Memories, memories...

Gevrey-Chambertin village "star" of the Côte de Nuits is a regular at the Saint-Vincent Tournante, which he will organize for the 5th time in January 2020, after 1947, 1960, 1980 and 2000, every 20 years… This photo by Arnaud Orsel, General Intendant of the Brotherhood of Knights of Tastevin The footage, dug into the Brotherhood's archives, is inevitably moving, as it shows the Knights' parade on February 2, 1947, as they left the church in the snow. Léon Rappeneau, Grand Master of the Brotherhood, leads the procession, and in the distance, we can make out Georges in his white ermine. Faiveley , the Grand Master. Created in 1938 in Chambolle- Musigny The Saint-Vincent Tournante had stopped the following year in Vosne-Romanée, before resuming after the war in Gevrey-Chambertin.

The starting point of the Saint-Vincent Tournante dates back to November 16, 1934, the day of the creation… of the Brotherhood of the Knights of Tastevin , in Nuits-Saint-Georges, by two Nuitons, Camille Rodier and Georges Faiveley accompanied by their winegrower and merchant friends from the Côte de Nuits Wine sales were poor at the time, but the founders of the brotherhood immediately understood that they mustn't give up and should continue to promote Burgundy and its wines based on a very simple initial idea: "since the wines aren't selling, let's drink them and invite our friends to share them with us." The 1930s were a whole era: the era of the creation of the Paulée de Meursault , from the beginnings of bottling at the estate, or even Gaston Gérard, the dynamic mayor of Dijon and the first French Minister of Tourism. The first Chapter of the Brotherhood took place on the day of its creation, at the Nuiton wine cellar (beneath the current cinema for those familiar with Nuits-Saint-Georges). The Brotherhood will begin organizing its Chapters at Château of Clos of Vougeot in the late 1930s (it was then on loan from Etienne Camuzet, the owner, mayor of Vosne-Romanée and deputy for Côte-d'Or) before settling permanently in Château from November 1944; all the chapters of the Brotherhood are now organized there at a rate of 16 per year. A few years after its creation, the Brotherhood therefore had the idea of ​​reviving this tradition of mutual aid societies (often called Saint Vincent societies* but not always…) which met in the villages Around a "pig roast," to make it a collective event: the Saint-Vincent festival, but "Tournante" was born. The word "Tournante" quickly took on a truly regional dimension, with its first stop in Côte Chalonnaise , outside of Côte-d'Or therefore, from 1962 onwards, to Mercurey , Then Chablis , in the Yonne , in 1976 and finally the Mâconnais in 2009.

Christophe TUPINIER

Publishing Director