Vacation days to burn before the end of the year, a low, late-autumn fare … the Salon des Vins des Vignerons Independants by noon of the first day.

So has our 2011 stay in Paris begun.

A valuable aspect of living in the UAE is proximity to places you might not get around to visiting, when living in Southern California. Like Sri Lanka or Lebanon or Istanbul. But, also, it’s being located only seven hours from Paris, instead of 10, and paying far less in airfare (not to mention a jet-lag-reducing three-hour time difference instead of nine hours).

And when the annual wine fair is being held at the big exhibition center in the south of the city … well, that’s a great way to kick things off.

How good … how big … is the Salon?

This good: All oenophiles must go before they die.

So, early morning arrival at CDG, late-morning sunrise on a gray November day (we’re further north than New York City, remember) … and we’re wandering through a maze of independent French wine producers.

Each one has a stand, with signage indicating the name of the winery and where it comes from … and behind the stand are mom and pop or a couple of the kids — cases of their product stacked behind them and a dozen bottles already open, waiting for you to come and sample.

It costs 6 euros for two people to enter, but tickets are widely available across Paris. And for your 6 euros, you get a pair of sturdy wine glasses.

Here is how the event’s website describes what goes on, translated from the French.

“It is not a salon like the others. You can meet the vintners themselves and each one has some words for you and will recount the history of the wine and the methods.”

Which is true. For every stand thronged with visitors, you will find two or three where the vignerons independants are able and happy to talk to you (preferably in French, but many know a bit of English, too) about their wines. They will show you on a map where they come from, and they will tell you which grapes they cultivate, and how long this or that red will need before it is really ready …

All sorts of pertinent information. And putting the face of a grower to a wine is a wonderful thing, too.

A few foreigners, like us, can be found wandering around, but the crowd is overwhelmingly French, people often buying for the holiday season, and the French-ness of the crowd gives it more of an aura of “legit.” As much as this ought to appeal to foreigners … very few are actually in the building.

And, unlike a lot of countries I could name where “free wine tasting at 1,000 stands” would turn into one huge drunken mess and probably a riot … the French know how to pace themselves, and every producer has a large spit bucket that gets used quite often. No intoxicated folks reeling from stand to stand.

Here is the group’s charter: “He respects his terroir. He cultivates his vineyard. He harvests grapes. He vinifies his own wine. He produces his brandy. He bottles his wine in his private cellar. He sells his wine. He perpetuates tradition. He is happy to welcome you, to give you advice about wine tasting and introduce you to his production.”

Sounds noble … and it actually is. An ancient art, practiced on a small scale, for the love of it as much as the profit of it … And the nice thing is it gives the smaller producers a chance to exhibit their wine side by side with bigger producers. There is something for everyone.

The event is so enormous that it helps if you arrive with a plan. In this case, Leah jotted down the names of eight or nine vintners with whom she had some familiarity from previous salons, checked the attendance list and discovered they would be there, and we visited each one in succession.

Another way to work the room is by region. Leah’s unscientific method, the one she used with some of her friends a decade ago, is to approach the stands manned by “cute guys.” Worked as well as anything else.

And it occurred to me that it might be interesting just to walk up to several stands with no customers in front of them, at all, someone you’ve never heard of … and just see what they have.

It is not unusual to stumble onto some excellent wine at an empty stand, from a name you have never seen. Now, if the guy is selling a particularly good wine, and charging precious little for it (it is not hard to find a good unknown wine going for 5 euros a bottle) … within a year (and maybe even before the weekend is over), word will get out and that vintner may soon be rich and semi-famous.

One vintner Leah discovered, a decade ago, sold his best stuff for 7 euros a bottle; now it’s 28.

So, we worked down the list of names. We were disappointed by the current offerings of several places that had made favorable impressions in the past. Guys we wanted to be good because we like buying direct like this. But maybe the little fellows just have some bad years. And love them as we might … when their 2007 and 2008 Minervois is semi-wretched … you smile and thank them and move along.

We took a break for a foie gras sandwich (or Leah did, anyway) … and then we hit upon several very nice Languedoc/Cote du Rhone wines (a Faugeres and a Cote du Rhone Village), and before we walked out we had four cases of red and three bottles of Champagne — to drink, give away or resell to friends — before we leave.

Transporting that sort of load out of the salon is a bit of a challenge, and something to be given more planning ahead than we gave it … but we were off to a very nice start of our stay.