They have Starbucks in Paris now.
   The first Starbucks opened a couple of years ago on Avenue de l'Opera, and if they don't exactly pimple the city, there are a handful now. It's funny how they seem to loom up at unexpected moments. However unlikely it seems -- the demitassed French like to refer to American-style coffee as "sock water" -- the global giant has gained a foothold in the city of Les Deux Magots.
   A few years ago I might have found this dispiriting, another nudge toward the corporate leveling of the world. My problem with Starbucks was never with their coffee or even with their success; I simply didn't like it when my fellow Arkansans bemoaned the lack of a local branch, as though the presence of a franchise might somehow confer legitimacy on us benighted hicks. I knew of plenty of places to get good coffee -- and too many places to get mediocre coffee. I didn't see a need for an iconic latte, when I could get a wicked Americano at Satellite.
   But now we have several Starbucks shops, and more coming. People don't act like it's such a great big deal. They serve good coffee and the experience is comfortable. I have not a thing in the world against them, especially not since they make my favorite coffee-based liqueurs.
   I wrote about Starbucks' initial offering in this line, Starbucks Coffee Liqueur, in this space in November 2005. It's designed to compete with products like the industry leader Kahlua and rougher, rawer, cheaper and (to some palates) more interesting brands like Kamora or Copa De Oro. The Starbucks liqueur is smoother and more coffee-ier (and, at 40 proof, less alcoholic) than Kahlua.
   About a month after that column ran, I tasted Starbucks' even more delectable Cream Liqueur (about $23 for a 750-mL bottle) at the Spirits liquor store in west Little Rock. While I'm not a particular fan of any liqueur -- I'm not much of a dessert fan -- I found the stuff dangerously delicious and made a note to write about it after a decent interval had passed.
   A year and a month is long enough: Just as the original coffee liqueur went right after some of the market share of Kahlua, reportedly the second most popular liqueur in the world, the cream version is a direct challenge to the world's most popular liqueur, Baileys Irish Cream. (Starbucks even suggests retailers place their products next to their respective competitors on the shelf.)
   From a business standpoint, the venture makes good sense -- the original Starbucks liqueur quickly became one of the bestselling coffee-based liqueurs in the world (though it hasn't quite caught Kahlua). And the $22 million market for cream-based liqueurs is about three times as large as that for coffee-based liqueurs. Starbucks research indicates nearly 50 percent of its "loyal patrons" demographic already drink coffee liqueur and that they are nine times more likely to buy such products than the national average.
   The liqueurs -- which are not sold in Starbucks stores, even in France -- are a collaboration with Jim Beam brands. Starbucks Cream is a blend of Beam's whiskey, cream and just a hint of Starbucks coffee, a formula that varies slightly from Baileys' blend of Irish whiskey and cream. (Like its brother beverage, Starbucks Cream is 40 proof, which makes it slightly more potent than 34-proof Baileys.)
   Whether you prefer the Starbucks or Baileys (or one of the other cream-based liqueurs, like Carolans or St. Brendan's or the eerily rich Vermeer's Dutch Chocolate) might depend as much on your self-image as your taste buds; while they're similar in consistency and they all have a satisfying, sweet end that allows them to stand in for dessert (which is all we ever use them for in our house), they're definitely not the same drink. It's a Coke or Pepsi sort of decision.
   Yet while the Starbucks is my personal favorite, a friend recently introduced us to an interesting alternative. Amarula is a South African cream liqueur made from the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea), which is locally known as the elephant tree.
   It's called the elephant tree because of a legend that holds that elephants ram the tree to get berries, which fall to the ground and ferment. The elephants then allegedly eat the fermented berries to, in the local parlance, "warm their brains."
   While it's a nice story, and one that might be useful to a Spirits columnist who believes that self-medication is a fairly common habit among the more sophisticated animals, unfortunately there's a party-pooping professor at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom who's investigated these stories and found it highly unlikely that the elephants really do this.
   "Elephants display many behavioral characteristics viewed as positive traits in humans, often causing us to identify with them in anthropomorphic ways," Steve Morris wrote in a paper, co-authored by his colleagues David Humphreys and Dan Reynolds, published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology earlier this year. "The tipsy pachyderm is a view bolstered perhaps by a mutual desire for the fruits of the marula tree. People just want to believe in drunken elephants."
   The authors concede it is possible that small amounts of ethanol might be in an elephant's stomach if its diet were rich enough in yeast -- necessary for fermentation -- and fruit. But the academics estimate that it would take about a half-gallon of ethanol to inebriate an elephant, which would require that the animal ingest about 1,400 "well-fermented " marula fruits -- the equivalent of seven liters of marula wine -- in a short time, to cop even the slightest buzz.
   Reportedly the world's second most popular cream liqueur -- behind Baileys -- Amarula is only getting started in the U.S. It stands out on store shelves -- it's the brown bottle with the elephants on the label. It tastes like the milk left in the bottom of the cereal bowl after the Cocoa Puffs drizzled with the canned fruit cocktail it was poured over is all gone.
   Like Starbucks in Paris, it's better than it sounds.
   

CAFE BLANCO
Mix one part Starbucks Coffee Liqueur, one part Starbucks Cream Liqueur, one part vodka and one part hot coffee.
   Serve in an Irish coffee glass and top with whipped cream. Spirits is a monthly imbibing guide. E-mail :

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

This story was published Friday, December 01, 2006