#2 Meeting: Xavier Laigle

Inventing, shaking up the world of whisky, yes, but with humility! By taking advice from your peers. It was under the expert and benevolent eye of the Forum Classic Bar’s head bartender that Fin de Partie and (D’) Un Verre printanier, the first whiskies from the House of Benjamin Kuentz, were born. A kind of godfather, in the exchange and listening to the beautiful stories of whiskies that Benjamin Kuentz wants to put into words and mouth.

It has been there from the beginning. A man of experience, behind his bar of 100 whiskies, but always in contact with customers, to better understand and advise them. We don’t tell it to him. And yet this is exactly the project that Benjamin Kuentz proposed to him at the beginning of the creation of his House. A singular proposal: to ask Xavier Laigle to listen to personal desires and stories, to which, by dint of dialogue, we would give shape and above all a taste, more and more precise, a story of taste that must be told like a beautiful story.

Xavier Laigle was seduced by the approach and noticed that for once, far from the marketing games, we think and create a whisky from a sensation, a moment, a memory, a desire and not the opposite.

The method is simple and informal. The young entrepreneur tells, his mentor questions, with real empathy and pushes Benjamin to refine his words, without concession. He has no preconceived ideas, but when he doesn’t like something, he doesn’t hide it. It is therefore by dint of a frank and repeated dialogue that the two men write almost four-handed stories about whiskies. A nice way to transmit knowledge and above all their passion.