Paris Wine Walks: My Boozy Afternoon in the Latin Quarter

“Walk, talk, think, clink, drink,” reads a line on the Paris Wine Walks website and it sums up the experience I enjoyed when I tried out their Latin Quarter tour, without, perhaps, doing the experience full justice. It doesn’t quite capture how our informative wander would degenerate nicely into a slightly sozzled end-of-afternoon gathering in a wine bar in Rue des Écoles with people I had never met, yet who immediately somehow seemed to be my new best friends. This was largely due to Geoffrey, wine connoisseur, raconteur, wordsmith and trivia enthusiast, in whose amusing company we bonded and put the world to rights. 

We began soberly enough in the Jardin des Plantes, learning that wine is “the real story of Paris” and that wine-making in the Île de France, once the largest vineyard area in the world, had financed many of the abbeys and churches in medieval Paris. Wine, said Geoffrey, was for centuries a main driver of the Paris economy. In the 12th century, for instance, wines from the Seine Valley were renowned all over Europe, selling in large quantities and bringing prosperity to the region. And that, he continued, delivering the first of a torrent of memorable phrases, was quite apart from the “spiritual uplift” it provided.   

All the elements of a Geoffrey-led tour — bar actually tasting wine, a pleasure reserved for our next stopping point — were hinted at as we grouped around him at the entrance of the Jardin des Plantes: a smattering of facts about vineyards in Paris (a surprisingly high number), a guessing game on the number of grape varieties which exist worldwide (nearly 10,000.  Who knew?), an unexpected sight (vines form part of the logo for the Natural History Museum), a stop by the little vineyard planted in the Allée Centrale which prompted a first plea for organic wines, grown without the pesticides which destroy the natural cycle and a liberal sprinkling of delightfully random asides.   

Somewhere near the vineyard came Geoffrey’s first opportunity to quote from literature. The opening lines of the Madeline stories refer, apparently, to this very spot, giving him the perfect opportunity to recite them with gusto: “In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…”     The relevance of the next digression was not clear to me. I think perhaps he had wandered into the vagaries of human digestion, but whatever the link, we enjoyed hearing the derivation of the French phrase ça va? which translates literally as “does it go?” It originates, we were told, from the days when courtiers enquired after the king’s bowel movements in order to check his well-being.   

We exited the Jardin des Plantes onto Rue Jussieu, where Geoffrey pointed a disdainful finger at the 1960s architecture of the Sorbonne’s Science Faculty and showed us pictures of how the area used to look when it was site of the Halles des Vins, the world’s largest wine trading area. Until it was replaced by Bercy on the other side of the Seine in the mid-19th century, this was the bustling hub where local wines were stored, sold and shipped. Why, wondered our guide, had no one thought to leave some trace of the area’s proud commercial history? But he cheered up on being able to point out that a section of Philippe Auguste’s wall, dating from the 12th century, still stands.   

Our next stop was in the Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman arena discovered by accident by 19th century workmen digging out a new road. This was the perfect place for a little more history, explaining how the Romans brought the first vines to the area, establishing a culture which would thrive for 18 centuries until the blight of phylloxera killed it off. We have them to thank, said Geoffrey, for the discovery that vines grow well in the Île de France soil, knowledge which the monks of the nearby Abbaye St Victor made good use of when they planted vineyards here. Today, it is the site of one of the city’s newly replanted small vineyards, making it a good place to stop for our first tasting. 

It’s a bubbly white, said Geoffrey and you should approach it with three of your senses. What would be look, smell and taste to raw amateurs became, in Geoffrey speak, a visual appraisal, followed by olfactory and finally gustative appreciation.  He savors words as much as wine and had one more to dazzle us: retro-olfactory, which I looked up later and found defined as when “odorous stimuli present in the mouth are sampled during exhalation via the back of the throat.” He quoted some sage advice about eating an apple before tasting wine because it will cleanse the palate and mean you taste more discerningly. On the other hand, if you are selling wine and don’t want your buyers to be too critical, serve it with cheese, which will coat the palate and mask the taste. 

Our walk continued through more of the Latin Quarter, giving Geoffrey the chance to toss out literary references. At Descartes’ house, he posited that rather than “I think therefore I am,” the great man actually said “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.” We ambled past buildings linked to Hemingway and Orwell, we crossed the Place de la Contrescarpe  which was once a vineyard and made for our final destination, an organic wine bar called Bonvivant. Here, three more wines awaited us, whimsically described, I noticed later, on the wine bar’s website as glouglou bio, alongside platters of fermented bread and a cheese selection to nibble. 

Geoffrey continued our tuition amidst the clinking of glasses and tasting of platters. He challenged us to name the grape in one of the sample wines. Geoffrey, we don’t know we whined, pleading for him to make the question multiple choice. He duly obliged and rewarded the person who called out the right answer with an amused smile. Did we know that the Île de France was not designated an official wine-producing region until 2016? Or that of the 24 vineyards in Paris today, only 12 produce wine and only one – so far – sells it? We chorused our answers: no and no. We slipped a little further into the haze of tasting as the Geoffrey-isms continued to flow. “Nipped in the bud” he said at one point, is a wine reference. If frost nips a bud, there will be no grape and therefore no wine. This cheese – or was it that wine? – is “fresh, vigorous, deep, complex.” The tumble of words and ideas seemed infinite. 

Geoffrey began to fear he was losing his audience. “Focus, people,” he implored, ‘”Focus.” Did we know that focus is Latin for fireplace, usually the “focus” of a room?We did now. Anyway – Geoffrey begins many sentences with anyway, signaling a jerk back from a random idea to the main plot – anyway, had he already mentioned the importance of organic wines? Those from grapes grown without chemical interventions, truly representative of their terroir, untainted by fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, artificial additives ….? Geoffrey in full flow is unstoppable.  His stats were startling (“33% of chemicals used in foodstuffs go into wine”), his arguments incontrovertible (“there is simply no need for an arsenal of chemicals”) and his passion unmistakable. Organic wines are having a moment and I think I have met the man who is driving the trend. 

Time slipped away, our mood ever more convivial and enhanced by the Jacques Brel music playing in the background. We practiced clinking glasses “properly,” that is holding the stem to enhance the musicality of the sound and, always, unfailingly,  making eye contact. Yes, all eight of us, each with everyone else. No rush, just savoring the moment and hoping the afternoon would never end. Geoffrey commented that while the word drunkenness has a sordid edge in English, its French equivalent, ivresse, is loftier, more “exalted, uplifted, spiritual, desirable.”   

Despite this further evidence that words never fail him, Geoffrey turned to a French poet in order to bring our little fête to a conclusion. He declaimed the full text of Baudelaire’s Enivrez-vous which ends with these memorable lines: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.” 

You can’t top Baudelaire. Or Geoffrey. So, I’ll leave it there. 

For information on the Paris Wine Walks Latin Quarter Tour and other wine tours of Montmartre, the Marais, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Belleville, consult the Paris Wine Walks website 

See also The Hidden Vineyards of Paris by Geoffrey Finch