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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781845336264 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Octopus |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2003 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Chapter One
From the sixth century BC to the twenty-first
century AD: history and trends
* * *
The four broad regions covered in this book, Roussillon, Languedoc,Provence and Corsica, have enjoyed quite a different politicalhistory over the last two millennia or so, but nonetheless thereare common threads in their viticultural development as well as adiversity that originates from different external influences. Corsicawas Italian until 1769, while Nice did not become part of Franceuntil 1860. The rest of Provence, the former Provincia Romana,was ruled by the Counts of Provence until it came under the Frenchcrown in 1486. In contrast, Roussillon has enjoyed a strongCatalan influence, with the Pyrenees providing a point of contactrather than a natural barrier. It was finally incorporated into Francewith the signing of the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. As forthe Languedoc, the mountains of the Massif Central formed asubstantial frontier, firmly separating the northern and southernparts of the country. Links with Paris were non-existent and thesouth enjoyed a rich cultural life, speaking a different language,the langue d'oc, as opposed to the langue d'oil of the north, until thearea was torn apart by the Albigensian Crusade. The Languedocwas under the control of the Counts of Toulouse until the last of theline, Alphonse of Poitiers, died after a childless marriage in 1271;his heir was Philippe III of France. From then on, the Languedocwould be gradually assimilated into France.
THE GREEKS ANDROMANS
The viticultural history of the south begins with the Greeks. It isagreed that they brought vines with them when they foundedMarsilia, on the site of the modern city of Marseille in the sixthcentury BC. There is evidence of viticulture and the remains ofamphorae, indicate Marsilia's importance as a trading post — whatMarcel Lachiver in his fascinating history of French viticulture,Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, describes as a point of anchorage for theHellenic world in Gaul.
A few years later the Greeks had settled further along thecoast around Agde, and there is again evidence of viticulture, butnot necessarily of wine making. Excavations at Lattes outsideMontpellier have uncovered a large quantity of grape pips fromthe fifth century BC, thus indicating with certainty the existence ofvineyards in the Languedoc before the arrival of the Romans, whofounded a colony at Narbonne in 118 BC. They built a thriving portand opened up the south with the Domitian Way, which linked theRhone Valley to Spain. You can see today an original part of theroad in the centre of Narbonne.
Viticulture flourished under the Romans. Domitian's edict of AD92 ordering many existing vineyards to be pulled up, in an attemptto ensure that land suitable for the cultivation of wheat retainedthat purpose, had a temporary braking effect throughout Gaul, butonly until the Emperor Probus repealed the edict in 276. Meanwhilethere are records of wine being imported from Gaul to Italy, andever since then viticulture has been a vital part of the agriculturalactivity and economy of the whole region, despite a brief period ofArab rule in Roussillon. The Saracens took Narbonne in 719 and itwas recaptured by Pépin le Bref forty years later.
THE MIDDLE AGES
The collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century heralded aperiod of instability. Vandals and Visigoths, as well as Saracens,contributed to the upheavals until Charles I, soon to be known asCharlemagne, was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope LeoIII on Christmas Day 800 at St Peter's in Rome. His rule broughtsome much-needed stability to the region.
The increasingly powerful Catholic Church also contributedto the development of viticulture throughout the region duringthe Middle Ages. There were Benedictine abbeys such as SaintGuilhem-le-Désert and Lagrasse, as well as the later Cistercianabbeys of Fontfroide and Valmagne, to mention just four that arestill standing and which very much merit a visit. At one time, infact, there were as many as fifty Benedictine abbeys in Languedoc-Roussillon,for all of which the production of wine was an essentialpart of monastic life. It was needed not only for the eucharist butalso for hospitality, for the monasteries were the four-star hotelsof the medieval traveller. They played a vital role in maintainingand expanding the viticultural traditions of the south throughoutthe Middle Ages, especially during the periods of socialupheaval caused by the Albigensian crusade and the Hundred YearsWar.
The recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague also had an effect,devastating the population and causing a sharp drop in the area ofvineyards. The records of the village of Alignan-du-Vent nearBéziers illustrate this sharp decline and subsequent revival. In 1353there were forty vineyards out of a hundred fields. By 1378 thenumber had fallen to thirty-three and by the turn of the century tojust six. It would seem that a revival began in the fifteenth century,with twenty vineyards by 1520 and a lively expansion during themiddle of the sixteenth century. Vineyards competed with olive treesand with wheat. Once the Languedoc was assimilated into France,wine from the region began to travel north, and there are records ofLanguedoc wine being enjoyed at the Valois court of Charles Vtowards the end of the fourteenth century. Nonetheless the MassifCentral represented a substantial barrier throughout the MiddleAges and difficulties of transport would ensure that the wines of thesouth remained unknown.
Viticultural fortunes continued to fluctuate. The ending of theWars of Religion with the accession of Henri IV in 1589 offered ahope of prosperity. Vineyard plantings increased enormously in thefirst half of the seventeenth century as a result of the clearing ofscrubland in the hills, while the plains remained indispensable forthe production of wheat. Taverns flourished, trade developed andthe market opened up towards Italy and Catalonia, with Agdeand Béziers becoming important commercial centres.
THE CANAL DU MIDI
Nonetheless the region remained relatively isolated from the restof the country, with poor communications, until the building ofthe Canal du Midi in the seventeenth century under the impetusof Colbert. The reputation of virtually every wine has dependedupon ease of transport. Most great vineyards are close to riversystems, which were vital in the days of impassable roads before theinvention of railways. The Canal du Midi was opened in 1681. It isalso appropriately called the Canal des Deux Mers, for it linksthe Mediterranean and Sète, a new port that had opened a fewyears earlier, with the Atlantic. To appreciate this colossal featof engineering, it is worth taking a detour to see the locks ofFonséranes, just outside Béziers. This is a series of eight locks, oneafter the other like a flight of steps, that changes the water level bytwenty-five metres. Pierre-Paul Riquet, the engineer who mastermindedthe whole project at great personal cost, is commemoratedin the Allées Paul Riquet, the broad promenade in Béziers that hashis statue in its centre.
However, the Bordelais maintained their privileges and during theeighteenth century only five per cent of the wines and eaux de vie ofthe Languedoc were exported along the Canal du Midi. Bordeauxdid not want the Languedoc as competition. In 1742 a royal decreeallowed the sales of wines from the Languedoc from the feast ofSt Martin on 11 November until 8 September, when any unsoldwine would have to be returned to its source for distillation.Transport was expensive and so were the tolls. Although the port ofSète provided another opportunity for trade, it was only accessibleto merchants from northern Europe, notably the Dutch, throughthe Straits of Gibraltar.
THE WINTER OF 1708-9
The terrible winter of 1708-9, with severe cold that lasted from themiddle of October until the end of the following February, causeduntold damage to agriculture all over France, and particularly in thenorthern part of the country. Many vineyards were devastated byfrost, and only those near the sea in the south, with their moreequable climate, particularly those of the Languedoc and Provence,survived. None the less, temperatures of -17.5ºC were recorded inMarseille and -16.1ºC in Montpellier, while in Paris they fell to-23.1ºC. A royal edict of 1710, intended to facilitate the transportand sale of wine from the south to the capital, caused friction withthe Bordelais, who struggled to maintain their privileges. The southwas able to benefit from the shortage of wine in the north.
THE PROSPERITY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
It was not until the nineteenth century that the vineyards ofthe Midi experienced a period of major prosperity. The period ofindustrialisation after Napoleon's reign brought an immensedemand for the wines of the Midi, for with the Industrial Revolutioncame a new clientele, the factory workers and miners of the north,who wanted a cheap, energy-inducing drink, namely wine. TheMidi adapted itself to this demand and created an industrialvineyard for the production of thin, acidic wine that barely reached7º or 8º alcohol and which was further watered down by itsconsumers. Today it would be considered quite undrinkable.However, it was on this that the economic and agricultural successof the Midi was built. This was the period that saw the buildingof many fine châteaux, with immense cellars that catered forenormous quantities of wine. A building such as the Château deGrézan in Faugéres may look from a distance like a medievaledifice, but in fact it dates from the nineteenth century and is one ofmany such designed by a Bordelais architect, Monsieur Garosse,who offered potential clients a catalogue of different buildings.
The Midi, not Bordeaux or Burgundy, was where the greatesttechnical progress in wine making took place in the nineteenthcentury. In a vineyard near Mauguio in the Hérault, Henri Bouschetcreated a new grape variety, the Alicante Bouschet, by crossingGrenache Noir with a hybrid of Aramon and Teinturier du Cherdeveloped by his father Louis, a few years earlier. Louis Bouschet deBernard, known as 'the father of hybrids', lamented the demands ofthe market, which chose wine by colour, irrespective of taste: 'If Ichose grape varieties like Aspiran and Terret, which give me finedelicate wines, why would I not fear that the négociants, althoughrecognising the quality of the wine, would not want it. We knowthat these wines are neglected and despised. Colour is everything fortrade. That the wines are bitter, hard and green, so long as they aredeep in colour, it is all the same.' Alicante Bouschet was to becomeone of the most widely planted varieties of the Midi in the yearsfollowing the phylloxera crisis.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century France had the largestvineyard in the world. The Gironde was the most productivedepartment, followed by the Charente and Charente Inférieure (asthe Charente-Maritime was then called) and then the Hérault.Lachiver asserts that in the early nineteenth century the viticulturalfortunes of the Languedoc were based on eau de vie. In 1820 sixtyper cent of the production of the Hérault was distilled. Lachiver sees1850 as the year that brought the end of the traditional vineyardall over France, for within a few years it was to be transformedby cryptogrammic disease, notably oidium, as well as by theconsequences of the railways and of phylloxera, which meantthat the Languedoc would be replanted as a vignoble de masse,completely changing its traditional practices of cultivation andproduction.
The nineteenth-century authorities wrote of the wines of theLanguedoc with varying degrees of enthusiasm, sometimes singlingout specific crus. Jullien said that the red wines of the Languedocgenerally had body and alcohol and that some were very good. Hedesignated three categories, in addition to the vins de chaudière orwines for distillation.
By 1862 Rendu was more precise. He too classified the wines ofthe Languedoc into three categories: the vines of the hills orthe garrigue, a term describing the wild scrub of the foothills of theMassif Central, which provided wines for export; the vines ofthe terraces, where the soil consisted of pebbles mixed with iron,which gave wines suitable for commerce; and finally the vineyardsof the plains, planted with Aramon and Terret Bourret, thatproduced wines for distillation.
In the 1860s Guyot undertook a very detailed report on thevineyards of France for Napoleon III. He enthused about thequality of the Mourvèdre, called Espar in the Midi, and regrettedthe development of what he called the 'common' grape varieties. Inthe Hèrault he found wines for distillation, ordinary wines andgreat wines, as well as fortified wines and brandy. As today, thesurplus wine production was destined for distillation. He alsomentioned that some eminent wine growers of the Hèrault wereexperimenting with Pinots, Cabernet, Syrah, Cot, Sauvignon andSèmillon, as well as Spirans, Espar, Carignan, Grenache, Morasteland Clairette, which gave some very superior wines and drinks thatwere much in demand. There were apparently as many as 150different grape varieties grown in the south. Sadly, many of themwere to disappear completely in the aftermath of phylloxera.
Yields increased enormously in this period. In 1848 the Héraultovertook the Gironde as the department with the largest area ofvines. Between 1861 and 1867, the six years during which Guyotwas preparing his report, production in the Hérault rose from nineto fourteen million hectolitres. The all-time record harvest was1869, when the Hérault produced a breathtaking 15,236,000hectolitres from 226,000 hectares of vines. The average yield perhectare works out at almost 68 hectolitres, which is enormous forthe period. The year 1875 saw the record harvest of France, with84 million hectolitres. Between 1878 and 1899 there was never aharvest larger than 50 million hectolitres and consumption wasalways greater. However, in 1900 production soared to 68 million,dropping again to 58 million hectolitres in 1901.
The development of the railways in the second half of the nineteenthcentury coincided with the period of industrialisation andencouraged the growth of the Languedoc vineyards, providing aneasy means of transport to the capital and the industrial north. TheParis-Lyons-Marseilles railway opened in 1856 and links were alsoprovided with Sète, Montpellier, Béziers and Narbonne. Thecharges for the transport of wine dropped significantly. In 1840 ithad cost 50 francs to send a cask of wine from Montpellier toLyons, a price that fell to 10 francs by 1858.
PHYLLOXERA
But there were problems too. A severe attack of oidium in the 1850sled to a change in the composition of the vineyards, for Carignanand Aramon became the principal grape varieties when replantingtook place. Then in 1863 the phylloxera louse was found at thevillage of Pujaut in the Gard, in the vineyards of a grower who hadimported some American vines. The louse began its steady munchwestwards and northwards, although it did not reach the Aude until1885 and Chablis in northern France until 1887. People hoped toescape its devastating effects, but its progress was relentless.
In the later part of the nineteenth century enormous energywas devoted to finding a remedy for phylloxera. The louse wasidentified by Emile Planchon, professor in the school of chemistryat the university of Montpellier. His statue stands in front of therailway station in Montpellier. As well as identifying the dreadedlouse, he made the connection between it and the American vinesthat had been brought into France. The effects of phylloxera wereinstantaneous. Plantings in the Hérault fell from 222,000 hectaresin 1872 down to fewer than 90,000 in 1881, and in the Gard from88,000 in 1871 to 15,000 in 1879. The French government offereda reward of 300,000 francs to whoever discovered a remedy. TheHérault alone produced some 696 different suggestions, of whichabout half were tried out in an experimental vineyard nearMontpellier. Suggested remedies included the flooding of vineyardson the coastal plains, for the life cycle of the louse includes fortydays underground. The soil around the roots of vines was injectedwith carbon bisulphide; occasionally you still see the piece ofequipment used, carefully preserved as a museum piece. GastonBazille from Montpellier was the first to experiment with thegrafting of European vines on to American rootstocks, but thisprocedure was not initially seen as the sought-after remedy and thereward was in fact never paid. Eventually, however, it was realisedthat this was the only viable solution. Already by 1879 there werefour hundred and fifty hectares of grafted vines in the region.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE WINES OF THE SOUTH OF FRANCE by ROSEMARY GEORGE. Copyright © 2001 by Rosemary George. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgements | ix |
| Introduction | 1 |
| From the sixth century BC to the twenty-first century AD: | |
| history and trends | 9 |
| Developments in the vineyard and cellar | 36 |
| ROUSSILLON | 59 |
| Introduction | 61 |
| Côtes du Roussillon and other table wines | 65 |
| Rivesaltes | 97 |
| Maury | 106 |
| Banyuls and Collioure | 114 |
| LANGUEDOC | 129 |
| Introduction | 133 |
| Corbières | 135 |
| Fitou | 164 |
| Limoux | 177 |
| Côtes de la Malepère | 193 |
| Cabardès | 206 |
| Minervois | 216 |
| St Jean-de-Minervois | 249 |
| Coteaux du Languedoc | |
| Introduction | 255 |
| Quatourze | 258 |
| La Clape | 262 |
| St Chinian | 274 |
| Faugères | 296 |
| Picpoul de Pinet | 315 |
| Pézenas and Cabrières | 324 |
| Clairette du Languedoc | 334 |
| Terrasses de Larzac | |
| St Saturnin | 340 |
| Montpeyroux | 343 |
| Pic St Loup | 359 |
| Grès de Montpellier | 379 |
| St Georges-d'Orques | 380 |
| Méjanelle | 399 |
| St Drézery | 403 |
| St Christol | 405 |
| Terres de Sommières | 410 |
| Muscat de Frontignan | 415 |
| Muscat de Mireval | 422 |
| Muscat de Lunel | 427 |
| Vins de Pays d'Oc and others | 432 |
| Vin de Pays des Côtes de Thongue | 467 |
| Costières de Nîmes | 480 |
| Clairette de Bellegarde | 502 |
| PROVENCE | 505 |
| Introduction | 509 |
| Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence | 511 |
| Les Baux-de-Provence | 529 |
| Palette | 539 |
| Cassis | 544 |
| Bandol | 555 |
| Côtes du Lubéron | 578 |
| Coteaux de Pierrevert | 592 |
| Coteaux Varois | 599 |
| Côtes de Provence | 616 |
| Bordure Maritime | 622 |
| Ile de Porquerolles | 628 |
| Collines du Haut Pays | 632 |
| Massif de la Sainte Victoire | 637 |
| Vallée Intérieure | 640 |
| Villars-sur-Var | 646 |
| Bellet | 649 |
| CORSICA | 657 |
| Introduction | 659 |
| Ajaccio | 668 |
| Sartène | 672 |
| Figari | 676 |
| Porto-Vecchio | 678 |
| Plaine Orientale | 681 |
| Cap Corse | 687 |
| Patrimonio | 691 |
| Calvi | 698 |
| Heat summation figures | 707 |
| List of Vins de Pays for the region | 708 |
| Glossary | 711 |
| Bibliography | 715 |
| Index | 717 |