It happened on 13 September
The man who turned Thomery grapes into a luxury product
On 13 September 1819, Rose Charmeux, a horticulturist, was born in Thomery. The village is thus organised entirely around a single crop, table-grape Chasselas, which is trained on trellises along the walls.
He served as mayor for thirty-four years, from 1854 to 1888. In 1863, he published Chasselas viticulture in Thomery, which would set the standard. In 1865, he perfected the preservation process that would change everything, patented in 1877.
The nursery and primary schools in Thomery are named after him.
The UN recognises the rights of indigenous peoples
On 13 September 2007, after more than twenty years of negotiations, The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The text recognises the right to self-determination, to land and to languages.
Four countries voted against the motion: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. All four have since changed their minds.
The grape that spent the winter hanging upside down in a vial of water
The invention that made Thomery’s fortune is contained in a tiny object. The bunch is cut off using a long piece of vine shoot. The vine shoot is placed in a small glass vial filled with water. The vials are stored on wooden racks in a dark, well-ventilated room known as the ‘grape room’.
Picked in September, Chasselas grapes remained in perfect condition on Parisian tables right through to spring.
At its peak, in the late 1920s, Thomery produced several hundred tonnes a year, across tens of kilometres of walls. It all came to an end in the early 1970s, when the walls were demolished to make way for housing developments. There are still enough of them that we can walk past them without seeing them.
