feature / then and now / Wine in the French Revolution
WINE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The simplistic view of the French Revolution is of a period of chaos and extremism. But that was far from the full picture, says Rod Phillips, who argues that the years post-1789 were a time of era-defining progress for French wine
LIBERALITY, QUALITY, FESTIVITY:
existing barracks, so that thousands had to be billeted in private homes. Their hosts, who were reimbursed the costs of lodging them, were instructed to provide these soldiers not only prescribed measures of bread and meat, but also wine, beer, or cider—whichever was the region’s main production.1 In the autumn of 1793, François Bertrand, a tinsmith in Seurre, a village in Burgundy about 18 miles (30km) east of Beaune, was billeting a detachment of volunteers. One day, he served them wine with their meal, but the wine was spoiled (gâté)—so badly spoiled that the soldiers declared they would rather “irrigate the earth with it than drink it.” They took their complaint to a nearby patriotic Popular Society, which called in expert tasters (experts dégustateurs) to assess the quality of the wine. These tasters determined that it was “of a nature to be harmful to health.” It’s not clear what was wrong with the wine. Eighteenth- century wines were not what we would think of as delicious; from what we know of winemaking at the time, the results must often have been variously oxidized, maderized, and tainted by dirty vats and barrels. (Beware of any modern wines said to have been made in the “traditional” way!) Even given contemporary taste preferences, many wines might have been unpleasant to drink, yet they were not harmful to health. Despite that, wines were often evaluated in terms of their supposed effects on health, and the assessment of the expert tasters was that this particular wine was harmful—which tells us that it must have tasted quite foul. There is no indication of the wine’s provenance, but it was undoubtedly local, a vin de Bourgogne of some sort, and probably made from Gamay—not because Gamay wines were bad, but because they were less expensive than Pinot Noir. Having received the tasters’ report, the Popular Society thought this case was serious enough to refer it to the Tribunal Criminel Révolutionnaire in Paris, the court that dealt with political crimes and that handled many of the famous cases during the Terror, including the trial of Marie Antoinette. In May 1794, as the Terror was intensifying, François Bertrand was tried for serving bad wine to the soldiers. This act, the judges declared, showed Bertrand’s “greed and egoism, putting his own vile interests above the wellbeing of our brave soldiers and, by extension, jeopardizing their success in battle and the survival of the Republic.” Bertrand’s action, they added, had given aid to
T 118 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
he French Revolution produced a shocking story involving wine. After war broke out between Revolutionary France and other European states in 1793, the French government raised a massive army of volunteer soldiers—too many to be housed in
“the enemies of liberty.” By this relentless logic, serving bad wine to soldiers was an act of treason. Bertrand was sentenced to death, and the guillotine ended his life soon after. We might say that the Revolutionaries took their wine seriously. This story checks some of the boxes widely associated with
the French Revolution: kangaroo courts, arbitrary executions, irrationality, and extremism. But that is very far from a complete and accurate picture, because, if we focus on wine—and in this article we will look particularly at Burgundy—we can see that the French Revolution was a very constructive period. It broadened the ownership of wine production, encouraged better vine management and winemaking, made wine accessible to more French people, strove to improve wine quality, and embedded wine in French culture. In short, the French Revolution established some of the bases for the French wine industry and the place of wine in French culture for more than a century afterward. Before the Revolution, French wines were, as they are today,
starkly stratified by quality. The bulk of the population— peasants, manual workers, and artisans—drank mediocre or poor-quality wines known as vins communs or vins pour boire. These were generally produced close to the markets where they were sold and consumed. “Buying local” wasn’t a moral exhortation, however, but a simple financial imperative, because shipping wine any distance added considerably to the price. The price of wine was less important to better-off people, of
course. Nobles and well-off merchants and professionals could afford to drink the higher-quality wines known as vins fins or vins de cru. If they lived in regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy, which were already known for their superior wines, they could often buy very sound or excellent wines at reasonable prices because they were locally produced. Those with substantial means could also afford wines produced elsewhere in France and throughout Europe, despite the extra fees incurred. Inventories of the cellars of wealthy households in the decades before the Revolution show hundreds of liters of wine— in bottles and barrels of various sizes—from the prestigious regions of France and elsewhere. In Burgundy, the cellar of the Duke of Tavanes was mainly
stocked with wines from Burgundy and the Médoc, as well as from Hungary and Cyprus. The cellar of the first president of the Parlement de Bourgogne held mostly local wines, many from prestigious vineyards such as Chambertin, Clos de Vougeot, and Montrachet. The Duke of Ponthièvre had a massive cellar that included wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne, and also from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Cyprus.2
Job, pseudonym for Jacques Onfray de Breville (1858–1931), Revolutionary Banquet after the Capture of the Bastille; illustration for the book La Tour d’Auvergne, First Grenadier of France (1902). Private Collection. Photography © Photo Josse / Bridgeman Images
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