The Story of Willi's Wine Bar: How a British Upstart Changed Paris Wine Culture

On the 13th of October 1980, a young Englishman named Mark Williamson opened a small wine bar at 13 Rue des Petits Champs, a quiet street tucked between the Louvre and the Palais Royal. Nobody predicted it would change anything. Paris already had its cafés, its brasseries, its centuries of drinking culture. What could a British upstart possibly add?

As it turned out: everything.

A Bar Before Its Time

Willi's Wine Bar arrived at a moment when wine in Paris was still largely the domain of formal restaurants and stuffy sommeliers. The idea of a relaxed, convivial space dedicated to serious wine — where you could stand at the bar, explore a thoughtful list, and talk about what was in your glass — was genuinely radical.

Mark championed the Rhône Valley when its wines were, in his own words, "deeply unfashionable." Syrah, Viognier, Grenache — grapes that Parisian wine culture had largely overlooked. He put them on the list, talked about them with passion, and slowly, steadily, changed the conversation.

The Irish Times would later write that Willi's had changed "Paris wine bar culture forever and irreversibly." Forbes agreed. So did BKWine, one of the world's leading wine publications. For a bar that started with no fanfare on a side street near the Palais Royal, this was pleasantly refreshing.

Forty Years of Feeding the French

Mark made all this the basis of his 2020 book, Immoveable Feast: Forty Years of Feeding the French — a memoir that is part wine history, part love letter to Paris, and part portrait of a life built around the table. Illustrated by Petronille, it is the story of what happens when you follow a passion with curiosity, dogged determination, and a definite flair for mischief.

Over four decades, Willi's became a landmark. Not just for wine lovers, but for artists, writers, journalists, and the kind of people who believe that a good glass of wine and a good conversation are among life's essential pleasures. The address — 13 Rue des Petits Champs — became a destination.

Where Wine Meets Art

From the beginning, Mark understood that Willi's was about more than wine. It was about a certain way of living — what the French call the art de vivre. And art, in the most literal sense, was always part of that.

Each year, Willi's commissioned an original poster from a world-class artist. Not a photograph of a bottle. Not a generic vineyard landscape. A genuine work of art — bold, personal, sometimes surprising — that captured something about sharing wine, the vine, and the pleasure of being alive.

Over 45 years, those commissions accumulated into what is now the Bottle Art collection: 35 original posters, each one a collaboration between Willi's and an artist who brought their own vision to the brief. The collection spans styles, generations, and continents. It is, as we like to say, an ode to wine and the vine and the art de vivre.

The Collection Today

Today, those posters are available as fine art prints — and for collectors, as signed Velin editions on museum-quality paper. Each piece carries the history of Willi's with it: the bar, the wines, the artists, the conversations, the forty-plus years of a place that refused to be ordinary.

If you are new to the collection, a good place to start is with some of the earlier works — pieces like the Wayne Ensrud 1989 or Alberto Bali 1984. Or explore the more recent commissions, where artists like M H Jeeves brought a contemporary graphic sensibility to the tradition.

Each poster is a chapter in the same story. The story of a bar that changed Paris. And of the belief that wine and art, like good conversation, are best enjoyed together.

Browse the full Bottle Art collection — and if you'd like to know more about the signed Velin editions, start here.