Les Entrepots de Bercy (Paris)

Casks in the Entrepôts de Bercy (Paris, 12th) Les Entrepots de Bercy, Paris wine district (12th arrondissement) in the late 1980s'
You can't believe you're in Paris, do you ? Along the seedy streets and provincial-looking buildings of this part of the 12th arrondissement, millions on tons of wine have transited through over the last couple of centuries...
Many of you probably already visited the new Quartier de Bercy in Paris (Pdf document in French with maps and history), a mix of residential buildings, parks, restaurants, fancy bars and shops, even a multiplex cinema, most of them around the Cour-Saint-Emilion pedestrian street. As fun as the place can be, especially on a summer evening, it is mostly an empty shell compared from the huge gated wine district on the ruins of which this new neighborhood was built.
Here are a few pictures selected from many more pictures that I shot in the entrepots de Bercy in the late 1980's before they were levelled somewhere near 1993 to make place to the modern quartier de Bercy.The original quality of my slides is not fully rendered by my home scanner but it's enough to have an idea of how the place looked like then.
Until well into the 1960's, the Entrepots de Bercy were a bustling professional neighborhood, a gated enclave entirely devoted to wine and spirits where Nécociants, coopers, bottlers, label printers and cork dealers, among others, runned their business and helped supply the then-still-huge demand for wine by Parisians.

Cobbled street with warehouses At the turn of the 80s' and 90s', I would often go to the Entrepots de Bercy for a walk to exercise my photography and enjoy the beauty and palpable history-feel of the place. Here was a place in the middle of Paris where you could walk on silent, empty cobbled streets (if not for the hundreds of stray cats that had called it home). Few people ventured there, it was officially off-limits to outsiders, even if the gates were kept open all day, and there were a few gardiens keeping an eye on the compound, but strolling around with my camera, they never bothered me. There were also a few artists and painters who used the abandonned warehouses for performance art and murals. Photographers also came for inspiration and shot beautiful pictures : look at this one. The architecture of this wine district was also distinctive compared with Paris' average : these then-mostly-abandonned buildings along the leafy alleys had been obviously built by teams of builders and carpenters brought along by the Négociants themselves (who came from Burgundy or Beaujolais I guess) and the low buildings from the 19th-century made you feel in a faraway French province. It is really a pity that the people in charge of urbanism in Paris in the 1980s' didn't see the value of this place. I am sure that there would have been a way to keep more of the old Bercy warehouses and streets and spare this village. I think that the British for example respect more their old neighborhoods and can adapt them to modernity without the need to raze them in the first place...Buildings with wooden canopy The History of the wine commerce in Paris is tightly connected to the Seine, which allowed since the 17th century the transportation of important volumes of casks from the provinces, mainly Burgundy at the time. But the Entrepôts de Bercy really took off during the 19th century. The first factor was demographics and democratisation, Paris crowds had to get their daily wine intake, which amounted then to several liters per worker. The second factor driving the expansion of Bercy was a very French one, you might have bet it : taxes. While today the French state levies lots of money on gas at the pump (75% of the price at the pump is made of taxes in France), in the 19th century, considering the amount of wine needed by an average healthy person, wine was heavily taxed by the rulers of the time. The Octroi, this duty which was imposed on wines and spirits had to be paid at this entry point between Bercy and Paris city limits. Being technically located outside Paris city limits, the Négociants and wine businesses working in the 42-hectare gated compound of les entrepôts de Bercy could stock wine without having to pay the full taxes. As they first stored the wine several months or even several years for the elevage before selling it to the distributors, bars and débits de boisson, it was more pertinent to have the duties paid only at the delivery. These duties (the Octroi) were paid at the gate of Bercy on the¨Paris side.Buildings along a Bercy street The tariffs levied on wine and spirits at the door of Paris led not only the Négociants to invest just outside Paris, but there was another side effect : many entertainment spots, restaurants, bars, guiguettes were set up outside Paris. There, the wine was really cheap and workers and ordinary parisians would come and have a good time (I'm sure we would call that binge drinking today...). There were also famous guinguettes and drinking areas along the river Marne on the east of Paris, but Bercy was much closer and aside the wine professionnals making a living on the entrepôts, there was an active red light district in the vicinity.
In the 19th century, Bercy like other communes (for example what is now the 12th and 20th arrondissement), was incorporated into Paris city limits. The discussions leading to this merging of additional communes into Paris were complicated because of this octroi (tax) question. Here is a document (in French) about the negotiations regarding the merge of communes and the octroi at this period. On page #20 of this Pdf document, there's also a funny drawing which was printed in a French newspaper in 1860 featuring Paris as a woman and her new children : Belleville, La Villette and Batignolles inpersonated as three little girls, and Bercy who looks like an unkempt little boy drinking directly from a miniature cask...
Whatever, in 1860, this Bercy wine & spirits compound merged with Paris and this allowed for some unclear reason the négociants to avoid the tax, so more of them came from Burgundy to build facilities and stock wine there.Cour Nicolai under a blanket of snow While from the beginning, the river Seine was the only mode of transportation to bring wine to Bercy from the provinces, a new and modern transportation, trains, allowed from 1878 the entrepôts de Bercy to get the wine delivered faster and in big volumes. In addition to casks, that kept being delivered there, cheaper wine could be transported in wine tank cars right in the middle of Bercy. Nearly every street of the wine compound had railroad tracks installed so that the various Négoces could enjoy a comfortable delivery. We must remember that there was virtually no bottling in the wineries then and that even in Paris, the cafés and restaurants (and families) had wine delivered at their door in casks. Just to figure out the volumes of wine that were transported, in 1909, the PLM (the equivalent of out modern SNCF) transported 2,7 millions metric-tons of wine, making 10% of its freight revenues. The first wine tank cars were wagon-foudre type (scrolldown to the 6th pic on this early-20th-century entrepots de Bercy page), that is, wooden big-capacity casks mounted on a railroad-car chassis (see also this one)... This then-rustic wine could stand vibrations... When I strolled the entrepôts de Bercy shooting these pictures there were still wine tank cars standing here and there. I guess they had been mostly used to transport wine from the Languedoc and other cheap southern French regions, the bottling stage taking place near the consumer market to save money. This type of mass bottlings of cheap wine near the consumer market is still in use totay : Castel group, a French big player built a few years ago a bottling plant in Kline near Moscow (Russia) to bottle its cheap wines for the Russian market. The wine is delivered to Kline in wine tank cars which is considerably cheaper than in bottles.
In Bercy, barges kept being used after the introduction of railways, as you can see on this historic-Bercy page (click on the pics to enlarge), and casks kept arriving on the right bank of the Seine. The Vins Fanton Négoce under a gladeFanton was one of the last Négoces to leave the entrepôts de Bercy before their destruction in 1993. The Maison Fanton was started by Michel Fanton in 1891 after he left his family which was growing grapes in the Saone valley in Burgundy. The Maison Fanton had some famous clients, like this signed order for a Napoleon prince may testify : The house of Prince Jerome Napoleon orders a cask of Macon 1857 (the birth year of Jerome Napoleon) and 3 casks of Macon 1858 (a better vintage ??). The last words signed by Intendant Campagnole are "deliver the first one as soon as possible" (birthday coming-up soon ?).
I remember having seen many names of obscure Négoce companies and spirits brands on the buildings, many of them probably closed down since. I guess that they delivered wine and other alcoholic beverages to a string of cafés, bars and restaurants in Paris and the region. I read an interview of François Fanton on the web (the Maison Fanton seems to be still around), he was saying that in the 1960s' there were 200 négoce houses here and all sort of artisans made a living from the wine business, coopers, boatmen, wine-rackers, commis (assistants), bottlers, ironmongers, vat makers, label printers, wine-filters manufacturers... He adds that there were also some special people dubbed the "sénateurs de Bercy" (Bercy senators), half street-bums, half day-laborers, they would work a day for a négoce and be paid in liters of wine. The hard work included moving casks with a capacity of a few hundred liters each into the buildings.Street lined with industrial-type buildings This street with a legendary Tub Citroën parked on the left has a more industrial architecture style, the warehouses with their saw-toothed roofs being efficiently lined along each other perpendiculary to the street and its railroad tracks.
Earlier in the 20th century, individuals and families routinely ordered their wine in casks and a typical small order would be a 110-liter demi-pièce (cask), which was the normal monthly consumption of a family with its servants, according to Mr François Fanton who witnessed this era.
We all know that wine consumption hit records in France in the past, but we usually think about the 100 liters per capita and per year that were downed in France in 1960. The wine consumption was already slowing down and it would contract more in the second half of the 20th century because of health motivations, different workplace rules and driving laws. Concerning the 19th century, we have the chance to have under the hand a thorough study made by an economist and high-ranking administration officer named Armand Husson. Mr Husson's report, les Consommations de Paris [Pdf] 19,7Mo (in French), which was written in 1856, lists in detail what the Parisians of this era ate and drank. If you follow the link to this Pdf document of les Consommations de Paris, you first pass the bread and the meat chapters before arriving to the drinks section (about at mid-scroll) : everything is listed there, beginning with the prices of full casks of many different Burgundy Climats. Imagine : Romanée Conti or Clos Vougeot cost 800 Francs (for a pièce, a 228-liter cask), only twice the price of a Pommard Clos des Mouches. Follows prices for tonneaux (equivalent of 4 casks each) of Bordeaux wines, then prices for Champagne, then more "vulgar" wines, like Macon (80 Francs a cask), then the other French regions. Plane trees along Négoce facilities in Bercy The most interesting informations found in Les Consommations de Paris are the ones that allow to visualize an entirely different way of life and type of consumption. The study is well written and makes insightful digressions, sometimes with lyrical accents like here (page 203) : "Providence has put at humans' easy reach, natural products that allow them to make pleasant and healthy drinks for their daily use". It says further that at the time the nearly 2-million-hectare surface of vineyards yielded 45 millions hectoliters of wines, making 478 million Francs. There were 4408 débits de boisson in Paris then, places, shops or bars where you could purchase wine (if you take today's Paris city limits, there were actually 11 346 débits de boisson then). The page 214 of Armand Husson's study lists the per-capita consumption of Parisians (per inhabitant, to be precise) from 1781 to 1854. There are slight ups and downs but 1851-1854 is in the average : 113 liters per year and per inhabitant, or 0,31 liter per day per inhabitant.That is a high consumption of wine especially if you consider that children would have a little part in it and women a more moderate one, but it is close to what the average French would down in the 1960s'. Let's remember also that this wine was probably between 8° and 10° in alcohol. The author and contemporary Armand Husson considers this consumption as being high, considerably higher than other French towns (with the exception of wine-regions major towns).Futailles, a cooperage workshopThere were quite a number of specialized professions inside the 42-hectare compound of the entrepôts de Bercy, and I named a few of them above, but I forgot a couple more : the sellers of egg's yellow for example. The négociants used such a big quantity of egg white to fine the wines before bottling that there was an entire business just to sell the other part of the eggs, the yellow. Another professionnal corps present on Bercy was the French tax authority, the Octroi administration in the past and more recently the Douanes Françaises who until today are in charge of collecting the wine taxes and checking the conformity between the declared stocks of wine and the duties.
The architecture of the entrepôts de Bercy changed after regular natural disasters, like the fire of year 1820, which destroyed many buildings of négociants. Thereafter, thatched roofs ( the fact that there had been thatched roofs is another proof that builders were coming from the provinces) were forbidden and new buildings were made of stone instead of wood. Another recurrent problem was the river Seine overflowing its banks, as there was no man-made dikes then to protect Bercy. In 1877, Viollet-le-Duc ordered large infrastructure works including a dike along the Seine and organized, square cobbled-street in the place of the previous anarchic Bercy village. The dike was probably not high enough and a major inundation happened in 1910 and this picture shot back then shows where the water rose [picture on left]. This 1910 inundation was particularly devastating, there were floating casks and foudres every where as far as one kilometer away (anyone interested by a cask of Romanée Conti 1902 ?). Some casks were stuck atop trees, some others on roofs which they had damaged in the process, all sort of wine-related objects were strewn everywhere covered with mud. The dike was reinforced after this disaster which destroyed enormous quantities of wine.An abandonned Négoce interiorThe interesting thing in the Entrepôts de Bercy at the time I shot these pictures was that many facilities, offices and chais were abandonned, with all their period furniture, casks, cement vats, everything. You could literally walk into a time capsule. This office above for example smelled the late 1930s' or early 1940s', it was an amazing experience to make in the middle of Paris, it's like if one day, say, in 1942, these people had left the place and every thing was still in place...
Many artists also took advantage of the abandonned vat houses and facilities to paint huge murals and weird paintings. I came accross many of these Art works as I visited repeatedly the entrepôts de Bercy and I shot quite a few pictures of these paintings, you can see a few of them on this page............................
Today, you can visit the few remains of this former wine district of Bercy, starting from Cour Saint-Emilion (Métro Cour St-Emilion - line 14), which is a lively pedestrian street bordered by renovated chais/négoce facilities. And you can even find a good wine bar there : the Nicolas wineshop & wine bar...

Comments

[wine-blog]

Simply wonderfull. Thanks for the lovely pics.

[Mariëlla]

Fantastic, I have been reading with growing enthusiasm! Your site was mentionned to me by Roelof Ligtmans, an old acquaintance. I have a wineblog myself, and will certainly draw attention to this story on the entrepots de Bercy (I wrote a few articles on the wine history of my city and read everything concerning history and wine).
I'll be coming back, regards, Mariëlla

[Paulo Queiroz]

Hi, I added your blog on my blog “ Nosso Vinho”, a Brazilian wine blog based in friend’s opinion. Take a look at
http://nossovinho.com/?p=2170
Could you please link my blog?
http://nossovinho.com
Thank you and congratulation for your work.
Paulo Queiroz
contato@nossovinho.com

[Olaf.]

Very interesting and wel documented story Bertrand. Also great pictures, both yours as the old ones to which you refer.

regards,
Olaf
http://vinama.skynetblogs.be/

[Jens Hork]

Dear Bertrand,

This is the most interesting story I've read on your blog in a very long while and it took me back on a nostalgic trip to the late 1970's when I visited Les Entrepôts de Bercy and took similar pictures as yours. THANK YOU!

Best Wishes,
Jens

[Bertrand]

Thank you for the comments, I wanted to share some of these pictures for a long time and I'm pleased you like the story. The old B&W pictures I link to are amazing indeed, all these casks waiting along the Seine and in Bercy streets...I think I'd pay quite a lot to taste a mid-range Burgundy from one of these casks.

[rachete]

I like your blog!

http://globalartblog.com/