Over time | Izarra

BAYONNE - 1906

Photo of the employees at the J. GRATTAU merchant house on rue Frédéric Bastiat in Bayonne in 1906. The distillery had just opened in Hendaye.

THE FIRST PRODUCT NAME

Izarra’s official name when it came out in 1906 was “Fine-Hendaye”, because at the time all Basques ordered fine-hendaye, a liqueur made with plants in bouilleurs de cru in the Hendaye region, cut with water. Joseph Grattau had decided to take this generic name and make a brand name out of it. The following year, he had to rename his Fine-Hendaye. The name Izarra was chosen, which was a simple tagline.

THE FIRST ADVERTISEMENT

This advertisement appeared in the Journal de Bayonne in December 1906, right below an advertisement for the competitor, "Liqueur d’Hendaye" by Paul Barbier, which Joseph Grattau had sought to buy out without managing to do so.

FOR HIS MAJESTY

At the end of a legendary match of Basque pelota, the champion Chiquito de Cambo gave the King of England, His Majesty Edward VII, his chistera along with a bottle of Izarra. From that day on, Izarra was used as a symbolic gift from the Basque Country to all the celebrities who came to visit, from Ernest Hemingway to Nikita Khrushchev.

THE DISTILLERY

Built in 1912 and early 1913, the distillery on Quai Bergeret in Bayonne welcomed nearly one million visitors over the century and saw four generations of Bayonnais succeeded each other at the commands for the elaboration of Izarra. The distillery was unfortunately sold for financial reasons in 1998 and production was moved to Angers. Temporarily.

DISTILLERY IN BAYONNE - 1913

Photo of the personnel at the Izarra distillery in Bayonne the day of its official inauguration on 2 February 1913. Izarra’s success required the transfer of distillation operations from Hendaye to Bayonne to get closer to the commercial port.

ACCOUNT LEDGER

At the beginning of the 20th century, accountants wrote up all orders and shipments by pen, customer by customer, in these account ledgers which weigh over ten kilos each. They show the liqueur’s impressive commercial growth in the Basque Country and throughout Aquitaine.

THE FOUR WHEELS OF IZARRA

From loading crates of Izarra coming out of the distillery on the Quai Bergeret in front of the Cathedral’s spires in 1913 to the Peugeot J1 and the promotional cars of the 1950s.

THE GRANDE PLAGE – 1910

In the 1910s, the Grande Plage in Biarritz remembered the Izarra signs – "Liqueur de la Côte Basque" (Liqueur of the Basque Coast) as well as the big red balloons floating in the summer skies.

AN ICONIC BOTTLE

This second advertising campaign in Izarra’s history sought to highlight the curved shape of the iconic Izarra bottle and to make a name for itself in the world of spirits.

ARGENTINA 1915

The first grocery store sponsored by Izarra in Argentina – the land of the gauchos, some of whom were part of the Basque Diaspora. The painting on the fronton is by the artist Zulla, in which the picador’s horse is drinking a puddle of Izarra.

SYMBOL OF TRADITION

To the music of the txistu on the fronton square, Izarra was served as a digestif after every meal.

A CUP OF IZARRA LIQUEUR

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Izarra paid homage to its historical tagline: "the sun and the snows of the Pyrenees". Each year, this competition attracted thousands of French skiers, both men and women.

AROUND THE WORLD

Izarra liqueurs were marketed abroad starting in 1910 and its distribution reached over seventy countries during the thirty boom years after World War II.
Today, Izarra is going international again.