sec, had a lot of momentum in the 1930s. But the most famous to this day has always been Picon-Bière.
A persistent myth surrounds the blend of Picon and beer, stemming from the 1962 movie “A Monkey in Winter,” in which Jean-Paul Belmondo's character gets drunk on Picon-Bière and is kicked out of a café after starting a fight.
The café owner then delivers an iconic line: “Picon-Bière does not forgive. That's what my poor daddy died of. There’s nothing more treacherous!”
A French cinema classic, “A Monkey in Winter” is said to have popularized Picon-Bière among the general public. Some go further, claiming that the blend itself was created by the movie. This is a bit of a reach, since the movie is an adaptation of Antoine Blondin’s 1959 novel with the same name, “Un Singe en Hiver,” in which Picon-Bière is mentioned twice.
Picon-Bière wasn’t created by the film or by the book, and it’s most likely that it was popular before either of them appeared. If these not-so-accurate facts can flourish all over the internet, it’s mostly because you won’t find a lot of historical writing or research about Picon or about amer drinks in general. Maynard faced the same difficulties while researching Picon Punch.
“Alcohol is a particularly difficult subject to find accurate information on, because so much of what a patron or a bartender will tell you with 100% surety is often more legend than fact,” he says.
“Alcohol is a particularly difficult subject to find accurate information on because so much of what a patron or a bartender will tell you with 100% surety is often more legend than fact.”
When I reach out to the Stenay Beer Museum in Alsace-Lorraine, they’re sorry to tell me that they can’t find anything in their archives related to Picon-Bière, despite being located in a region where people are very familiar with Picon. The Musée Français de la Brasserie tells me the same thing, as do other local museums and historians.
The brand owners—past and present—have not communicated much about Picon’s real history. Several requests for comment from the company go unanswered.
A deep dive into the press archives of the French National Library—whose stated mission is “to collect, catalog, and preserve French national documentary heritage”—confirms that Picon-Bière was a big part of French drinking culture long before Belmondo’s on-screen bar fight.
One of the oldest mentions of Picon-Bière in the library dates back to 1940 in Nice, where Lucien de Mandre, a soldier born in France’s colonies, asks for a Picon-Bière with lemon at a café. (In those days, journalists frequently shared what people were drinking in their articles, which is a blessing for the sake of this story.) The writer notes that, in France, this order is “un mélange inconnu,” meaning “an unknown blend.”
Other mentions follow. One 1949 article claims that Picon-Bière is a specialty of the Alsace region. Advertisements bearing the name Picon-Bière can be found in newspapers in 1953, while branded bottles of Picon-Bière begin to appear in Picon company brochures in 1962.
Despite those earlier dates, Picon’s own announcements for the 175th anniversary of the distillery in 2012 all claimed that Picon-Bière officially launched in 1967.
It’s most likely that the “Picon and beer” boilermaker wasn’t invented by the brand itself, but by the people drinking it. Northern and eastern France have always had a strong relationship with beer, so trying the famous bitter with beer must have come about naturally. Soldiers returning from colonies overseas could also have spread their favorite blends in different regions.
But Picon-Bière has stayed a French thing to this day, and—despite a shared border, an even stronger beer culture, and a similar colonial history—Belgium seemingly never got into it, at least not officially.
Romain Hottelart, co-founder of l’Amicale Flamande du Picon-Bière, or “Flemish Friends of Picon-Bière,” a Facebook group launched in 2014 and a formal public association since 2018, confirms that 90% of the group’s almost 6,000 members are French. “Belgians are rather fond of Picon with white wine, which I find to be an abomination,” he says, laughing.
In 1975, Picon launched Picon-Club, a new product designed to be used in cocktails with tonic or white wine. The difference between that and Picon-Bière is unknown, as the two labels list the exact same ingredients.
Hottelart believes that Picon started being mixed with beer as a way to enhance its flavor profile. “Belgian beers were more tasty than what you could find in France at the time,” he says. That gave Picon-Bière a raison d’être in one country, but not the other. “Maybe they didn’t see the point of adding anything to a perfectly fine product, while French beers were a bit more bland.”
According to l’Amicale, there may be another reason why the Belgians never got into it: bottles of Picon-Bière aren’t sold in Belgium. Instead, what’s available there is Amer Picon, a slightly different product which is much less commonly found in France. The recipe of Amer Picon, at 21% ABV, gives a more bitter drink than Picon-Bière—too bitter to be properly blended with beer, they say.
In her café in France close to the Belgian border, Coudeville says she mostly serves Picon with white wine to Belgians, while serving it with beer for French people. However, she uses a different spirit from the Picon family: Picon-Club, which adds more sourness. That goes against what l’Amicale recommends: Only use Picon-Bière.
The generosity of Coudeville’s pour makes it easy to forget and forgive. She uses a single 12oz Stella Artois bottle to make five Picon-Bière drinks, with just 2.4oz of beer in each, while the average Picon-Bière puts 1oz of Picon into an 8z glass of beer.
That’s because the best Picon-Bière cocktail is the one you like, according to l’Amicale, and it can be many things to many people. Hottelart likes his with a full-bodied Pale Ale like Livinus, while other members seem rather fond of a mix with a Strong Ale like Chimay Bleue or a Triple like Paix Dieu.
Most importantly, beyond your choice of beer or the darkness of your Picon, it’s who you drink it with that really matters.
Alexandre Storck, the organization’s secretary, says he doesn’t even own a bottle of Picon, because he would rather drink it with friends in a bar than alone at home.
This eminently social aspect of Picon is what made it famous but also made its reputation, not always in a good way.
For many, the stereotypical Picon drinker is an old drunk who spends all his free time at a very specific French venue that is known as “un bar PMU,” a gambling café where customers can buy cigarettes while drinking beer and making sports bets. A bar PMU is associated with a very specific clientele: the lower class.
Though it’s classist and prejudicial, I’d be lying if I said this image never crossed my mind when thinking about Picon. This common misconception has a simple explanation: Picon-Bière is, in fact, the working-class drink of choice.
Hottelart himself was born and raised in Denain, one of the poorest cities in France, in the Bassin Minier area, a location which has historically been linked to coal mining. Coal mines were also significant in the Eastern regions of France, Alsace and Lorraine, where Picon also thrives.
In Denain, Hottelart’s grandmother—“Mamie Jeannine,” as he calls her—was a café owner where he used to hang out as a kid, playing pinball. Those childhood memories remain with him today. “It’s always been a bit of a habit to get out of work and go to the café to have a beer, most likely a Picon-Bière,” he says. “For people working in a factory or in the mines, adding Picon to beer was a way to add something special to their day.”
“It’s always been a bit of a habit to get out of work and go to the café to have a beer, most likely a Picon-Bière. For people working at a factory or in the mines, adding Picon to beer was a way to add something special to their day.”
Eric Leleu, owner of the bar La Musette in Guesnain, at the very heart of the Bassin Minier, believes that adding Picon was also a way to get drunk on the cheap.
In La Musette, named after the lunch bag miners traditionally carry, 500ml (16.9oz) of Picon Charbon—the bar bestseller, made with a whopping 120 ml (4oz) shot of Picon, which renders it dark like coal, aka charbon—costs 4.50 euros, or just less than 5 dollars.
This higher dose of alcohol made Picon-Bière’s reputation, as well as that of its drinkers. In a country where wine heritage is strong and drinking it is a sign of refinement, a miner having a pint of orange liqueur mixed with beer isn’t the typical image of what a French person is supposed to look like.
After being seen as obsolete and cheap, Picon-Bière appears to be making a comeback, at least according to Leleu and other bartenders I talked to. But no one seems to know why.
The rise of craft beer in the last decade could be an explanation. Beer is in, and French people are more familiar with bitterness now that IPA has been accepted by consumers.
With Picon-Bière, the beer trend meets another one, the return of vintage spirits. Now, Amer Picon is finding its way onto trendy cocktail menus.
That said, Picon-Bière has mostly been associated with industrial beers, not craft products. The brand itself has made ads with Kronenbourg. As such, it doesn’t quite fit into the craft universe.
“It’s frowned upon to make cocktails with beer in the craft beer community. Most people say that if a beer is well done, it doesn’t need to be blended with anything, that it should be good as it is.”
For Agathe Leroy, a beer sommelier and brewer in Douai, there’s another reason why Picon-Bière is seen as a weird fit for craft beer. “It’s frowned upon to make cocktails with beer in the craft beer community,” she says. “Most people say that if a beer is well done, it doesn’t need to be blended with anything, that it should be good as it is.”
Storck doesn’t agree with this idea: “Picon isn’t used to make a bad beer less disgusting,” he says. “If you give me a Picon with a Kronenbourg, I’ll know right away. Picon with a shitty beer is a shitty Picon.”
“Picon isn’t used to make a bad beer less disgusting. If you give me a Picon with a Kronenbourg, I’ll know right away. Picon with a shitty beer is a shitty Picon.”
“Sugar may be another reason,” Leroy says. “Sweetness in beer is associated with traditional Belgian styles, which are rejected by French beer geeks.” That’s a bit of a contradiction, she notes, when you consider the popularity of Pastry Stouts and Pastry Sours within the same community.
Funnily enough, if you spend some time on l’Amicale Facebook group, you’ll realize that Picon lovers are a lot like craft beer stans.
Like beer lovers, they also have their own slang. A Picon can be called a Cuivré, a Velours, or a Bourbourg, depending on the amount of Picon you put in the beer and the color it creates. If it reaches a certain darkness, the Picon-Bière is “homologué”, which can be translated to “approved.”
They also share their favorite places to drink the best Picon. They have their own celebrities, including Gisèle Coudeville, who are known for serving the best or most generous takes on Picon-Bière.
They even have hardcore fans, Hottelart says, who can be judgy and rude to newcomers if they dare to use Picon-Club instead of Picon-Bière, despite the general respect for Coudeville.
Just like a lot of beer fans, they’re mainly men in their thirties, who represent more than 80% of l’Amicale members. That might not come as a surprise when you consider Picon’s history with soldiers and workers.
The thing is, even if superfans set many trends in the craft beer community, they’re still a minority of all beer consumers in France, where things like traditional Belgian styles are still very much appreciated.
As such, it would be wrong to look at Picon-Bière only through the sometimes elitist and judgmental lens of the craft beer scene, even if it’s interesting to see that the two can coexist.
In France, the craft beer scene moves fast, and what was once considered uncool can end up being popular just a few years—or even months—later.
Camille Cieplik, co-founder of the craft distillery Disent-elles, says the same thing could happen with Amer Bière, following trends that she and distillery co-founder Luce Lepissier saw while living in Canada.
“Beer cocktails are quite popular now in North America,” she says. “It’s going to reach France at some point, just like any other beer trend.”
Cieplik and Lepissier came up with Disent-elles l’Amère, their own, craft-distillery version of Picon, using locally sourced, handpicked plants like sea wormwood for bitterness. Their drink earned a lot of attention at French beer festivals last year.
After years of taking inspiration from North American brewing, mainly by focusing on really hoppy styles, it now seems like French brewers—and drinkers—are looking to embrace their own traditions, whether it’s by taking influences from French wine or by paying homage to institutions like Picon-Bière.
Kévin Coudette, manager of the Lille craft beer bar La Capsule, believes Amer Bière conveys the sense of familiarity and conviviality that he wants to create at his venue—by throwing “Soirée Picon,” a recurring “Picon Evening” event where you can choose from various amer brands and flavors to blend with a craft beer.
That’s also what led two breweries, Hôpi and La Débauche, to brew Homologué, a collaborative spiced beer with orange zest and gentian that attempts to recreate the taste of a Picon-Bière cocktail.
Ludovic Hörlin, Hôpi’s founder, took it as a challenge to make a Picon-Bière without actually using Picon, but one that fits in with how he often finds inspiration. “As a brewer, I don’t restrict myself to beer when it comes to creating new recipes. I get lots of ideas through food, herbs I tasted in a meal, or our terroir,” he says. “It’s our own take on a local tradition everyone is familiar with here.”
It’s true that many in France are familiar with Picon, sometimes even more the brand than the drink itself. When asked about other orange-flavored liqueurs, members of l’Amicale say they don’t even think about changing brands, and often get disappointed when doing so.
“I believe there’s an attachment to the brand itself,” Storck says. “Maybe it’s the same thing for people only drinking Ricard or Pastis 51. A familiar brand brings back lots of memories and nostalgia.”
That nostalgic feeling makes many fans question what the new owner, Campari Group, will do with the almost 200-year-old brand. Will Picon find its way back to shelves in North America? Will the iconic bottle have a makeover to make it “less dusty” and more appealing to a new public?
Since the takeover, Campari Group hasn’t shared what they are going to do. The only significant change occurred this April, when Picon’s social media started up again, after more than two years without a new post.
The brand now recommends adding 5cl of Picon, or about 1.7oz, into a 250ml (8oz) glass of beer, after decades of saying you only need 3cl (1oz) of Picon, a recipe that was even engraved into branded glassware.
It feels like Picon isn’t up for a makeover anytime soon, mostly because it simply doesn’t need one. Sure, you may find it at fancy bars in Paris, if you want to spend 40 euros on a cocktail. But the OG Picon drinker will always rather hit up Café St Éloi, La Musette, or someplace similar.
Amer Bière doesn’t need approval from superfans or wealthy drinkers to keep its steady course. Trends may come and go, but this one is set to stay.
Words by Anaïs LecoqIllustrations by Ben Chlapek
