[C]offee has long been part of the French identity. Some of history\u2019s most well known French figures were coffee lovers. Honor\u00e9 de Balzac drank the equivalent of fifty cups a day (although he consumed it in straight coffee grounds). Voltaire\u2014who was said to drink upwards of forty cups of coffee a day\u2014purportedly responded to his physician\u2019s comment that coffee was slowly poisoning him by saying, \u201cYes, it must be a slow poison, it has been poisoning me for over seventy years!\u201d<\/p>\n
With its first caf\u00e9, le Procope, dating back to 1686, caf\u00e9 culture has been intrinsically linked to Parisian culture for centuries. After all, what would a trip to Paris be without a lazy morning spent on a caf\u00e9 terrace nursing a caf\u00e9 au lait and watching Parisian street life unfold in front of you?<\/p>\n
But while Paris had a robust caf\u00e9 culture, until recently the city did not have a coffee culture, at least not one focused on the quality of what was in the cup. Shots were harsh, bitter, and over-extracted, made of coffee sourced from French industrial coffee giants. In a culture known for painstakingly focusing on the food served on a plate and the wine poured into a glass, how could the quality of the coffee be so bad?<\/p>\n