THE VIRTUAL WINE MUSEUM - LE MUSÉE VIRTUEL DU VIN

One of the chief consequences of industrialisation was the urbanisation of Paris, which had exploded in terms of both demographics and size. Administratively, the city expanded, piercing the barrier of surrounding farms susceptible to excise duty; it gained eight new arrondissements in 1860. In the east, the 12th arrondissement annexed the Bercy municipality.

“Who hasn’t heard of Bercy, town of wines, holding more barrels than Gargantua could have emptied in one hundred years, Bercy, the great red where Paris drinks?” asks Aristide Frémine in the preface to his book Bercy, Unknown City Three Kilometres from Notre-Dame, published 1866.
 

If the railway – notably with the goods station of the PLM (Paris-Lyon-Marseille) and the use of Parisian stations for intersections of the grande and petite ceinture circular railways – gradually overshadowed and then supplanted the river transport on the Seine, for over a century Bercy was an activity hub for the capital: in 1910, Bercy’s warehouses expanded until they could guarantee 70% of wine transit in France. The name entered into the vocabulary of wine and drunkenness. “Bercy fever” or “sickness” meant perpetual drunkenness. A drunkard was said to be “born on the banks of Bercy”, or “bersillé”. (Gilbert Garrier, Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin, Larousse 2008).

“Always jammed with barrels and casks”, according to Jacques Hillairet, Bercy’s port supplied the wine market of the capital which, having first been implanted downstream at the port de la Râpée, just beyond the customs barrier, moved east. The site is dedicated to the stocking of wines delivered by boats coming down the Seine. The men transporting the barrels, dressed in the traditional workers’ blouse, lead one or several horses. They pull a haquet, a cart consisting of a sideless platform upon the barrels from the unloading quays are piled. The barrels are placed in the storehouses which line the purpose-built area of the quay. (Source: Bernard Colomb, Paris: Le port de Bercy, Histoire par l’image. URL : http://histoire-image.org/fr/etudes/paris-port-bercy).

Between the walls of their storehouses, the wine traders of Bercy put together blends of questionable quality which would make their fortune. But consumers were becoming more and more demanding, preferring wines bottled at source – a guarantee of quality. It was now out of the question to augment a Burgundy with a Côtes-du-Rhône, or to pep it up with an Algerian wine. After a century in existence, the warehouse wine trade began to decline.