Paris Vendanges - Vineyards in the City

By Thirza Vallois

Paris Kiosque - October 1998 - Volume 5, Number 10
Copyright (c) 1998 Thirza Vallois - used with permission
Excerpted from "Around and About Paris"

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During the month of October, when, in anticipation of Dionysian pleasures, France celebrates the bounty of her earth by way of the "Vendanges", even pollution, traffic, tar-ridden Paris, joins the festivities and has a whale of a time!

Paris has many hidden secrets, and her pocketsize vineyards are among the most charming ones, vestiges of days not so long gone by when the city was a collection of small villages and winegrowing among their activities. Here is the story of some of those vineyards , "pulled out" from Thirza Vallois's highly acclaimed "Around and About Paris" series.

A stroller forty years ago penetrating beyond La Salpêtrière by way of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital ... would have come to a region where Paris seemed to disappear.

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, 1862

Only a few years ago most people would have agreed with Victor Hugo - some may do to this day. Despite its conspicuous high-rise buildings, to many, the 13th has remained a `no man's land'. Few outsiders venture here; guidebooks hardly mention the area except for the Gobelins workshops, which are on the northern edge of the arrondissement and mercifully close to the `civilised' 5th. In short, an uninviting neighbourhood most Parisians avoided until recently and most tourists have never heard of.

In pre-industrial days this was a land of green pastures, of scattered windmills, and of vineyards watered by the meandering Bièvre as reported by one of its inhabitants:

Le Liquide puisé au tonneau d'Ivry
me chatouille d'une maniere suave

The liquide drawn from the wine-cask at Ivry
gently titillates my palate.

A few other villages already stood here in the early Middle Ages - Gentilly, Arcueil and Saint-Marceau (or Marcel). Later the great Renaissance poet Ronsard used to meet his poet friends under the bowers of Saint-Marcel or take a leisurely stroll through the countryside to Arcueil. Ronsard was pining at the time after the young but married Geneviève, a native of the future arrondissement, and it was for the love of her that he drank his fill so as to forget his pangs:

Go to Harcueil hereafter,
Put the table as close as may
By the fountain.
Put hither the bottle full,
Then for ever
Pour wine into my glass,
To strangle the memory
Of my troubles after drinking.

In 1443 Jehan de Gobelin, the famous Flemish dyer and ancestor of the renowned Gobelins manufacturies settled on the banks of the river Bievre in the future 13th arrondissement, like many other Flemish dyers. The Flemish dyers were not the only foreign group living in Faubourg Saint-Marcel. The English too were present, as an occupying force in the the aftermath of the Hundred Years War, and like the rest of the population liked to frequent its taverns. They preferred their own ale, however, and tried to introduce it among the natives, with apparently little success: the latter snubbed their barley-based drink and clung persistently to their own Dionysian customs and to their vinetum sancti Marcelli. They did, however, retain the name of the new beverage - `good ale' - which, as true Frenchmen, they distorted into `godale', and then again into godailler (`to booze'). Jehan de Gobelin, on the other hand, because of his Flemish origins, was accustomed to drinking beer and even opened a brewery on the banks of the river for the benefit of his employees, most of whom where fellow-countrymen from Flanders and enjoyed a hearty pint at the end of a day's work.

The village of Charonne, in today's 20th arrondissement in eastern Paris, was a village of winegrowers favoured by Jean Jacques Rousseau, as he reported in his account of his ramblings, Reverie d'un promeneur solitaire. If you wish to be among the last to see the seamier side of old Paris before it is relegated to the historical archives, and your feet are up to it, continue along rue Vitruve as far as rue des Orteaux, then turn left. To your right, on either side of rue des Vignoles - whose name alone evokes the vinegrowing past - lie several narrow streets, lined with crumbling houses and hovels, which have retained the exact layout of the vineyards they have, regrettable, replaced. Here too, concrete is fast devouring the little crumbling houses, whose ill-fated tenants were poets and wits. The first alley to your right on rue des Orteaux, beyond rue de Vignoles, has been dubbed Impasse Dieu, not to makr some spiritual yearning but just to honour the memory of one of the inhabitants of Charonne, a certain Monsieur Dieu.

A bunch of rascals was quick to give tit for tat with Impasse Satin! - first to your left along rue des Vignoles. And if the parallel Impasse Rançon (ransom), reflects presumably shady goings-on in these parts, Impasse des Souhaits (whiches) and Impasse de la Confiance (confidence, trust, or faith), on either side of rue des Vignoles a little further down, add a touch of optimism to an otherwise desperate world. So does the hapy, sunbathed roof terrace at no. 86 rue des Vignoles, bursting with flowers among its crumbling neighbors.

Vineyards clung to the slopes of western Paris too, now the 16th arrondissement. Back in the Middle Ages, the wine of Auteuil had gained a reputation that spread beyond the borders of France. A Danish bishop by the name of Roschild thanked the canons of Notre-Dame for the excellent quality wine from Auteuil they had sent him as a gift: Vino optimo Altolil. At the time of Pierre Abélard, students came to Auteuil to drink its wine every 22 January - the holy day of Saint Vincent, patron of the vineyards - was celebrated here with much rejoicing. But later the wines of Passy and Chaillot began to compete with it, eventually bringing about its decline.

Passy still honours its dionysian past by way of its wine museum at 5, Square Charles Dickens. Le Musée du Vin, also known as Le Caveau des Echonsons, occupies a vast 14th-century vaulted cellar. This was once part of the domain of the Minimes, whose wine-growing monks kept their wine in these vaults. Here you can see historical scenes animated by wax dolls showing, for example, Napoleon tasting a Bourgogne and Balzac walking down the stairs in his white dressing-gown to escape his creditors' bailiffs in his nearby home on rue Raynouard, as well as a display of various items connected with wine. The bonshommes cultivated their vineyards roughly on the site of the present rue Vineuse and their claret was so praised that Louis XIII came over to drink it after the hunt.

Lying across the river to the south, the village of Vaugirard, in today's 15th arrondissement, was also a village of vinegrowers. Before the Revolution, the vineyards of these sunny, southern slopes were the pride of the village of Vaugirard. Some malevolent tongues derided the quality of its wine, the sharpness of which `would make a goat dance.' Sheer calumny, apparently, for it was even marketed abroad. Mention of its export to England goes back to 1453, when `Jehan Legrand, husbandman, resident of Vaugirard, has received forty francs minted at Tours.' The English must have discovered the wine during the Hundred Years War that ended that year. Indeed, we know from the Great Chronicles of France that the English had occupied the undefended area stretching south of Paris, which included Vaugirard. An even earlier document, now kept at the National Archives, goes back to July 1230. This is a sales deed written on parchment, confirming that Milon Bergen and his wife Agnès sold one acre of vineyard to Etienne Poirier for the sum of 15 francs minted in Paris, paid in cash.

In 1717 as many as 27 of the 95 houses of Vaugirard were taversn which meant they served wine. Parisians would come here on Sundays and holidays, especially after 1786, when the oppressive toll walls were built around Paris - in this arrondissement on the site of the Boulevards de Vaugirard, Pasteur, Garibaldi and Grenelle. Beyond the walls, wine escaped taxation and entertainment was cheap. Louis-Sébastien Mercier recorded that `one drinks wine, one eats strawberries and peas. One dances to the sound of fiddles, musettes and oboes.' However, the prosperity did not last long - the profit-seeking winegrowers of Vaugirard replaced their wines with a new stock which yielded much more wine, but of a poorer quality. The demanding consumers would have none of it and by 1810 there were not vineyards left in Vaugirard.

But Vaugirard boasts a vineyard even today, in full functioning order: The annual grape-picking ceremony at the resuscitated vineyard of the Clos des Morillons in the Parc Georges Brassens is a more joyous pilgrimage. It takes place on a Saturday in September or October. Some 600-700 kilos of grapes are picked that day, accompanied by folk dancing and music and much rejoicing as the harvest is loaded on to a brightly decked cart. The following summer, several hundres of bottles of Clos de Morillons Pinot Noir - a fine vintage according to connoisseurs - are sold for 50/60 Fr. each at 38 rue des Morillons. The proceeds go to charity. The vineyard, with its 700 vines, was planted only in 1985, when the park was laid out and it was meant to rekindle old traditions.

Of all Paris's vineyards, Montmartre's is the most renowned. Continue along rue Norvins and turn left into rue des Saules, named after the willow trees that once grew on this watery spot. On your right is Montmartre's vineyard, a neat, bright-green patch cheerfully tilted downhill towards rue Saint-Vincent, but against all logic, exposed to the north! This is because it was planted in 1934 by Montmartre's merry yet incompetent intelligentsia to revive old traditions. Their knowledge of wine growing was limited indeed, and unaware that grapes need four years before they can be pressed for wine, they went on to organise the first grape-picking ceremony the following year. The ceremony was held all the same and was honoured by the presence of both the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, and the Minister of Agriculture, Henri Quenille, who were offered the first two bunches of grapes. The grape-picking ceremony has been repeated every October since, except during World War II. The wine is pressed in the cellar of the Mairie and sold at auction in April. The labels of the bottles are painted by local artists and the money raised is used for charity, a tradition initiated by the artist Poulbot for the childred of the hill, whom he had loved and fostered, and immortalised in his paintings.

East of the hill of Montmartre, is an area called La Goutte d'Or, a working-class area, the one-time home of Emile Zola's Gervaise. But the name "The Golden Drop" evokes better times. In the middle of this North African enclave, behind an iron gate at no. 42, is la Villa Poissonnière, an incongruous contrified allyway sloping gently down towards you, decked with the same romantic street lamps as those that decorate la Butte Montmartre: it seems to have been placed here by mistake. On either side stand charming old houses, some attractively embellished by ceramics, each with its exquisite, pocket-size garden filled with the twittering of birds. This site is believed to have been the property of a winegrower when this was open countryside, ideally situated on its sunny slope rolling gently to the south. Indeed, in the Middle Ages the wine of La Goutte d'Or had attained such renown that during a European contest at the time of Saint Louis it shared third prize with the wines of Alicante and Laconia. The first prize when to Cyprus, the `Pope' of wines, and the second prize went to Malaga, the `Cardinal' of wines. The wine of La Goutte d'Or was crowned the `King' of wines, which also tells us something about the position of the royal authorities in the hierarchy of medieval Europe and their struggle to gain independence from Rome. It was customary at the time for the City of Paris to present the King with wine from La Goutte d'Or on his birthday.

Last but not least, perhaps the best hidden vineyard of Paris is just behind the polluted and unlikely neighbourhood of the Gare St-Lazare! At no 28 rue Blanche is the fire station, which has a vineyard on the premises - six vines in all, nurtured by the fire brigade since 1904! The firemen produce an average of 30 bottles of wine a year. On the second Friday of October the picking of the grapes is celebrated with great pomp. The names on the bottles may sound promising - Le Pinot Noire and Chasselas - but the wine itself is almost undrinkable, although the labels are highly sought after by collectors.

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Thirza Vallois brings Paris to life in a way that enthralls her readers and provides them with a detailed knowledge of the city which exceeds that of most Parisians, while her fast moving style disguises a depth of historical fact that is normally only found in academic tomes. Writer William Boyd wrote in The Spectator: "I think we can safely toss all other Paris guidebooks aside....There can be no higher praise than when I say they come close to the world's greatest guidebook, J. Link's "Venice for Pleasure" and they should soon achieve similar legendary status." The French Ambassador to the UK wrote: "I am convinced that this guide will constitute from now on, for the British lovers of Paris, a reference book which will have the success it deserves." Around and About Paris may be ordered here.

A long time resident of Paris, she currently lives just three hours outside of Paris in London, and may be contacted via thirzavallois@iliadbooks.demon.co.uk.