Paris · France
L'Arbre à Café
L'Arbre à Café is one of 4 Paris roasters tracked on day9, in Île-de-France.
Since 2009 · Hippolyte Courty
Overview
L'Arbre à Café was founded in Paris in 2009 by Hippolyte Courty, a historian, gastronomy critic and trained wine taster from a knife-making family — his approach was to treat coffee as a wine sommelier would, focused on biodynamic farms, single-parcel and single-fermentation lots, and direct producer relationships. Where the global third-wave was leaning into bright acidity and Nordic intensity, Courty pushed in the opposite direction toward what he calls a New French Art of Coffee — equilibrium, balance, gastronomic compatibility. Since 2019 the company has produced its own coffee from Finca Mariposa, a biodynamic farm at Villa Rica, Junín, Peru. L'Arbre à Café is doubly Demeter-certified — as a producer at Finca Mariposa and as a roaster in its Saint-Mandé atelier — and is a B Corp with a 48/75 environmental score (national average 26.2).
Known for
- Founded 2009 in Paris by Hippolyte Courty — France's first specialty coffee roaster
- Demeter biodynamic certified twice — producer (Finca Mariposa, Peru) and roaster (Saint-Mandé)
- Owns Finca Mariposa biodynamic farm in Villa Rica, Junín, Peru (since 2019)
- Mission-based company, B Corp certified
- Courty is the author of the reference book Café (250 pages, re-edited)
Why it matters
Courty is the Burgundy-style sommelier of coffee — explicitly modeled on French wine appellation thinking, deliberately rejecting the bright-acid Nordic playbook. L'Arbre à Café is the supplier of choice for top French gastronomy (Anne-Sophie Pic, Pierre Hermé) precisely because Courty thinks like a sommelier, not a barista. The vertical integration via Finca Mariposa Peru is unusual: Demeter biodynamic certification at both producer and roaster ends of the chain is rare anywhere in coffee.
Production
- head roaster
- Hippolyte Courty
- roastery location
- Saint-Mandé (Paris suburb), France
Café
Two boutique locations in Paris
Recognitions
- Demeter biodynamic certification (producer and roaster)
- B Corp certified (48/75 environmental score)
- Mission-based company status (France)
- Pioneer of specialty coffee in France