by Think of Paris and you probably think of grand architecture, stunning boulevards, world-class galleries and buzzing cafes. You are almost certain will not be think of a vineyard … but maybe you should. A new book, written by wine connoisseur and adopted Parisian Geffery Finch gives an insight into the forgotten history of the French capital as a world capital of wine production.
“The real story of Paris is wine,” said Geffery, dressed in jaunty red slacks and a wonderfully off-kilter trilby for our wine tour of the Latin Quarter earlier this month. It’s a bold statement and it had other strengths.
On the trip, which is aimed at finding hidden vines in Paris, I learned how the vine was first brought to the region during the Roman conquest around 2,000 years ago and continued to be seriously cultivated for 18 centuries, up to the 1800s. The drained soils of the Seine basin were suitable for grape cultivation and might still be if they were not covered with concrete.
“When people find out that until two hundred years ago the region around Paris was the largest vineyard in the world, it’s a big surprise,” Finch told me. His research is collected in The Hidden Vineyards of Paris and detailed in his wine tours of the capital.
According to his research, the Île-de-France at its height had vineyards across 300 sites covering up to 52,000 hectares (today the Bordeaux wine region covers “only” 45,000 hectares). For centuries, the Latin Quarter also housed the Halle aux Vins, the largest wine warehouse in the world, with direct access to the trade routes of the Seine.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the cultivation of the vine continued and business flourished in the Middle Ages. Industry was closely linked to church activity in a mutually beneficial relationship. Monasteries had their own vineyards as usual and there were thriving vines in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on today’s Left Bank, close to where our journey took place, as well as the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, where the Olympic games. This summer will be a village. Later, Finch said, the profits from wine sales financed the first Gothic cathedrals, including Notre-Dame.
In the following centuries, the Paris region continued to dominate the European wine trade and was home to the largest wine storage warehouses in the world, first in the Latin Quarter and then in the Bercy neighborhood along the Seine. But as Paris urbanized and industrialized, the vines began to disappear. Today, a precious few remain in the capital itself.
The best known is the Clos Montmartre, located on the northern slope of the famous hill topped by the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. Every year, this nice plot produces 500 bottles. The harvest is celebrated at the annual Vendanges de Montmartre festival in October – a lively affair reminiscent of a country feast from a bygone era. Patrons can grab a glass of Montmartre red, which is vinified in the cellar of the local town hall.
In his book, Finch not only makes his passionate case for the importance of wine to Parisian identity, but also discovers lesser-known urban vineyards, the largest of which are owned and managed by the City of Paris . Clos Bergeyre, located between buildings in the 19th arrondissement, has 230 Chardonnay, Muscat and Pinot Noir vines harvested each year. Clos des Envierges has 27 Chardonnay vines and 160 Pinot Meuniers within the Parc de Belleville, on a site where wine has been grown since Carolingian times.
The wines are vinified in a cellar in Bercy in the 12th arrondissement, the former house of a huge storage facility of the 19th century, which also has its own modest production of small vineyards of Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The resulting wines can also be sampled during the city’s fête des vignes in October and Finch also gives private tours of the sites.
Amid a general push for more biodiversity, the city is planting more young vines. In 2022, urban agricultural entrepreneur Virginie Dulucq planted more than three hectares of vines in the Bois de Vincennes, creating the largest urban vineyard in the city to date. It is expected that they will produce wine by 2025 and host regular visits and workshops.
On our journey, we visited a young vineyard on the slopes of the Arènes de Lutèce, a Gallo-Roman amphitheater discovered during the Haussman restoration of Paris in the 1860s. Here, 200 Artaban, Floréal and Vidoc vines are growing rapidly.
Even wider changes are underway in the largest region of Paris. After being off the map throughout the 20th century, the IGP was awarded to the Île-de-France region (Indicative Géographique Protégé) status in 2020 and, since then, several new vineyards have emerged in the region. Finch’s favorites include La Bouche du Roi in Davron, a 30-minute drive southwest of the city, and Les Coteaux du Montguichet in the village of Chelles in the eastern region of Paris. Both properties produce highly regarded natural red and white wines and are open for tours and tastings.
Our tour ended with a tasting at Bonvivant, an organic wine bar in the Latin Quarter, where we toasted to a Parisian vine. “Paris is the wine capital of the world and always has been”, says our host, and we all drink to the view.
Hannah Meltzer was a guest on the Latin Quarter Unbottled! tour, which runs almost every day and costs €95 per person.
Discover the best wine bars in Paris.
The natural wine movement in Paris
Parisian wineries and stockists were early adopters and key players in the natural wine movement. Thanks to the Parisian scene, “natural wine” has gone from an obscure hippie interest, started by a gang of rogue Beaujolais winemakers in the 1960s, to a ubiquitous global trend, in vogue from Milan to Mexico City. In contrast to the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Controlée), awarded by the French government, the definition of “natural” wine is somewhat amorphous. Wine guru Jancis Robinson defines it as “a relative term rather than an absolute term for wine produced by small-scale independent growers from hand-picked grapes using sustainable, organic or biodynamic viticulture”.
