Revolution simply to occupy land and plant it with vines. Some was common land—owned by communities rather than individuals—and some was land that had not been cultivated because it was too hilly or had poor soil but was suitable for vines. Legally or otherwise, the early years of the Revolution saw a dramatic change in the ownership of France’s wine production. Another Revolutionary law had a long-term effect on the ownership of French vineyards. In 1793, a new inheritance law replaced the patchwork of laws that had existed under the Old Regime. At that time, the property of noble families had gone to the firstborn son, and the rules of inheritance for everyone else varied by region. Some allowed parents discretion to leave their property as they wished, others excluded daughters; yet others favored the firstborn of either sex.


The 1793 law mandated absolute equality of inheritance among all children, with a small proportion at the discretion of the parents to favor (or punish) one or more of their children. Over time, this law led to the fractionalization of land, including vineyards, and it produced the pattern of ownership in many places, notably Burgundy, where individual vineyards are often owned by many proprietors. This law is often attributed to Napoleon, but in fact he adopted the basic egalitarian principle of the Revolutionary law and diluted it by increasing the proportion of property that parents had discretion over. If the radical redistribution of France’s vineyard land was not an explicit aim of the Revolutionary government, other policies did set out to reconfigure the place of wine in French society and culture. One was to make wine more affordable by eliminating the various taxes that sometimes made it an expensive commodity. Under the Old Regime, sales taxes were imposed on all wine production, and wine was taxed again when it was brought into towns to be sold in bars or by wine merchants. These tariffs (entrées) were levied at town gates and sometimes (as in Paris) at wharves where barrels of wine were unloaded from barges. Tariffs were a flat sum per barrel regardless of the value of the wine, so that ordinary wine was effectively taxed at a much higher rate than more expensive, high-quality wine. Etienne Chevalier, a vigneron who was a member of the first Revolutionary legislature in 1789, complained that “it is deplorable that in a free nation, the poor should pay as much tax for their mediocre wines as the rich pay for their bottles of Burgundy and Champagne.”6


This was widely resented, and


smuggling wine into towns was common. Wine barrels were hidden under other goods on carts, or barrels of wine were described as holding less expensive contents, such as vinegar. These tariffs produced a disparity in the price of wine inside and outside towns. In Paris, a number of drinking places, known as guinguettes, operated just outside the city walls and enabled Parisians to enjoy wine at lower, tariff-free prices than in the city. Vigneron Chevalier declared, “Wine is the basis of survival of the poor citizen of Paris… How many poor families go and eat at the guinguette in winter? There they find honest and inexpensive wine.”7 In the 1780s, just before the Revolution began, the Paris authorities decided to build a new wall that would enclose the guinguettes and subject the wine they sold to city tariffs. Work began on the new wall in 1785, but it was quickly subverted in the interests of keeping wine prices low. Holes were drilled in the


Above: To the three orders reunited: the clergy, the nobility, and the Third State.


walls so that wine could be poured through them and into buckets held on the inside. Eighty such holes were discovered by 1788, and it was said that as soon as one hole was sealed up, another was drilled. Tariffs were charged not only on wine but on many other goods entering towns, and resentment at their effect on the cost of living led to violence in Paris in July 1789. For four days beginning on July 11—three days before the storming of the Bastille on July 14, the date recognized as the start of the French Revolution—crowds attacked and burned the customs buildings at each of Paris’s gates, where tariffs were levied. This was controlled and targeted violence against tariffs that made life hard for ordinary Parisians. We might say that wine, or anger at the price of wine, was integral to the beginning of the French Revolution.


Accessibility, quantity, and quality


When the Revolution got under way and a new government began to govern France in 1789, one of its first instructions was that, until a new tax code was in place, all existing taxes and tariffs should be paid. But in 1791, the government abolished all sales taxes imposed by the state and the entrée tariffs imposed by towns. At midnight on June 1 that year, when the new tax- free system came into effect, hundreds of carts loaded with now-inexpensive wine rolled unimpeded through the gates and into Paris and other towns throughout France. It is said that the drinking that night went on until dawn.


Hangovers might have lasted for days, but the benefits of inexpensive wine went on for years, until government debt required legislators to reimpose taxes on wine in the late 1790s.


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 121


Anonymous painting for a wine merchant's sign; French School, 18th century, Revolutionary period. Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France. Photography © Leonard de Selva / Bridgeman Images


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