On a misty morning in October, winemaker Vincent Bolenor gathers his team among rows of vines heavy with grapes. They’ll spend the next day plucking the fruit from carefully cultivated branches and piling them into trucks ready for pressing.
It’s a scene repeated across France at this time of year as the country harvests the ingredients that make its wines famous among connoisseurs the world over. But Bolenor and his crew are not in the classic winemaking regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Languedoc or the Loire.
They’re in the middle of Paris.
Clos Montmartre, located on the north side of Montmartre, the teeming artsy neighborhood crowned by the majestic Sacre Coeur cathedral, is a tiny but picturesque vineyard that’s home to about 2,000 grape-producing vines that grow seemingly oblivious to the fact they’re in the heart of the French capital.
The grapes are a holdover from days when Montmartre was a quaint village surrounded by vineyards. Located further north and with less sun than more prestigious French cuvées, they produced wine of questionable quality, and gradually vanished as it became part of Paris in 1860.
But the tradition of vine cultivation in Montmartre survived. Today, the Clos Montmartre is a small, picturesque parcel tucked away from the chaos of the city under the watchful eyes of the Museum of Montmartre. And each October, Parisian gardeners gather alongside urban wine enthusiasts to harvest these grapes right under the noses of city dwellers.