(30km) from Beaune, for serving spoiled wine to soldiers. That alone might have been a salutary example of the fate that could befall a purveyor of bad wine. His subsequent execution, which was publicized on posters widely displayed in the region in November 1794—just as Beaune’s second annual wine market was taking place—would have been a strong deterrent to anyone thinking of trying to sell bad wine. Good-quality wine thus became the order of the day, and during the Revolution, prizes were offered to vignerons who excelled in their work. In the Burgundy commune of Savigny- lès-Beaune, awards were given for such achievements as “having vines perfectly cultivated, with no diseased plants and with an abundant crop,” for being “an excellent grower, hard-working, and choosing his vines well,” and being “a good grower and a good son, taking care of his very old father who was one of the best vignerons in Savigny.”14 Individuals became engaged in the drive to improve wine


quality. In 1790, a Citizen Maupin of Paris wrote to the Burgundy authorities that although their fine wines “are rightly regarded as the best wines in the universe,” Burgundy produced more ordinary wine than fine wine and that the fine wine was inconsistent in quality. He wanted to propose methods of increasing grape yields by one fifth or one quarter, and to improve maturity: “By correcting greenness, one would make them stronger, healthier, and more pleasant, increase their value, and prolong their life.”15 In 1794, one André Gentil, a former member of the


Academy of Sciences of Dijon, wrote a memoire that advocated giving up “the merely mechanical way of making wine” in favor of making wine “according to science, based on the combined principles of chemistry and physics and my experiments and observations.” His wines were made from “common grapes” (probably Gamay) and were, he claimed, “similar to the best wines of Burgundy, Champagne, and Bordeaux.”16 Nor should we forget the work of Jean-Antoine Chaptal in promoting the addition of sugar to grape juice in order to


Above: The death warrant of François Bertrand, for serving faulty wine.


compensate for poor ripening and to raise the potential alcohol level—and thus memorialized in the word “chaptalization.” The method was used long before Chaptal’s book advocating it was published in 1801, soon after Napoleon’s coup d’état had ended the Revolution. But Chaptal’s experiments were carried out near Montpellier during the Revolution itself, in the political conditions that promoted the production of good-quality wine. The dissemination of Chaptal’s findings by Napoleon’s government led to the widespread adoption of the method.


Pinot Noir, health, and wealth Yet despite all these changes in respect of wine during the French Revolution, there were also continuities from the Old Regime. In Burgundy, distinctions continued to be made between Gamay and Pinot Noir, even if they were a bit awkward because they echoed the invidious hierarchy of the Old Regime. But no one could deny that wines made from Pinot Noir fetched higher prices than those made from Gamay. A case before a justice of the peace in the village of Meursault in 1793 centered on the price that one Françoise Blondeau had paid for wine that year and the year before. She asked the court to appoint assessors to taste the wines and judge their quality, because the barrel of wine she had bought in 1792 was a 50/50 blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir, while the one she bought in 1793, and paid much more for, was sold as 100 percent Pinot Noir. She wasn’t convinced of its purity and wanted an expert opinion.17 There was no suggestion in this case that either wine was harmful—this was a matter of potential commercial deception—but the effects of wine on health continued to be a preoccupation of those who regulated wine quality. The municipal council of Beaune complained that some merchants in the town were selling new wine before it was filtered and clarified. “Considering that the distribution of this beverage in this state is infinitely harmful to the health,” the sale of wine before November 1 (about four or five weeks after the harvest at that time) was forbidden.18


(As a point of


reference, Beaujolais Nouveau has long been released on the third Thursday in November.)


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 123


Photography by Rod Phillips


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