Le Fête des Vendanges

I went up to Montmartre on Saturday for the Fête des Vendanges, an annual event celebrating the grape harvest of the local vineyards. To my surprise, I found out that the neighborhood has a working vineyard right on the side of the hill. Montmartre has actually been producing wine since the Middle Ages — a Benedictine abbey built there in the 12th century included a wine press to process all the grapes. Although the abbey was destroyed during the French revolution, the vineyards remained until the early 20th century when a phylloxera epidemic wiped them all out.

In the 19020’s, a real estate development threatened to pave over the remaining plot of land until a group of artists took over, planting new vines. That was the start of the Clos de Montmartre Vineyard, which still exists today. Their first harvest was in 1934, and the Fête des Vendanges has been celebrated every year since. The vineyard is only 1500 square meters and produces a small yield of mostly gamay grapes (similar to Beaujolais Nouveau) – last year they produced only 1100 bottles of a wine.

So that’s our history lesson for today.  Now for the festival.

The big parade started at the 18th arrondissement town hall with speeches by the mayor of Paris, the mayor of the 18th, and famous French actor Gérard Jugnot, who was the sponsor of this year’s festival. Then there was a procession of Rolls Royces carrying Fête royalty, groups of musicians, dancing children, and then people wearing the traditional costumes of their wine-producing region or vineyard.

Many of them were passing out small bunches of grapes and small cups of wine to parade watchers. I was lucky to find an opening right up front along the route and was a happy recipient of several tastes of wine. Then a line of older men in red robes and gold crowns came by and formed a line in front of me, and one-by-one fed me a single grape in exchange for a kiss on the cheek! It was perhaps my most surreal moment thus far in Paris.

I watched the parade for a half hour or so from that spot before deciding to follow the route up to the end around Sacre Coeur. Up on the butte, there were stalls with all kinds of wine (of course), cider, chocolat chaud à l’ancienne, as well as some regional food — like some sort of smelly smoked fish (though I don’t think that’s the French name for it.) There were performances of music, readings, and even stand up comics (the theme this year was “humor”). It was cool to see it all, but it was crazy crowded, like wall-of-people, can-only-shuffle-feet-to-walk crowded, so as soon as I got up there, I realized I wish I had never gone.

But, on the upshot, in trying to find a way down the hill I ran into the most gorgeous part of Montmartre – virtually untouched in a hundred years.  I’ll post more on that tomorrow.  Right now it’s a cuppa tea and off to bed for me, as I’m feeling a bit under the weather.  Hope all is well back home!

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