LUX Spring 2018

102 Gazing out over the beauty and splendour of Paris in the twilight, it is hard to imagine a better way to spend the evening than with a glass of Grey Goose in one hand and a delicious dessert on a plate in front of me. Reimagining the French classic Café Gourmand serve by pairing the Grey Goose Espresso Martini with mini dessert bites, the Grey Goose Café Gourmand offers a lighter alternative to a traditional ‘third course’ dessert, providing the perfect mood and atmosphere to start the rest of the night after dinner comes to an end. This new creative, alternative serve and ritual consisting of the perfect Grey Goose Espresso Martini cocktail and beautifully crafted mini desserts, the Grey Goose Café Gourmand aims to inspire consumers to choose the new ‘third course’ over a traditional dessert. The lighter alternative provides the perfect end to a consumer’s dining experience but not their evening and in doing so bridges the gap between dining, drinking and going out - signalling the beginning, not the end, of a night. The ‘Café Gourmand’ has long been the perfect compromise between a heavy dessert and the simple espresso to end a meal in France. A unique way to round off a meal, this creative take breathes new life into a quintessentially French ritual. Through collaboration with experts in the art of coffee and patisserie – Parisian baristas, La Brûlerie de Belleville, and renowned French pastry chef, Yann Menguy – Grey Goose Café Gourmand has been created. Both partners were specifically selected due to similarities in their production ethos and commitment to quality. Just like Grey Goose’s Cellar Master, François Thibault, who oversees every step of production from field to bottle, La Brûlerie de Belleville is a high-quality coffee roaster, where every product can be traced from bean to espresso. Yann Menguy’s emphasis on quality ingredients mirrors Grey Goose’s dedication to knowing exactly where their single-origin French ingredients come from to craft a vodka of unmatched quality. These mini dessert delights are designed to complement the four main flavour profiles in the Expresso Martini; the citrus, in the form of the dish Le Citron; the nutty flavour is enhanced thank to La Noix de Pecan; the dense, slightly bitter chocolate is complemented by the Le Chocolate de Madagascar; and finally, the vanilla notes are expertly paired with the rich La Vanille de Madagascar. The first, Le Citron, is a citrus-based dessert bite in which the acidity of the citrus counterbalances the bitterness of the coffee,