Winemaking in the city

by Alison Hird

Article published on the 2008-10-26 Latest update 2008-11-05 09:35 TU

Local children have the fun job of treading the grapes
(Photo: Teruel)

They won’t be rivalling Bordeaux's famous Château Petrus in a hurry, but Paris has its very own wines. A long wine-making tradition had died out by the 1940s but now there's a revival. One restaurant presses its own grapes, makes its own wine ... and holds a tombola for locals to win the product.

There was a time, in the late 18th century to be precise, when the Paris region was the largest winegrowing area in the whole of France, with some 42,000 hectares of vines.

Then the arrival of the railways brought cheap wines up from the south and the phylloxera disease wiped out many vines. By the 1940s Paris vineyards were history.

Grape harvesting at Chez Mélac bistro
(Photo: Teruel)

But there’s something of a revival going on and while production is still tiny, Paris and the Ile de France region now has around 11 hectares and some 132 vineyards. The best-known is certainly Montmartre, which holds its annual wine harvest festival in October.

A smaller but far more raucous affaire can be found Chez Mélac, a bistrot in the rue Léon Frot, in the traditionally working-class, racially mixed Charonne area, a part of the city's 11^th arrondissement.

You can’t miss this bistrot. Its outside walls are covered with luscious vines. Owner Jacques Mélac planted a Baco vine from his native Aveyron 30 years ago when he took over the family business and has been making wine ever since.

Every September for the last 29 years, Mélac has been holding a street party outside his bistro, inviting the locals to come and harvest his grapes, and children to tread them barefoot. After a year in his cellar, the resulting Château Charonne is distributed to the public through a tombola system.

This year the affable winegrower made a long-standing dream come true, installing an automaton of  Bacchus above his vines. It is a large sculpture of the Graeco-Roman god of wine that pops out once an hour during drinking hours, like a bibulous cuckoo clock, ringing a bell and raising his goblet. Designed by Gaëtan Bousigué, it’s one of only two such machines in the whole of Paris .

The Bacchus automaton installed this year.
(Photo: Teruel)

“It was a big investment but it completed the picture: a bistrot, a vine, wine and a happy man,” he explains

The wine is no grand cru and, like all Paris wines apart from Suresnes, can’t be sold on the market due to the absence of vine-planting rights. So why not mix the grapes a bit more?

Mélac has founded the Vignerons de Paris association, inviting people who have vines in their gardens, on balconies or even window boxes to chip in their grapes. Mélac does the winemaking in his large cellars and the “donors” can pick up their surprise bottles the following year.

Katarina, who is originally from Russia, has been a member of the association for the last ten years. Her garden vine in the east of Paris produced 120kg this year.

With husband Vasily they piled kilo after kilo into the wooden vats for the children to slosh around in.

“We grow grapes in the 20^th and make wine in the 11^th” she says with a smile. “Our vines produce a lot. They cover the whole of our pergola and the neighbour’s roof too.” 

The street party in rue Léon Frot
(Photo: Teruel)

But for Katarina, this year’s party had a downside.

“It’s our last wine harvest. We have to leave Paris,” she says. Paris City Hall plans to knock down the old houses in the area where she lives to make way for new flats. Despite attempts to fight the forced buy-out, they failed and will now have to leave the city in which they hoped to spend their last days.  

“Prices are so high in the capital we won’t be able to buy anywhere else here”.

They’re going to live in Provins, a medieval town 90km east of Paris. Their new hometown is near vineyards. But Paris will have one less vine to its name.