Crème Yvette

A violet-and-berry liqueur made in Philadelphia by Charles Jacquin et Cie from 1890, discontinued by them in 1969, and brought back by Robert Cooper at Cooper Spirits in 2009. More complex than Crème de Violette and the original spec for several Pousse Café layered drinks.

What it is

Crème Yvette is a sweet liqueur built on a base of violet flowers, with raspberries, blackberries, and wild strawberries layered in, and a spice note from clove, cassia, and orange. ABV is 21 percent. The color is a deeper purple-red than Crème de Violette, leaning toward berry rather than pure flower.

Crème de Violette is a simpler bottle. Yvette is rounder, fruitier, and more spiced. The two have been used interchangeably in some Aviation specs for a century, but they are not the same liqueur. Yvette in an Aviation produces a slightly fruitier, slightly heavier drink than Crème de Violette does.

Where it shows up

The most distinctive use of Crème Yvette is in Pousse Café drinks, the layered, multi-color cocktails that were popular in the late 1800s and were sometimes more about visual showmanship than drinking. Yvette's specific gravity put it in a particular slot in the layer order, and recipes were written for it by name.

It also shows up in the Blue Moon, the Atty, the Eagle's Dream in some specs (the Ensslin recipe mentions Yvette as an alternate to violette), and a handful of pre-Prohibition American manuscript recipes. Modern bartenders use it as a more aromatic alternative to Crème de Violette in the Aviation, especially when they want the drink to lean fruity.

The historical arc

Charles Jacquin et Cie launched Crème Yvette in 1890 in Philadelphia. The name was a tribute to the French cabaret performer Yvette Guilbert, who was famous in the 1890s and toured the United States. The liqueur was an immediate success and remained a popular ingredient through the early 1900s. Old cocktail manuscripts call for it explicitly alongside Crème de Violette, treating them as two separate ingredients.

Production paused during Prohibition, like everything else in American spirits. After Repeal, Jacquin brought Crème Yvette back, and it was widely available again through the mid-twentieth century. Then in 1969, Charles Jacquin et Cie quietly discontinued it. The reasons given at the time were declining sales and the difficulty of sourcing the violet flowers and the wild berries the recipe required. By 1970 Crème Yvette was a memory.

For the next forty years, anyone working from a pre-1969 cocktail recipe that called for Yvette had to substitute Crème de Violette and accept the difference. Some bartenders made house infusions. Most just dropped Yvette-specific drinks from their menus.

The relaunch came in 2009. Robert Cooper, the founder of St-Germain elderflower liqueur (which had launched in 2007 and become an immediate cocktail-revival staple), bought the Crème Yvette name and recipe rights from Jacquin and reformulated the liqueur. The new bottle launched in 2009. Cooper used a recipe based on the original Jacquin formula plus updated sourcing for the violet and berry components. Production was small at first, then scaled. Cooper Spirits was acquired by Bacardi in 2013, and Crème Yvette is now part of the Bacardi portfolio.

Robert Cooper died unexpectedly in 2016 at age thirty-nine. The liqueur he brought back outlived him.

Cooper, St-Germain, and the elderflower precedent

Cooper's path to Crème Yvette is worth tracing because it is a template for how lost ingredients come back. He had grown up in the family liqueur business at Charles Jacquin et Cie, the same company that had originally made Crème Yvette. In 2007 he launched St-Germain, an elderflower liqueur made from fresh elderflowers harvested in the French Alps. St-Germain was an immediate cocktail-revival staple, the kind of ingredient that bartenders called "bartender's ketchup" because they put it on everything. Two years of St-Germain sales gave Cooper the capital and the distribution to pursue the Crème Yvette relaunch.

So the Yvette that came back in 2009 was not just a Bacardi-funded resurrection. It was a Philadelphia liqueur kid bringing back his family's discontinued product using the proceeds of the elderflower bottle he had launched two years earlier. The same person, two of the most influential modern cocktail liqueurs, two years apart.

Modern brands

• Crème Yvette by Cooper Spirits (now Bacardi, 21%). The relaunched 2009 product. Currently the only commercially available Crème Yvette in the United States. Around forty-five dollars per bottle.

That is the entire list. There are no other Crème Yvettes. There are violet-berry liqueurs from various distilleries that are like Yvette, but only Cooper's product carries the name and the closest claim to the historical recipe.

Modern substitutions

Crème de Violette is the closest substitute, and the Aviation will work with either. The drink will be different. Yvette gives you fruit and spice underneath the violet. Crème de Violette gives you cleaner floral.

For Pousse Café layering specifically, the substitution problem is harder, because the layers depend on specific gravity. A Crème de Violette can stand in for Yvette in most cases but the layer thickness and color shift. If you are doing Pousse Cafés to spec, the bottle is worth seeking out.

Some bartenders blend Crème de Violette with Chambord (raspberry liqueur) at about 3:1 to approximate the Yvette profile. It works as a flavor sub but the spice notes are missing.

Where to buy

Total Wine and BevMo carry it in most US states. Online from ReserveBar, Caskers, and Drizly. The bottle is recognizable: tall, slim, deep purple, with a script label.

At a glance

Category	Violet and berry liqueur
Origin	Philadelphia, 1890, Charles Jacquin et Cie
Discontinued	1969 by Jacquin
Relaunched	2009 by Robert Cooper, Cooper Spirits
ABV	21 percent
Owner since 2013	Bacardi
Signature uses	Pousse Café, Aviation variant, Blue Moon variant

Cocktails to try

• Aviation (Yvette spec) · gin, lemon, Maraschino, Crème Yvette in place of Crème de Violette.
• Atty · gin, dry vermouth, Crème Yvette, absinthe, orange bitters. Pre-Prohibition NY.
• Pousse Café · grenadine, Crème Yvette, white crème de menthe, Chartreuse, brandy, layered.

Cooper brought back Crème Yvette in 2009 and St-Germain in 2007. Two of the most-used modern cocktail liqueurs trace back to the same Philadelphia entrepreneur.