Meal Ticket. Grape expectations

Last year I moved to the Parisian neighbourhood of Montmartre, best known as the beguiling setting of the film Amélie . The butte, or hill, with its winding streets, knee-twisting stairs, and bucolic nooks, is full of charm, but frequently overrun by souvenir sellers, pickpockets and tour groups in search of the “Amélie café”.

Still, Montmartre has character. And it’s always had wine. Like most of the Seine valley in the Gallo-Roman era, it was planted with vineyards; later, the nuns of the medieval Benedictine abbey produced and sold wine here. In the 19th century, the vineyards and its location just beyond the city limits made the village a byword for cabarets, bars, dancing, and tax-free revelry. Degas, Renoir, Apollinaire, Monet and Modigliani all made their homes here.

But by the 20th century, war and the phylloxera epidemic had destroyed Montmartre’s vines. In the 1930s, to counter urbanisation proposals, a group of artists led by Francisque Poulbot, calling itself the République of Montmartre, petitioned to recreate the old vineyards. And so the Clos Montmartre was founded in 1933.

More enthusiastic than experienced, Poulbot & co. invited everyone to the next year’s harvest, unaware that grapes need four years to mature. The next time round, vignerons from across France came to help the townies, accompanied by their village fanfare bands.

The Fête des Vendanges commemorates this story every autumn with fireworks, concerts, parades, a street fair and vineyard tours, all culminating in a grand concert-ball. As an official Montmartre citizen now, I was determined to go.

“The real terroir of Montmartre,” I said, gazing at the steep slopes.

“The real terroir at the bottom of our boulevard is mostly pee and French fries,” someone pointed out.

“All the more Parisian,” I said staunchly.

At the corner of rue des Saules and rue Saint-Vincent, the improbable little vineyard beamed sunnily down on us, its leaves turning red and gold among the old houses. The Clos is a toy-sized 1,556 sq m, with 1,700-odd vines. Each region of France contributed to the planting, which explains the diversity of the grapes: 75 per cent are gamay, 20 per cent pinot noir, and the rest are seibel, merlot, sauvignon blanc, gewürztraminer, and riesling.

But all the grapes were gone, to the cellar of the town hall of the 18th arrondissement (city district), where the wine is processed. Clos Montmartre vintages are infamously bad (and diuretic, rumour says), but the bottles are auctioned off at over €50 each — profits go to the district’s social services — so we had small chance of tasting anyway.

We wandered off to watch the parade, a motley, possibly tipsy string of delegations from the Commanderie du Clos Montmartre, confréries bachiques (wine brotherhoods), chevaleries du tastevin (wine-tasting knighthoods), and agricultural guilds. They filed past in traditional velvet robes, with silver tasting cups slung around their necks. The strawberry-growers’ guild — adorable septuagenarians dressed as velvet strawberries — marched along with steel bands, baton girls, and the local kids’ capoeira club. The Free Commune of Montmartre distributed their yearly programme, dated according to the French revolutionary calendar (we’re in the Vendémiaire or Grape Harvest month of the year 224), while other delegations handed out grapes, flowers, lollipops and thimble cups of wine.

Under the Sacré-Cœur cathedral, there were tents selling everything one might need for a very fancy, very fatty picnic: wine, champagne, charcuterie, cheese, oysters, snails. We tried some crisp, citrusy Gaston Revolté champagne and watched the servers at the Ardennes stall stir and sing to their pans of warm dandelion-and-ham potato salad. The stand opposite offered us some figs stuffed with foie gras, and we ended with luscious duck rillettes and melted raclette sandwiches.

Sunday morning saw the ‘Cérémonie des non-demandes en mariage’. This event pays homage to the Georges Brassens love song La non-demande en mariage , or the non-proposal of marriage. It’s no parody, though. “We welcome all couples — and threesomes, even foursomes, why not?” said ex-district mayor Daniel Vaillant, who was presiding, as two girls dressed as elves blew squeakers into his ear. “That’s love — when you don’t need a piece of paper, non?”

The non-fiancées had come with their children, witnesses and friends, with top hats, bouquets, rings and poems, to declare their love and fidelity (and their non-marriage). The town-appointed hairstylist gave them extravagant coiffures, with fascinators, butterflies, leaves and ribbons; some of the men sported ladybirds on their noses. The crowd cheered as the couples (and one trio) mounted the dais. One person was to say, “I have the honour to not ask you for your hand,” and the other would complete the Brassens couplet: “Let’s not engrave our names at the bottom of an old parchment.”

Vaillant ribbed them about their hairdos, asked how they met, and made mock-patriotic statements about the 18th arrondissement. To two women from the 3rd district, he said, gravely, “You have won the right to marry, but in Montmartre, we also give you the right to not marry,” and to an Italian couple renewing their non-vows for the third time, he declared, “Montmartre is always yours.”

There was much dancing afterwards, but we followed some of the newly non-weds up to the food fair instead. Everyone was toasting with mulled wine or chilled champagne, eating Cancale oysters, crêpes, truffle omelettes and Corsican ham, paper boats of cheesy tartiflette , and mergeuz sausages. People queued for Guadeloupe rum punch and warm chestnuts; kids bounced by with balloons. Montmartre’s own wine was nowhere to be seen, but no one minded.

Naintara Maya Oberoi is a food writer based in Paris; @naintaramaya

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