Let's start with a little history: until the 18th century, France's Island sheltered The largest vineyard across the country, out of around 42,000 hectares and some 300 municipalities.
And for good reason, with restricted means and axes of communications, a solution was needed to make wine drink at the Court of Kings of France.
Dating back to the 4th century, wine production was mainly intended for court and export. And yet, it was the course of history that got the better of this vineyard, and it ended up disappearing in the 1950s.
Nowadays, there are only a hundred vines over 100 feet in the heritage of the vineyard of theIsland-de-France and the majority of them have no economic vocation, but are simply linked to tourism, educational or cultural activities.
Visit the vines in Paris.
The capital houses the most famous and folk in its breast of the vineyards which is that of the commandery. It produces the Clos Montmartre on the northern flank of the homonymous hill, located in the 18th arrondissement. Its production is, certainly very limited, but at how emblematic. In 2009, she represented only 1003 bottles. Each year is organized a festival of the harvest in Montmartre as well as an auction of the wine produced.
Another viticultural place to discover in the heart of Paris, The Garden of Plants and its two two hundred-quarters-sept vines with a variety of surprising grape varieties, a beautiful discovery to make, but also to taste.
Another surprising discovery, between the Tours de la Défense, you find the Clos de Chantecoq, a vineyard of seven -cent feet grown on only ten ares with a racket of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It is not marketed, but it can be tasted.
In the rue de Reuilly, 12th arrondissement of Paris, you can find, behind the carriage door which hides the access, an original vineyard: Le Clos Reuilly. Its three immense trebles, planted between 1954 and 1957, crowned the small paved dead end. In the past, there was a convent where abbesse mothers had, as in all abbeys, their vegetable garden and their vine. Reuilly is therefore a wine -growing neighborhood. Today, the vine is here a playful pleasure, that of learning to vinify, as well as a source of conviviality, especially on the occasion of the harvest festival in which the inhabitants of the neighborhood participate.
As long as you are in Paris, you cannot finish your visit without going to visit the famous wine museum in the 16th arrondissement, located rue des Eaux, 5 Square Charles Dickens.
Viticultural route around Paris.
You will find, among the few vineyards of the Route des Vins d ’Island-de-France and to be discovered on the outskirts of the capital, the vines of the Sausset Departmental Park in Villepinte, but also the Clos Passemay, Located in a residential area at the foot of the city of Val d'Argent in Argenteuil and the Clos du Pas Saint-Maurice, located on Mont Valérien and oriented to the south, in Suresnes.
Planted in the park of one of the flagships of French architecture, in Versailles, right next to the Trianon, discover the twenty areas of vines planted, in 2003, of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
The Bérrurier estate in Conflans St Honorine, in the Yvelines, and its 1,600 feet of vines planted with Gamay and Pinot Noir on 40 ares.
In Rosny-sous-Bois, in Seine-Saint-Denis, on the heights of the city, in the Jean DECESARI PARC, And this, For more than twenty years, a brotherhood has cultivated 20 ares of vines, a tradition that dates from the Middle Ages and where production, although modest in these times, provided Paris.
At the time owned by the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève and its religious lords, it nevertheless made it live more than half of the population.
The Chasselas of Thomery, in Seine-et-Marne, also called Golden Chasselas of Fontainebleau, is a grape of Chasselas cultivated in a traditional and ornamental way and which knew its hours of glory between the two wars, in the village of Thomery in Seine- Et-Marne. This table grape, very close to the hunting of Moissac, is produced and preserved according to traditional and unique local methods, since 1730 and deserves to be mentioned for its viticulture techniques in espaliers On walls, and optimization of the maturation of the fruit by very specific sizes of the vineyard called in charming cord, According to Baptiste Rose Charmeux, Horticulturalist in Thomery in the 19th century.
