feature / then and now / Wine in the French Revolution


The Revolutionary authorities were concerned about the way wine tasted, and their aim was to ensure that people had regular access to wines that were not just affordable but good quality. Not only was the stress on quality new, so was the role of the state in overseeing wine in this way


Even then, taxes were lower than they had been before the Revolution, and less expensive wine not only permitted higher per capita consumption but also allowed for a broader base of wine consumers. Poorer workers, who might have drunk more water than wine when wine was heavily taxed, could drink wine regularly. The tax reforms of the Revolution, then, helped establish the pattern of high per capita consumption that characterized France in the 19th and much of the 20th century, even though more taxes were imposed during the 1800s. Throughout the Revolution, the price of wine was a constant preoccupation. Although taxes were removed in 1791, the price of wine—like the price of nearly all commodities— rose steadily, and between 1791 and 1793 it almost doubled. To protect consumers from inflation, price controls (the law of the general maximum) were imposed in late 1793 on basic necessities, such as wine, bread, candles, and firewood. When price controls ended after about a year, the authorities continued to monitor prices. Beaune’s municipal council, for example, fielded numerous complaints “against the sale of wine at exorbitant prices.”8


Revolutionary governments might have intended lower prices to benefit the poor and expand the wine-drinking population of France, but it is not clear that they wanted to increase consumption among existing wine drinkers. In some districts of Burgundy, the opening hours of taverns were reduced so as to deter drunkenness, and the Jacobin Club, Robespierre’s influential base during the first half of the Revolution, disapproved of heavy drinking; members who failed to perform their domestic and civic duties because of drinking could be expelled.


But the authorities did aim to make wine drinking more


attractive by combating wine fraud and encouraging sound winemaking, thereby improving the quality of wine. Wine fraud seems not to have been uncommon during the Old Regime, and there are many examples of wine merchants convicted of selling wine diluted with water or adulterated by all manner of additives. In a 1751 case, for example, a Paris wine merchant was found to have blended various wines, water, pear cider, and brandy. Detected by the tasters employed by the wine merchants’ guild, his concoctions were poured into the street, his barrels were burned, his bottles were smashed, his shop was boarded up, and he was banned for life from working as a wine merchant.9 The Revolutionaries, too, cracked down on bad wine, often


for reasons of health. The case of François Bertrand at the beginning of this article reflected the long-standing view that good wine was a healthy beverage and that bad wine was harmful. As far back as 1395, Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy banned the Gamay grape from parts of Burgundy because, he


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


said, “wine of Gamay is of such a nature that it is very harmful to humans, such that a number of people who have used it in the past have been affected by serious illnesses, we have heard.”10 For the most part, however, the Revolutionary authorities were concerned about the way wine tasted, and their aim was to ensure that French people had regular access to wines that were not just affordable and safe to drink, but reliably good quality. Not only was the primary stress on quality new, but so was the role of the state in overseeing wine in this way. Under the Old Regime, guilds had managed questions of quality, adulteration, and outright fraud. But guilds were abolished in 1791, leaving matters of wine integrity to the state to look after. Wine quality was often defined negatively, in that good- quality wines were neither the fine wines nor the mediocre wines of Old Regime, but a mid-range. It meant not only ridding the market of bad wine but also discouraging the production of fine, expensive wines. In 1794, during the Terror, local authorities were instructed to draw up inventories of the wine cellars owned by individuals identified as enemies of the Republic, such as émigrés and those convicted of political crimes. “Liqueurs, foreign wines, and fine wines of all kinds that the desire for luxury of their former owners had brought together” were to be cataloged so that they might be “used advantageously in exchange for basic necessities.”11 The fate of these wines was unclear, and it is uncertain what, if anything, happened to them. If they were to be sold, who would dare buy them and show themselves to have the aristocratic tastes that were now considered unpatriotic? In one case, we know what became of some of these wines— the wine cellar of an imprisoned Beaune priest that was placed under seal. It turned out that a member of the town’s Watch Committee (Comité de Surveillance) was seen “very often” helping himself to “good bottles of wine.” When the municipal council investigated, the priest’s housekeeper told them, “My master will be very angry when he returns and finds his wine drunk because it involves a barrel of good, mature wine that he asked me to keep for him. But what can I do, when it is a member of the Watch Committee, and they have the key…?”12 The results of the council’s investigation are not recorded. Seizing barrels and bottles of fine wines in the cellars of the enemies and suspected enemies of the Revolution was good politics but quite marginal to broader policy related to wine; far more important was ensuring consistency in the quality and safety of the wine generally available to the mass of ordinary citizens. This was an important shift, because there had been little interest in regulating quality under the Old Regime, other than punishing those who committed wine fraud. For the most part, the bulk of the wine on sale was what it was, year by year: good in good years, robust in warm years, green and weak in cool years, and of very variable quality every year. A sense of the importance of quality comes from Beaune in 1793, when the municipal council decided there should be a wine market early in November each year. They nominated commissioners to taste the wines that producers wanted to exhibit and sell, and they warned that “individuals who bring wines with bad flavors or weak wines will be condemned.”13 Condemned to what wasn’t specified, but the warning probably kept faulty wines away. At the time the Beaune wine market was announced, François Bertrand was languishing in a Paris prison, having been arrested in Seurre, only 18 miles


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