Harvest happenings

Grape events in and around Paris

Sep 12, 2024

The day has been a bit busy and so I was unable to post at the usual time. Better late than never…

Fall is the season for the grape harvest, the culmination of a year’s work of toil and often a time of great stress. This year’s harvest has already begun in some places and has been delayed in others due to persistent rains. By all accounts, the 2024 vintage is not going to be an easy one as downy mildew, powdery mildew, hail, frost and other blights have reduced harvests significantly.

But the show must go on and there are several harvest events taking place in and around Paris. The first for us was on Wednesday 11 September in the Marais district of Paris, and was a rather unusual one, as how often do you get to press grapes on a rooftop in Paris?

In 2017 Virginie Dulucq of Urbagri planted 150 vines on the top of a roof of the Municipal Police Department at 4 rue Lobau. (You can read about this in my post of 7 March) She has since added an additional 138 vines to a section of the roof she had originally reserved for vegetables.

We were invited to help press the juice out of the grapes from the section planted in 2017 and had a fun morning ‘hand crushing’ several kilos of grapes before putting them into the basket press.

This involved several stages, the first being an attentive sorting of the grapes, which had been picked a few days earlier, to remove rot and mould. We then washed them with water, allowing them to drain for a while before squeezing the bunches of grapes with our hands to break the skins into buckets. These were then added to a basket press to extract all the juice.

It was a fun morning and although not physically exhausting, it was tiring and hard on the hands. And though it was a fun morning, I would have to say, not as much fun as the naked wine stomp I participated in oh so many years ago in the Côte de Castillon (not a tale I can tell here). But those who have ever stomped grapes with their feet will know that that too is a lot of work. We nevertheless managed to extract about 40 litres of juice by squeezing the grapes with our hands, which isn’t quite enough to make wine, but is apparently enough to make beer… More on that later.

Following are a number of upcoming harvest events that are open to the public, so you too can get sticky with grape juice. Click on the highlighted texts for full details about the events below.

Virginie Dulucq of Urbagri is also responsible for the largest vineyard in Paris (2 hectares), which was planted in 2022 at the Paris Hippodrome. There are various events taking place there over the next few weeks:

From the information posted on Sortir à Paris:

Heritage Days, Saturday 21 September

Wine Festival, Saturday 28 September

Taste Trail, Saturday 12 October

Wine Trail, Sunday 13 October

Domaine Gravelle at the Paris Hippodrome, Rond-Point de Mortemart, Route de la Pyramide, 75012 Paris

Harvest Festival in Montmartre - 9-13 October

Paris’ most celebrated vineyard hosts the largest and most internationally acclaimed wine event in Paris. The entire village of Montmartre is transformed into a fairground so thick with crowds you’ll get high on people if nothing else. Although the fête is ostensibly for the harvest, you will find food and drinks stands from all over the country along with musical animation, events, and wine related ceremonies. This year’s theme is ‘the imaginary’…

Vine Festival in Suresnes - 28-29 September

Along with the Clos Montmartre in Paris, the vines of the Clos du Pas Saint-Maurice in Suresnes have the longest continuous history of producing wine for sale. The Vine Festival celebrates the city’s vines for two days with a concert and a talk by an oenologist (with tasting). New members of the Brotherhood of the Vine will be inducted on the morning of Sunday 1 October.

Entre Les Vignes in Vauhallan - 28 September

The newly planted vineyard in Vauhallan by the family of Fleury Champagne is celebrating the return of vines to Vauhallan with a festive guinguette. Along with wine tasting, music, beer, food and local crafts will be on sale.

Heritage Days in the Vines of Bougival - 22 September

This is primarily an opportunity to discover one of the ‘heritage’ vineyards of the Île-de-France, which have maintained a link with the region’s rich, viticultural past. Take a walk in the vines and learn more about the history of the vines and wines of the Île-de-France.

We will be attending as many of these events as we can and so look forward to seeing you there. If you would like to meet up, drop me a line and we can arrange a time and place. Santé!

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Harvest happenings

Grape events in and around Paris

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