Kir Royale

In the third season of Emily in Paris, the titular marketing executive finds herself newly unemployed and nursing her professional wounds at the Place de la Concorde. Her former colleague Luc orders her a Kir Royale—”the perfect drink to sip and do nothing as the Ferris wheel turns,” he tells her.

The moment is quintessentially the show: a bit precious, undeniably photogenic, and somehow both cynical and romantic about what constitutes Parisian sophistication.

J’adore, oui?

What happened next, however, reveals something curious about our current cultural moment: Emily pitches the idea of a canned Kir Royale to clients on the show, and within months, that fictional product became real. You can now purchase Chamère, an actual ready-to-drink Kir Royale, inspired by a marketing campaign dreamed up by a fictional marketer in a television show.

The cocktail’s origin story begins not in the glittering salons of Paris but in the Burgundian city of Dijon, where Félix Kir served as mayor from 1945 to 1968. A Catholic priest and resistance fighter during World War II, Kir faced the unglamorous task of promoting the region’s white wine, which suffered in comparison to its celebrated reds.

His solution was simple: mix the region’s crisp Aligoté wine with a splash of crème de cassis, a blackcurrant liqueur that Dijon had been producing since the mid-19th century. The marriage of tart fruit and dry wine created something entirely new—refreshing enough for summer afternoons, French enough to satisfy local pride.

Kir served this aperitif at every official reception, and it became so associated with him that it simply became “un Kir.”

The Kir Royale—substituting Champagne for Aligoté—emerged as the drink’s aristocratic cousin, though exactly when remains disputed. Some historians suggest the upgrade occurred naturally as the cocktail spread to Paris, where Champagne flows more freely than Burgundian white. Others argue it was a deliberate invention, capitalizing on the French tendency to improve upon regional traditions with a Parisian gloss.

What makes the Kir Royale endure, beyond its photogenic appeal, is its architectural simplicity.

The recipe remains remarkably stable: one part crème de cassis to five parts Champagne, assembled in a flute. The cassis—ideally a quality brand like Lejay-Lagoute or Gabriel Boudier—settles at the bottom, creating a gradient of color that rises from deep magenta to pale gold. The first sip delivers the cassis’s concentrated fruitiness; subsequent sips gradually lighten as the Champagne takes precedence.

It’s a drink that changes as you consume it, a quality that distinguishes cocktails from mere mixed drinks.

The preparation requires minimal effort but benefits from attention to detail.

Both components should be properly chilled. The cassis goes in first, followed by a slow pour of Champagne down the side of the glass to preserve the bubbles. Stirring is unnecessary and actually counterproductive—the rising bubbles will gradually integrate the liqueur, creating that signature layered effect. Some bartenders advocate for an expressed lemon twist, but purists consider this an American interpolation.

That Emily in Paris turned the Kir Royale into both plot point and product reveals the drink’s peculiar cultural trajectory.

It has traveled from pragmatic municipal boosterism to Parisian chic to Netflix aesthetic to literal shelf space at duty-free shops. Each iteration represents a new kind of sophistication, or perhaps just a new marketing opportunity. Yet this criticism misses something essential: the Kir Royale never pretended to complexity. It has always been about pleasantness, about the small luxury of improving everyday ingredients through simple combination.

Perhaps that’s why it persists. In an era of craft cocktail maximalism, the Kir Royale offers a different kind of sophistication—one measured in restraint rather than innovation. That it photographs well and translates to canned formats is merely proof of its adaptability, not a betrayal of its essence.