Motto — Bordeaux’s Sonic Cellar
By Rafi Mercer
New Listing
Venue Name: Motto Bar
Address: 33 Rue des Piliers de Tutelle, 33000 Bordeaux, France.
Website: —
Instagram: @motto_bar
Bordeaux is a city that knows how to hold a pause. Its rhythm has always been slower, softer, more deliberate than Paris — the pace of a pour rather than a pulse. Yet beneath that calm, sound finds its way. Tucked behind stone façades and 19th-century ironwork, Motto feels like the city’s quiet rebellion: a hi-fi listening bar disguised as a cocktail cellar.
You find it down Rue des Piliers de Tutelle, a narrow street of pale limestone and long shadows. The entrance gives almost nothing away — just a soft sign and the amber glow from within. Step through the door and the air shifts. The ceiling drops low, the lighting warms, and a turntable hums from a corner booth. The room feels immediately alive, but in a restrained, textural way. Conversations soften; glasses clink, but not loudly. You realise quickly that this is not another Bordeaux wine bar. It’s a room built for sound.
Motto’s founders, Hugo Seguy and Tom Moreno, wanted to create a space where listening and tasting could meet — a bar designed for both palate and ear. They took the architecture of a cellar and tuned it like an instrument. The acoustics have been carefully studied; materials absorb rather than reflect, allowing music to fill the space without echo or fatigue. The centrepiece is a colossal 400-kilogram cabinet, housing a pair of vintage bookshelf speakers whose age only enhances their warmth. The system is vintage but muscular, voiced to carry vinyl with full body and detail.
The sound here isn’t background. It’s part of the service. Early evenings drift through jazz and soul, subtle enough to thread through conversation. Later, the records stretch further — disco, funk, global groove, sometimes French chanson, sometimes the deep cuts of a visiting selector. Each side feels chosen for mood, not recognition. Patrons rarely ask what’s playing; they simply trust the selection to make sense of the room.
Behind the bar, the philosophy continues. Cocktails and wines share equal billing — nothing overly ornate, everything balanced. Signature drinks lean fresh and seasonal: citrus highballs, vermouth spritzes, and mezcal-based sours poured with a practiced ease. Bordeaux’s own wine heritage runs through the list, but the emphasis is on discovery rather than prestige. Natural and biodynamic producers sit alongside classic appellations, and each pour seems to land in rhythm with the music. The food, too, is modest and thoughtful — small plates of olives, cheese, charcuterie, and warm bites that keep conversation unbroken.
The crowd is a cross-section of the city’s new mood. Locals in linen, creatives from the nearby galleries, students from the conservatoire, visiting travellers who’ve heard whispers of “the bar with the big sound.” What unites them is curiosity — people drawn less by volume than by depth. The etiquette is unspoken but understood: voices drop to meet the music’s level, phones stay pocketed, time slows.
Design-wise, Motto feels halfway between cellar and studio. Stone walls, oak beams, soft edges. Lighting glows from alcoves, illuminating bottles and record sleeves in equal measure. There’s an intimacy that borders on reverence, but it never tips into pretension. You can tell it’s been made by people who care about texture — in sound, in drink, in air. It’s the kind of room that doesn’t need to shout its aesthetic; it just breathes it.
Motto belongs to a growing European current — the listening bar movement, inspired by Tokyo’s jazz kissaten and now finding its own continental accent. Yet Bordeaux adds its own inflection. Here, the culture of terroir meets the culture of tone. It’s not about exclusivity, but about proportion: the right wine at the right volume, the right record for the right hour. The result is something distinctly French — sensual, slow, measured — but global in its conversation.
Step back out into the night and the Rue des Piliers de Tutelle feels newly charged. The sound of footsteps echoes against the limestone, and you realise your ears are still tuned to Motto’s frequency — the weight of bass balanced against the light of glass. In a city built on heritage, this is the new Bordeaux: elegant, quiet, but modern in its confidence. Motto doesn’t compete with the noise of the world. It refines it.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.
