{"id":299344,"date":"2025-07-28T20:18:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T20:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299344\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T20:18:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T20:18:23","slug":"barley-latte-france-wakes-up-to-healthy-coffee-substitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299344\/","title":{"rendered":"Barley latte? France wakes up to healthy coffee substitutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

History records that Voltaire, the 18th-century writer, was not generally irritable but he did experience mood swings, perhaps because of his habit of drinking up to 50 cups of coffee a day.<\/p>\n

Today eight out of ten French people start the day with a coffee, usually black, and many also down several espressos \u2014 and some complain that it can make them tetchy or anxious.<\/p>\n

Most French caf\u00e9s also offer d\u00e9ca, or decaffeinated coffee, but now there is a lesser-known alternative, made by roasting cereals such as barley.<\/p>\n

The grains, which look remarkably like coffee beans, are grown in Brittany. They can be ground and used in espresso machines or French press coffee-makers.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our customers prefer barley coffee substitute to decaffeinated coffee, which usually contains solvents or is made with huge quantities of water, which is wasteful,\u201d said Micaela Duarte, the owner of a fashionable caf\u00e9 on a tree-lined boulevard in Paris\u2019s 11th arrondissement. \u201cI drank the coffee myself when I was pregnant and couldn\u2019t handle real coffee. It satisfied my craving for a morning coffee with milk,\u201d Duarte, 29, said. <\/p>\n

To demonstrate, she made an espresso and a latte with Orzo, a coffee substitute made with barley, without additives. You might have expected it to taste like jus de chaussette, or \u201csock juice\u201d, a colourful term for acrid coffee that smells sooty and leaves an ashtray aftertaste.<\/p>\n

However, there was a pleasant surprise in the discovery of a flavour close to that of freshly ground coffee, with a softer aroma. Both the espresso and the latte were smooth-tasting, although neither provided the authentic coffee kick that Voltaire craved.<\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/p>\n

Micaela Duarte makes an espresso with Orzo, a barley coffee substitute that does not taste like \u201csock juice\u201d<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

\"Package<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

Yoann Gou\u00e9ry, who produces the coffee substitute in Ploeuc-L\u2019Hermitage in Brittany, said: \u201cIt\u2019s not a booster. It won\u2019t wake you up, but it does give you energy and you won\u2019t feel tired in the afternoon. Like any cereal, it activates the intestinal flora and aids digestion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graine de Breton, Gou\u00e9ry\u2019s small company, has a turnover of about \u20ac400,000 a year, producing 30 tonnes of various coffee substitutes using barley, spelt and buckwheat.<\/p>\n

His products have been featured in national television news reports. A reporter on the TF1 channel swore off coffee for a month as an experiment and drank only Gou\u00e9ry\u2019s cereal substitutes. At the end of the month, clearly won over, he said he felt less tired.<\/p>\n

However, Marie Lijour, a nutritionist, said it might not have been entirely because of the barley beverage. \u201cPsychologically, it made him feel he was looking after himself and perhaps unconsciously he was more careful about what he ate and chose healthier foods.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Person<\/p>\n

Yoann Gou\u00e9ry owns Graine de Breton, based in Brittany<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

Gou\u00e9ry said he got the idea for making coffee substitutes from an old recipe book. \u201cWe wanted to produce an alternative to coffee that\u2019s healthy and locally sourced.\u201d <\/p>\n

He roasts barley for about an hour in a large coffee roaster: \u201cI\u2019ll go up to more than 230C until I get the colour I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Grain<\/p>\n

Grains get the coffee bean treatment<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

For now, he sells to a niche market. Few traditional French caf\u00e9s are interested and his customers are either individuals or modern coffee bars<\/a> that have sprung up in the past decade, catering mainly for young professionals and tourists who prefer to avoid the petit noir, or short black, on offer at the corner caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The French love affair with coffee began after Suleyman Aga, the Ottoman ambassador to the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, brought it to France in 1669.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Roquefort makers kick up a stink over \u2018unhealthy\u2019 tag in France\u2019s food labelling policy<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Caf\u00e9 culture took root in Paris during the Age of Enlightenment, when Voltaire gathered with other writers and philosophers at the Caf\u00e9 Procope on the Left Bank. Yet the coffee served in Parisian caf\u00e9s today is of variable quality.<\/p>\n

Too often, an espresso, which is what most French people prefer, is a bitter shot that many locals render drinkable by dropping in a couple of sugar cubes. Milk may soften the bitterness, but cannot hide it completely.<\/p>\n

Duarte\u2019s Moon Coffee Shop, which is highly rated in the prestigious Gault & Millau guide, is part of the new wave.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get a lot of people coming in who want to avoid caffeine, and when we suggest the barley drink, they\u2019re often sceptical,\u201d Duarte said. \u201cWe tell them, just try it, and if you don\u2019t like it, you don\u2019t have to pay. So far, everyone has paid and we have some customers who always order it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Exterior<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

Chicory is another option but \u201cwe didn\u2019t like the taste as much and it can\u2019t be ground and used in an espresso machine\u201d, Duarte said.<\/p>\n

Gou\u00e9ry\u2019s coffee substitutes are also available in supermarkets with organic counters. At Biocoop, near Place de la R\u00e9publique in central Paris, I found several devotees, but also a few sceptics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this stuff,\u201d said Micheline, 32, a lawyer, who bought a packet of a multiple-grain blend of barley, malted barley and spelt also produced by Gou\u00e9ry. \u201cI can drink as much as I like and it doesn\u2019t make me tense like coffee does, but the flavour is close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick, her partner, was less enthusiastic. \u201cThe barley drink doesn\u2019t do it for me. If you like the taste of coffee, just drink real coffee but don\u2019t overdo it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/p>\n

Not everyone wants cereal in a coffee cup<\/p>\n

DAVID CHAZAN FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

Perhaps Voltaire deserves the final word. It has often been said that his doctor once warned him that coffee was a poison. He supposedly replied: \u201cIt is a remarkably slow poison. I have been drinking it every day for more than 75 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

A word of caution, however: this same response has also been attributed to another French writer, Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History records that Voltaire, the 18th-century writer, was not generally irritable but he did experience mood swings, perhaps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-299344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114932711861816508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}