Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The warehouses of Bercy, located in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, were initially established around 1800 on the domain of Rapée, outside of the Parisian grant. This strategic positioning helped avoid taxes on wines. The first cellars developed thanks to private initiatives, such as that of M. de Chabons in 1809, which installed cooperage workshops on the Petit Château estate. In 1815 Louis Gallois, his successor, expanded the facilities and lot the land, giving his name to rue Gallois. Baron Louis, Minister of Finance, created a company in 1819 to build adjacent warehouses, rebuilt after a fire in 1820.

In the middle of the 19th century, Bercy's wine traders, via their newspaper Le Moniteur vinicole, petitioned Napoleon III to standardize the measures of gauging wines, denouncing annual losses estimated at a million hectolitres. The arrival of the railway in 1849, with the Bercy railway station and its internal network of 9.5 km of railway lines, revolutionized the transport of wines, gradually replacing the barrels with shovel cars. Parisian consumption exploded from 1 to 3.5 million hectolitres between 1800 and 1865, making existing infrastructures, such as the wine hall, insufficient.

In 1860, the annexation of the municipality of Bercy by Paris marked a turning point. The City purchased the warehouses in 1877 after a flood, placing them under the real warehouse regime and entrusting their management to dealers. Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for a partial reconstruction project, but only the Grand Bercy, north of Dijon Street, was renovated in a uniform manner. The Petit Bercy, downstream, retained a picturesque appearance with cellars built by traders. The site became a semi-autarctic area, with a church, a school and a post office, and dominated 70% of the Parisian wine market in 1930.

The decline began in the 1960s, with the evolution of consumption habits towards bottled wines and the loss of competitiveness of Bercy assemblages. The City of Paris ceased to renew the leases in 1964, preparing the site for conversion. The last cellars, like those of the Louis Proust court, were destroyed in 1993. Today, Bercy Park, Bercy Village and Cour Saint-Émilion station perpetuate the memory of this industrial heritage, while some cellars, such as those in Lheureux, now house the Musée des Arts Forains.

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