Grand Cru turns 10
After selling fine wines, spirits and cigars at a downtown shop for a quarter century, George Liggett and his wife and business partner decided to share another one of their passions — fine cuisine — and opened Grand Cru on New Year’s Eve 1999.
The restaurant, named after the French expression for a vineyard producing high-volume, high-quality wine, will celebrate its 10th anniversary on New Year’s Eve with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and party. In January, the entrepreneurs will mark the one-year anniversary of their adjacent cigar lounge and relocated tobacco shop.
The roots of the combined venture go back to the 1960s and ’70s, when Liggett and Timothy Flynn traveled to antique shows across the country and discovered high-quality cigars and rare wines, which they later introduced to Columbia through The Nostalgia Shop.
“It became a network-building thing that seemed to happen naturally through all our travels,” Liggett said. “From Napa Valley in California to Washington D.C., we developed an appreciation for those finer things.”
The lease for The Nostalgia Shop on Walnut Street was up at the end of 2007, and Flynn said they had to decide whether to keep “two separate locations. It made sense to bring everything together under one roof.”
Mariel Liggett, a CPA at Williams-Keepers, said the consolidation “helps create efficiencies and economies of scale. It’s more synergetic.”
George Liggett added the human element: “A restaurant environment is relaxed anyway, but it’s also a good one for talking business, particularly in the cigar lounge. Defenses are down, and it sets a good tone to smooth things out with a glass of scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other. Conversations take on a more natural flow.”
Because of the smoking ban that passed in 2006, their lounge is one of the few places within the city limits where people can eat, smoke and drink at one indoor location.
Regular patrons include local business, community and academic leaders as well as many Missouri politicians, including U.S. Sen. Kit Bond.
“It’s just a fun place to hang out and relax,” said U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau.