Deciding which drink to enjoy at the end of the day is a highly personal matter. Your choice-stiff or sweet, new or familiar-will be swayed by your mood, your palate, your companions. And your culture. While Americans may gather for happy hour cocktails, the French still enjoy the time-honored tradition of l'apéritif. "L'apéro is a gentle transition between a hectic work day and an evening with friends that has yet to unfold," explains Jean-Pierre Xiradakis, owner of the renowned La Tupiña bistro in Bordeaux. "If l'apéro goes well and everyone has a good time, you can be pretty sure that the rest of the evening will be a success."
     The word apéritif is derived from the Latin aperire, which means "to open." A true aperitif literally opens the palate and physically stimulates the appetite. France being France-that ungovernable nation of 365 cheeses that so frustrated De Gaulle-it has an aperitif culture that varies considerably from place to place. According to Gilles Pudlowski, one of the country's leading restaurant critics, the aperitif of choice in Paris these days is a glass of white wine.
     "Or Champagne. We're drinking a lot of Champagne to forget about the economic crisis," he quips. The real reason, he says, is that the recent crackdown on drinking and driving has meant that people are choosing lighter drinks and indulging much less when they go out.
     France's classic aperitifs-Dubonnet, Lillet, Ricard, even the wonderfully retro Suze-still have their fan base, however, especially in the provinces. Not surprisingly, the aperitif culture is strongest in the south of France, where a relaxed attitude, a Mediterranean climate and the ineffable quality of late-afternoon light conspire to create an ideal scenario for lingering, conversing, being. In Marseille, the slowly sipped pastis à la Pagnol remains a sacrosanct ritual.
     Aperitifs are only modestly intoxicating-around 18 percent alcohol-just enough to awaken the senses, not obscure them. And they are always served with something to nibble. Sarah Brown, an American who offers culinary vacations called A Week in Provence, has devoted a section of her cookbook to various aspects of aperitif culture. "Americans often serve cheese or pâté with drinks before dinner, but you never do that here," she cautions. "They would clash with most aperitifs." Better choices include nuts, Provençal olives, paper-thin slices of saucisson sec. There are even special biscuits apéritifs sold in grocery stores. "Or you can get fancy," she says. "Tapenade, stuffed zucchini flowers, Gruyère cheese straws, that kind of thing."
     While enjoying a nip before a meal may date from antiquity, aperitifs are generally traced back to the Middle Ages, when bitter concoctions of barks, seeds, roots and flowers were believed not only to facilitate digestion but to strengthen one's constitution and ward off illness. These pungent curatives were commonly blended with wine to enhance their palatability. In the late 18th century, early mixologists began to focus more on flavor, drawing inspiration from all manner of regional ingredients and eventually blurring the line between panacea and aperitif. Whether distilled from the roots of the gentian flower in the Auvergne, infused with anise in Provence or redolent of the noble wines of Bordeaux, these more refined renditions were all about taste. They became increasingly diverse, nuanced, even playful as modern transportation allowed access to such exotic ingredients as cane sugar from the West Indies, star anise via the Spice Route, cacao from the New World and citrus from Spain, Tunisia, Morocco and Haiti.

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