The Wine Walker
Geoffrey Finch is a wine professional, writer, and filmmaker. He has worked in French vineyards, sold wine in Bath, taught university-level wine courses at Sciences Po in Paris, and led wine and gastronomy tours throughout Europe. He operates a series of historic wine walks in Paris and continues to share his love of wine with private tours of French vineyards.
“Paris is covered with vines. It was once the biggest wine-producing region in the world, and much of its 20 centuries of history were built on making and moving the wines it produced. We celebrate this unique and forgotten history. Come with us as we explore the city’s Roman and medieval roots, while tasting France’s living wines and best comestibles — breads, cheeses, and local, seasonal vegetables — in the city’s finest wine bars.
We have the deepest respect for those who work the soil to produce real food and real wine, as it is only these that provide real taste.”
Learn more about our Wine and Food philosophy.
CONVIVIALITY
“Walking or cycling together in the most beautiful quarters of the city, sharing food and wine brings us closer together. It opens the mind, enlivens the spirit and sharpens the palate.”
IVRESSE
“This French word evokes ‘enthusiasm’. It is also translated as ‘drunkenness’ but it is better understood as being joyful, playful, and spiritually uplifted.
Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867), the great Paris poet, said it best:
“Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.
Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.
And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!”“Enivrez-vous”, Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, 1869
The Wine
The Gauls were the first to grow grapes in the Paris region from around the 6th century BCE and were followed by the Romans as they advanced north, expanding their empire. The work of cultivating vines, and the wealth generated by the sale of the wine was then taken up by the church, who went all in. This wealth is what made Gothic architecture, which finds its origins in the Paris region, possible. By the time of the French Revolution, the entire Paris region, which today we call Île-de-France, had 52,000 hectares of vines, making it the biggest wine-producing vignoble in the world.
Those vines produced a range of grapes that include some of the more familial varietals of today, such as Gamay, Pinot Noir, Fromental (a cousin of Savagnin from the Jura), Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Chasselas.
Following the revolution however, vineyards were seized them from the church and the aristocracy, and the pursuit of quantity became more important than quality. This caused a decline in the reputation of the wines of the Île-de-France, and sunny, cheap wines from the south took favour, with the invention of the steam engine and the railroad facilitating their arrival in Paris. The vines of the Île-de-France suffered a further setback with the arrival of phylloxera, which devastated vineyards throughout Europe. Only regions that were considered economically viable were replaced, so a very large part of the Île-de-France vineyard was not replanted. Urbanisation further reduced the surface area given to vines and the region lost its status as a wine producer.
This does not mean there was no longer wine being produced in the Île-de-France, there was just a lot less. Vines were still being cultivated around Belleville until the 1950’s and the tenacity and endurance of the vine continues its hold in the French capital with no less than 11 wine producing vineyards in production today. Only the Clos Montmartre, planted in 1933, has commercial status. All the others are consumed in the context of official gatherings by municipal officials, or sold for charity.
The explosion of barge shipments of barrels from all over France via inland waterways connecting to the Seine (the Canal de Bourgogne connecting to the Yonne, which feeds into the Seine and the Canal Latéral à la Loire connecting to the Saône, the Rhône and the eastern Loire also feeding into the Seine) combined with coastal shipments to the Seine from Bordeaux, the South West, Cognac and the Western Loire, contributed to a surge in wine consumption, rising from a million hectolitres at the beginning of the 1800s to three times that by 1865.
Another wine storage facility was needed and Bercy was chosen. At the time, it was outside the walls of the city, its vineyards and taverns therefore free from tax. In 1869, ‘chais’ (cellars) were built along alleys named after the regions they served (rue de Bordeaux, rue de Champagne, rue de Meursault, Cour Saint-Emilion, etc.). Storage was augmented further to accommodate rail shipments from the Midi (Provence, Languedoc Roussillon…) via the Gare de Lyon. In all, 42 hectares (about 100 acres) were dedicated to the storage of wine and served Paris until the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Halle aux Vins continued to provide storage for wines on the left bank up until the 1950s but, in addition to wine, was a depot for spirits.
Traffic to the Bercy warehouses was limited to the depot workers, wine merchants and their clients, though there was a passenger train track that travelled through the area to and from the Gare de Lyon. Wine bars, taverns and ‘guinguettes’ (open air cafés located along the banks of the Seine) had been associated with Bercy since the early 18th century because the wine was much cheaper than in Paris. In the 19th century, it became the ‘in place’ to go. People crowded into places like the Rocher de Cancale, the Marronniers and the Soleil d’Or, drawn not only by the wine, but the festivities that included frequent fireworks displays and fairground attractions.
Some came to fish, or picnic in the fields, but most came to dance and get picolated onboard guinguette barges on the Seine.
The main appeal was the price of the wine. Taverns and cabarets in the suburbs paid no state taxes, meaning wine was a third to a quarter cheaper than it was in Paris. The guinguettes also had a novel approach to “Happy Hour”: you paid money upfront, and then had 60 minutes to drink yourself into a stupor.
Today, that term has been replaced by pinard, aka le gros rouge qui tâche – “the heavy red that stains.” And until recently, the once-famous vignoble d’Ile de France was more or less moribund.
But all that is changing…
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