The Eiffel Tower Is Now Home to an Urban Winery

Two of the most typical stops tourists make in France are, one, the Eiffel Tower, and two, a winery. Now, you can do both at the same time. An urban winery recently opened inside the Eiffel Tower, producing wine with a view of Paris from the second floor about 190 feet above the ground.

Upon its opening, La Winerie Parisienne was said to be the first urban winery to open in Paris in over four decades. Then, earlier this year, the owners got a chance to really kick their connection to the city up a notch. "After La Winerie Parisienne was founded in 2015, my business partner Julien Bengue and I have been exploring the possibility of making wine in the most emblematic buildings across Paris," President and Co-founder Adrien Pelissie told Wine Searcher. "The opportunity to install a winery at the Eiffel Tower presented itself in early 2019. It is the obvious location to vinify our first urban wine, using grapes from the wider region…. Name me a better symbol than the Eiffel Tower to publicize Parisian wine."

Up until now, La Winerie Parisienne has been sourcing grapes from other parts of France, but their sights have always been set on producing a wine in the country's Ile-de-France, the populous region that's home to Paris and seven surrounding administrative departments. For their first Eiffel Tower wine, the grapes come from vines the winery planted in 2017 in the department of Yvelines, just west of Paris and about 15 miles from the Eiffel Tower—according to The Drink Business, the plan was for this plot to be the first commercial vineyard in the region in over 150 years.

La Winerie Parisienne's Eiffel Tower winery—which is located next to the La Bulle Parisienne restaurant—was reportedly completed on October 4, composed of little more than a couple of stainless steel fermenters, a grape sorting belt, and what in photos appears to be just eight oak barrels. Grapes trucked in from Yvelines made the trip up to the second floor of the tower on October 7, and a Merlot wine will hopefully make its debut next year. In all, the winery says it plans to release as many as 3,000 bottles of wine produced entirely from grapes within Ile-de-France—though how many of those will come directly from the Eiffel Tower wasn't clear.

According to the winery's Facebook page, the facility is open to the public "every day from 9 am to 23 pm on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower." (Two important notes: In Europe, the first floor is what America calls the second floor; also, you have to pay to get into the tower.) La Winerie Parisienne will also provide guests a tasting of their wines. No, it's not the wines that have been produced at the tower itself, but, hey, you don't go to the Eiffel Tower for its wines… at least not yet.