Marseillais entrepreneur Yannis Amokreze shelved his day job in fashion and set out to save his family’s grape-juice kiosk near Vieux Port in 2022. Once a mainstay of the Occitanie diet, jus de raisin was long touted as a healthy alternative to wine that could help to detoxify the liver – but the thirst for the drink dried up after the advent of mass-produced juices in the 1950s. Today, thanks to an increasingly health-conscious customer market and a rising demand for alcohol-free beverages, Station Uvale du Palais is pressing ahead and turning a profit. The family business, which was established in 1943 by a cousin of Amokreze’s uncle Eugène, is the only survivor of the area’s original eight stations uvales. 

“I often welcome three generations from the same family,” he says. “ The elders come to honour a childhood memory, while the younger people discover something new.” The entrepreneur has maintained the profitability of his kiosk by favouring short distribution channels and working with seasonal fruit from local growers. Amokreze also takes a very personal approach. “For more than 40 years my family has worked with Jacques Daussant, a grape supplier based in Vaucluse,” he tells Monocle. The former president of the now defunct Fédération Française des Stations Uvales, Daussant was the original supplier for several of the country’s kiosks. 

During high season, Amokreze visits Daussant’s vineyards every week to harvest the grapes that he presses by hand. “It’s an artisanal economy on a human scale,” he says, his pink-stained hands hinting at the morning’s graft. “It’s intense, absorbing work.” 

Benefitting from mineral-rich soils and the warm Mediterranean climate, Amokreze harvests the region’s black muscat, white chasselas, Alphonse-Lavallée and cardinal grapes between August and October to create his jus de raisin. But the third-generation owner of Station Uvale du Palais also has an eye on modernising the Marseillais tradition. So he also presses melons, peaches, oranges, lemons, pineapples and grapefruit, expanding the kiosk’s business potential as people increasingly seek out alternatives to the sugary stuff found in supermarkets. 

Served from a welcoming, green wooden kiosk, Amokreze’s juice isn’t an endeavour to scale then flip. He is determined to maintain the personability of service that his aunt and uncle worked hard to create. “You don’t only come to drink juice,” he says. “You come to share a moment at the counter.”