If you’re in Paris in October, do yourself a favor and go to the Fête des Vendanges de Montmartre. Yes, technically, it’s a wine festival. But this is France, where apparently a perfectly respectable harvest is considered a really good excuse to eat, drink, listen to music, watch people cook, discuss fish, make new friends, and generally behave as though somebody’s grandmother has just announced there’s going to be a party.
And honestly, who am I to argue with that?
A ‘cozy’ event in a city of 2 million
I’m from New Orleans, where a festival means several hundred thousand people and marching band that has clearly seen things. So I arrived in Paris expecting the French equivalent – some kind of grape-based stampede. Instead, I found something almost cozy, which is not a word I ever expected to use about an event in a city of two million people. I liked it immensely. There’s something quietly radical about a major event in a major city where you can still stop, look around and have an actual conversation without being swept away by the crowd like a leaf in a storm drain.
There were little stands explaining everything from the different kinds of fish sold in France and their origins to ways of eating more responsibly — the sort of thing that at home would come with a pamphlet nobody reads, but here came with someone actually happy to talk to you about mackerel. France Télévisions was filming chefs cooking live and handing out samples. And here’s the part that still surprises me: you could actually get one. You could stand in line like a civilized person, watch the demonstration, and then eat the thing, without once needing to deploy your elbows as a defensive weapon.
Naturally, there was wine.
Vignerons had come from all over France, not just from around Montmartre. But Montmartre, delightfully, has a little vineyard of its own, tucked into the hillside as though nobody ever told it that vineyards are supposed to be in the country. The vignerons will cheerfully tell you, unprompted, that the wine produced there is not exactly France’s finest. But that’s hardly the point. The vineyard is still there, defiantly growing grapes in the middle of Paris, a bit like keeping beehives on a rooftop: nobody’s claiming it’s the best in France, but who cares? It doesn’t have to produce the best to be exactly the right amount of fun.
Meeting new friends
And then, of course, there were the people.
at one point, I spotted a group of people in overalls, which is not typical Parisian festival attire, so naturally I wandered over. “Hey,” I said, “you guys speak English?” They looked at me with suspicion before begrudgingly asking, “How did you know?” “Oh,” I said, “just a hunch.”
We became friends on the spot, the way you do at festivals and nowhere else. I took one them – a woman who’d later go on to become a chef and eventually open her own barbecue restaurant in Frankfurt, a career trajectory I did not see coming from a
vineyard in Paris – to a local restaurant, and we all had a wonderful time. You just never know where one conversation in a vineyard is going to lead. Apparently, it can lead to Frankfurt. And you never know … you might meet somebody in overalls, too.
300 step to the top of Paris
And then there’s Montmartre itself, which does not need the festival’s help to be extraordinary but accepts it graciously anyway. The whole thing unfolds around the Sacré-Cœur, in the neighborhood where generations of artists have gathered, argued, and presumably annoyed each other about brushwork. You can still feel all of that n the air. If you can manage it, visit the Sacré-Cœur on a separate day, and go early. Really early — six-thirty or seven in the morning, before the tourists have had their coffee, let alone arrived. The basilica opens at 6:30 a.m., admission is free, and at that hour it feels less like a monument and more like a secret you’ve been let in on.
If you’re feeling ambitious, climb the dome. There’s a separate fee, and just under 300 steps, but the reward is a 360-degree view of Paris that makes the knees fully worth complaining about later. Early in the morning, Montmartre goes quiet in a way that seems almost implausible for Paris, and standing up there while everyone else is still having breakfast, you can look out over the whole city and, just for a moment, pretend it’s yours — which, all told, feels like a fitting way to end a festival built on the idea that a harvest is really just a party waiting for an excuse.
If you go:
The Fête des Vendanges is held every October; the 2026 festival runs 7 thru 11 October. The Grand Défilé, the big parade, takes place on Saturday, 10 October, with events, food, wine, music, and performances spread across Montmartre throughout
the week. The Parcours du Goût — producers, winemakers, and food artisans from around France — sets up around the Sacré-Cœur.
––––––––––
Read more about Paris here in Dispatches’ archives.
See more from Alice here.
Alice Verberne is a contributing writer for Dispatches Europe. She has worked in print journalism and magazine production in the United States and Europe throughout her career. She currently resides in France where she enjoys visiting former French speaking colonies and discussing history with the locals.
