The dining room at Geranium moves with the precision of an orchestra that knows every measure by heart. Each gesture from the Copenhagen restaurant’s team falls into place on an exact beat, a choreography where kitchen and front of house share the same pulse. Between the tables and the service counter, Giulia Caffiero sets the tempo.
She is the restaurant manager of the three-Michelin-star institution, and for years her role has carried a double weight: overseeing a 17-person dining-room team and running the Inspiration Kitchen, the lab where she and two colleagues produce nearly 200 liters a week of “special” drinks designed to accompany chef Rasmus Kofoed’s dishes.
Juice Pairing: High-End Gastronomic Mixology
This is where the juice pairing takes shape — a nonalcoholic path that runs parallel to wine, built with sensitivity and a kind of quiet conviction. You could call it high gastronomic mixology, a sequence created only after tasting each dish. “That’s when the work begins: extraction, infusion, balancing. Every drink takes two days to prepare. Nothing is improvised,” Caffiero says. Everything starts with fruit, vegetables, spices, and herbs — selected carefully for seasonality and flavor. “Our drinks are designed to last a week and keep their character until the final service.”
An Alternative to Wine
The goal is to offer an experience that stands next to wine with the same “dignity and complexity.” Juice pairing, in her view, is far more than a trend. “In a three-star restaurant, it would be unthinkable not to offer an alternative as noble as wine for guests who don’t drink.” Behind the word inclusion, she adds something tangible: “It might look like a symbolic gesture, but it’s really about respect. At Geranium, every guest is treated with the same care, whether they choose wine or a juice pairing.”
Juice Pairing According to Giulia Caffiero
In the glasses, the compositions are built to hold the intensity and structure of the dish. It’s a technical and sensorial exercise all at once. Green apple, fennel, and dill for oysters. Shiso and tomato for marbled cod. Rhubarb, red apple, and elderflower for a chamomile dessert. Each drink adds acidity, cleanses the palate, and extends flavor. “The dish is always the focus. I taste, understand what I have to work with, and build from there. I’m not interested in creating something that sounds intriguing but isn’t pleasant when you actually drink it.”
Control of Raw Ingredients and Balance of Flavor
Raw materials require constant monitoring. “Every week I test and rebalance the apples for some of our drinks — they change in sweetness, acidity, flavor. It’s a job that demands real sensitivity.” In a drink built around celeriac, hay, and ten varieties of apple, every ratio is adjusted with meticulous precision. “Sugar, when needed, shouldn’t scare anyone. It’s not the enemy.
If it’s essential to harmonize a dish, I’ll use it. What matters is that nothing feels off-balance.” Service is part of that equilibrium. The drinks arrive pre-batched, with a small finishing touch — shaken or smoked — done in front of the guest. Each serve comes in a glass chosen specifically for it: size, shape, color, all tailored to the pairing. “Of course the look of the liquid matters too — its shades, its aroma, its texture should hint at what’s coming. I won’t serve anything I wouldn’t drink myself.”
How Giulia Caffiero Approaches Her Juice Pairings
Within this attention to detail lies Geranium’s philosophy — an interplay of Nordic rigor and Caffiero’s own sensibility. “When I hire someone for the dining room, I don’t care whether they know how to set a table. That can be taught. I look for empathy and kindness. Hospitality begins there, in the passion you bring to this work.” It’s the same instinct that defines her idea of service: an extension of the dish, a gesture of love toward those who cook and those who taste.
This is Giulia Caffiero, part of a generation reshaping the modern dining room, bringing a new balance of technique and feeling, discipline and attentiveness, to fine dining. In her lab — between a humming Thermomix and an infusion in progress — luxury is measured by the ability to offer every guest a complete experience, with no exceptions. “If you judge a guest for not drinking alcohol, you haven’t understood what hospitality really means.”
The article first appeared on Coqtail – for fine drinkers. Order your copy here
Images credits of Claes Bech-Poulsens, courtesy Geranium
