St-Germain's Meteoric Rise to Become 'Bartender's Ketchup'

To the enduring benefit of cocktail lovers everywhere, Robert J. Cooper was not a man who gave up easily. Fifteen years ago, the 31-year-old approached his father with the idea of creating a liqueur made from elderflowers, a flavorful but fickle ingredient he’d first tasted in a cocktail in London’s storied Hakkasan Chinese restaurant. His father, Norton J. “Sky” Cooper, ran the house of Charles Jacquin et Cie., a Philadelphia company known for its sweet and syrupy cordials like blackberry brandy and crème de menthe. Young Cooper was already overseeing Jacquin’s raspberry liqueur Chambord, but he longed to create something more refined—“a product that was impeccably high quality,” he told The Aspen Times in 2008. Sky Cooper had scoffed. “I’ll hire you back in a year when you fail,” he'd said. Fortunately, his son ignored him. When St-Germain hit the market in 2007, it turned heads with its lush packaging and bewitching flavor, a light and aromatic mélange of pear, citrus, honeysuckle and passion fruit. St-Germain not only arrived in style, but at the right time: The craft cocktail renaissance was just getting underway. Rob Cooper, who’d majored in English at UC Santa Barbara, proved to be an innate businessman. He courted influential bartenders at hipster haunts like New York’s Death & Co, where the opulent libations began to include St-Germain and created a buzz that prompted mixologists in other cities to try it. And while some prefer to sip St-Germain over ice, the liqueur is better known for its somewhat mystical ability to elevate most any cocktail—and salvage poorly mixed ones. For these properties, St-Germain has become known as the “bartender’s ketchup.” (Though that'd be a $33 bottle of fine French ketchup.) “I'm really cool with that,” said Emma Fox, St-Germain’s global vp at Bacardi, which acquired the brand in 2013. “I love the description because it’s the truth of what it is, exactly.” St-Germain breaks ranks with other liqueurs that taste of only one fruit—cherries, oranges, melons—because, in most any drink, “it complements the flavors that it plays with,” Fox said. The sale of St-Germain gave Rob Cooper “more [money] than I expected to see in a lifetime,” he said, according to an obit in The New York Times. Unfortunately, Cooper—who died unexpectedly in 2016—hardly had the chance to enjoy it. But Bacardi has tended to his creation respectfully. Its deep corporate pockets have helped build St-Germain into a global brand and weather two years of people avoiding cocktail lounges amid Covid-19. During this time, Bacardi has adjusted its marketing tactics. “We’re really spending a lot of time talking to consumers about how to make great cocktails at home,” Fox said. Message in a bottle Flavors aside, St-Germain stands apart—figuratively and literally—from every other spirit brand because of its phantasmagorical bottle. Cooper envisioned a vessel that would capture the art deco aesthetic of Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Paris’ Left Bank. But it fell to designer Steve Sandstrom to perfect a top-heavy bottle with an umbrella-shaped shoulder and fluted body into something that glassmakers could actually produce. Sandstrom also designed the skinny labels to fit that bottle, along with the logo, color palette and the rest of the brand’s visual identity. “The packaging reflects the mélange curieux that is Paris—belle époque, Gothic, art nouveau, existentialism, antiquity and modernism,” Sandstrom told Adweek. “It is beautiful enough to be a gift.” Elderflower power The late Robert J. Cooper created St-Germain in 2007, recruiting his wife, Katrina, to help with marketing (1). Designed by Steve Sandstrom, the brand’s icon evokes farmhands in the French Alps (2) gathering elderflowers on their bicycles. By courting the favor of influential mixologists at bars like New York’s Death & Co (3), Cooper positioned St-Germain at the center of the craft cocktail movement. Every bottle of St-Germain contains the essence of some 1,000 elderflowers (4), which bloom only in the late spring. Among the bottle’s abundant details is the cap (5), which reads, 'Liqueur Artisanale: Délice De Sureau' ('Artisanal Liqueur: Elderberry Delight').

Perspective

St-Germain's Meteoric Rise to Become 'Bartender's Ketchup'

The fragrant French liqueur in the instantly iconic bottle only debuted in 2007

Robert Klara

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Robert Klara