Dispatches Cock Photography Portraits of Distinction.
A bearded Salmon Faverolles rooster seen from behind at the top of a steep city vineyard, looking out over the rooftops of Paris

Montmartre, October

North Facing

9 October 2026

Paris keeps one working vineyard, on the north side of Montmartre, planted facing away from the sun. Every book on the subject advises against it. Géraud has helped with the harvest there each October for some years, and admires it for that reason.

Featuring Géraud

Low to the ground in a row of yellowing vines, the rooster leans forward in side profile to inspect a single leaf at the base of an old twisted vine trunk, a cloth-covered wooden basket further up the row
Half-length portrait of the rooster in sunlight, eyes closed and beak raised to the sun, his feathered wing tips folded across the front of his navy blazer, vine leaves and a shuttered wall in shade behind him

Ten. He is given the same row every year, at his own request: the steepest one, picked last.

Noon. The sun clears the rooftops for a little under two hours. He stands in it for a minute, out of courtesy, and goes back down to work.

Seen from behind, the rooster sits settled on a stack of wooden harvest crates covered with a linen cloth, his satchel set down beside him, looking up a steep bank of vines toward tall cream apartment buildings in afternoon sun

Half past three. Three crates, which counts here as a good year. The sun has gone back up to the houses, where it is generally happier.

At blue hour the rooster walks away from the camera up a lamplit cobbled lane, one foot lifted mid-stride, the vineyard behind an iron railing on the left and the floodlit white domes of a basilica above the rooftops

Seven. The wine goes to auction in the spring, for the arrondissement. He will bid once, at the reserve, and either it will be his or it will not.