1947 : The rebirth at Gevrey-Chambertin
 

1945 and 1946 : although liberated, France had not yet recovered from the wounds inflicted by the war and it was still too early for festivities and banquets.
 
In both these years, the religious service was again held on the 22nd of January in the Chapelle des Dames hospitalières in Nuits-Saint-Georges. But if the ceremony was conducted with the seriousness appropriate to the circumstances, it was also with the pride of being able to do so freely and the hope of a glorious revival. Better days arrived at last, albeit slowly, and the Confrérie decided to revive the grand occasion of the Feast of St Vincent in all its splendour.

In 1947, the pilgrimage, which was now to be held in a different village each year, took place in Gevrey-Chambertin on the first of February.

Since this date, the Festival has continued to move around without interruption.

Some villages have played host to the festival two, three, even four times, and always with the same enthusiasm and whole-hearted participation of the entire population. St Vincent has travelled as far as Chablis in the north of Burgundy and the vineyards of Montagny, in Saône-et-Loire, in the south. Occasionally, some villages grouped together to stage it.

Always more attractive, always more welcoming.

Over the years, the villagers have performed great feats of imagination in their attempts to add to the festival’s programme, employing every available means to make their village more beautiful and more welcoming than last year’s village.

For instance, literally millions of paper flowers have been made by villagers sitting in the evenings at their kitchen tables. And the Assembly of St Vincent – the famous pork dinner organised by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin in the Caveau Nuiton and later at the Château du Clos de Vougeot – was quickly replicated by wine growers’ banquets held in the villages themselves.

1964 : Saint Romain had the idea of opening all the villages’ cellars to the public. At around the same time, visitors were offered a glass of wine on leaving the mass : the famous cuvée was about to be born.

1971 : Rully gave the Saint-Vincent Tournante its first specially designed poster.

1973 : Morey-Saint-Denis invented the wine glass engraved with the festival’s colours.

The mobilisation of an entire village

Hosting the Saint-Vincent Tournante is a major event for any village. The meaning of solidarity becomes clear as the village’s entire population participates in the preparations which begin months, if not years in advance.

Organising the festival, decorating the village and preparing the cuvée de Saint Vincent, the wine which is offered freely over two days to every visitor, requires months of preparation and draws on all the villagers’ talents and resources.

If medical insurance policies have replaced the mutual aid association in the wine-growers’ life, it could still be claimed that the spirit of mutual help is kept alive in Burgundy’s villages thanks to the organisation of the Saint-Vincent Tournante.

Over the years the Festival had established itself as the most popular public event to be held in Burgundy, attracting in some years around 100,000 visitors from all over Europe.

What began as a modest and good-natured village fete had effectively grown into a major business enterprise with a budget in excess of one million euros – sometimes well in excess. And the responsibilities that had to be assumed when welcoming tens of thousands of visitors beginning with public safety and traffic, had become too great for most of Burgundy’s villages.

It must be said that villagers had learnt to use the rapidly burgeoning success of the Saint-Vincent Tournante as an effective communications tool, and what began as a celebration for wine growers, had become a wine festival in honour of an individual appellation, plucking some appellations from veritable obscurity, such was the media interest.