The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000–1500 9781472599285, 9780826425843

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For my grandsons, Jacob, Rory, Gabriel and Daniel May you all enjoy the pleasures of wine but avoid its pains.

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Illustrations

Frontispiece. The wine harvest in September from the zodiac section of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

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Figure 1.1 Vine growing in the Bordelais.

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Figure 1.2 A view over the vineyards near Saint-Emilion which Ausonius felt resembled those along the Moselle.

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Figure 2.1 Working in the vineyard, picking the grapes. An image from a version printed in Venice of the De Agricultura by Pietro de Crescenzi.

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Figures 2.2 and 2.3 Treading the grapes and barrel making; woodcuts from a version printed in Speyer in 1492 of Pietro de Crescenzi’s Libri Commodorum Ruralium 20 Figure 2.4 The title page of the book on wine by Arnold of Villa Nova printed in Germany in 1519.

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Figure 2.5 A carved representation of the labour of the month for February, pruning the vines, from Notre Dame, Paris.

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Figure 3.1 A capital on a pillar in the ruined church of the Abbey of La Sauve Majeure.

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Figure 3.2 The ramparts of Saint-Macaire with the priory church visible in the background.

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Figure 3.3 The bridge over the Dordogne at Libourne.

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Figure 8.1 The Drunkenness of Noah.

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Figure 8.2 The Mystic Winepress.

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Maps and Tables

MAPS 1. North West Europe showing the most important centres of the wine trade.

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2. The Bordelais wine-producing region.

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3. The most important trade routes used by medieval wine merchants.

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TABLES Table 4.1 The export of wine from Bordeaux 1402–1452.

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Table 4.2 Non-sweet wine imports to England by both denizen and alien merchants in the fifteenth century.

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North West Europe showing the most important centres of the wine trade.

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Preface

I would like to thank all those who have helped enormously in the writing of this book. Mimi Howes translated medieval French for me with aplomb. Professor Stuart Jenks very kindly pointed me in the direction of sources for the trade in Rhenish wine. Dr Herbert Eiden also helped a great deal with references to articles and gave much needed guidance with problems with translations from German. The staff of the National Archives at Kew, the British Library and the Institute of Historical Research were all uniformly helpful and supportive. A trip to the Bordelais and Saint-Emilion culminated in staying with our friends Margaret and Peter not far from the Via Domitiana along which vine cultivation travelled from Rome itself to southern France and then Iberia. I am especially grateful to them for their help, hospitality and support. My husband also helped with translations and has been an indispensable source of help of all kinds during the process of research and writing. The enterprise would not have been completed without his aid. I am, of course, responsible for any errors of fact or judgment or problems with the text as a whole.

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Acknowledgments for Illustrations

Illustrations 1 and 2 and 7–10 are from photographs taken by the author. Illustrations 3–6 and 11 and 12 are by courtesy of the Warburg Institute, University of London. The maps were drawn by Philip Judge.

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Introduction

My intention in writing this book is to examine not only how and why wine became one of the most widely traded commodities in medieval Europe but also to reveal the important place wine had in many aspects of medieval life. Modern business men and economists probably regard hydrocarbons, particularly oil, as the most important commodity in world trade along with wheat, the staff of life. If they consider the wine trade at all it is probably a something on the margins of national economies. The cultivation of the vine and the making of wine have now spread all over the globe. There are areas of virtual monoculture like the Bordelais in France and the wine country in California. The wine trade as a whole, however, neither raises a major part of the revenue of any government nor is it a major factor in relations between states or often seriously affected by the rise and fall of rulers and regimes. In the period under consideration here, wine played a much more important economic role. The revenue from the charges and taxes on the passage of wine from producer to consumer could be of great importance to a government. The fortunes of the trade could also be dramatically affected by the success or failure of a particular regime. It was, however, clear that wine was in demand in all the nations and states of Europe. Its consumption could be on the one hand, in certain regions, an unremarkable feature of everyday life and on the other, an unmistakeable mark of high social standing, wealth and influence. It was widely regarded as beneficial to mankind, a gift of beneficent nature to relieve the pains and sorrows of humanity. It could be, for believers, part of the ritual that ensured salvation. It could also be a source of humiliation or the way to eternal damnation. The sources which allow exploration of the various roles that wine played in medieval life were originally compiled for many different pur-

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poses. One large and important group is the surviving records of the tax authorities who profited from the traffic in wine. Others are the works of doctors and other medical men and of moralists and theologians who either extolled the virtues of wine or pointed to the dire consequences of over-indulgence. There are the works of writers on agriculture and all sorts of casual mentions of the uses made of wine in chronicles, letters or notarial and other legal documents. There are also poets, and storytellers who, like the scholarly writers already mentioned, praise wine or condemn drunkards thus providing an insight into the way wine was viewed in the society of their time. Particularly with regard to legal or tax documents a problem can arise over the precise meaning of words used to indicate measures of quantity or capacity. There were no universally recognized systems of weights and measures. Sometimes a commonly-used measure such as ‘tun’, a large barrel of a type used in French vineyards, often had a different capacity in different winemaking areas. Other words were particular to one small region or fell out of use such a long time ago that any estimate of their meaning is something of a guess. There is no easy or really precise way to convert or relate these terms to imperial gallons or litres. Sometimes the most one can say with confidence is that a term signifies a large amount (like the cartload used in documents from the time of Charlemagne) or a much smaller amount (the somewhat enigmatic jug or jar, an expression quite often found). The most widely used set of terms for wine in northern Europe, particularly in England, was the hogshead, pipe, tun system. In this system, 2 hogsheads made 1 pipe and 2 pipes 1 tun: the rough equivalents in litres and gallons are 1 hogshead 238.5 litres/ 52.5 gallons; 1 pipe, 478 litres/105 gallons and 1 tun 954.7 litres/210 gallons. Since the Bordeaux wine tun, the basis of this system, was used as the measure of the capacity of a ship’s hull, there was probably a reasonable degree of uniformity in this system. Although there was a considerable amount of variation between one winemaking region and another the terms most frequently used in France were the muid of around 156 litres, and the setier of around 10 litres. The term tun (tonnelle) was also used in France, along with pints and quarts for small amounts. Words like barrel and cask do not seem to have had a precise meaning in terms of their capacity. In the Mediterranean

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the preferred term for a wine barrel was butt (in Italian botte) with a capacity comparable to that of a pipe. This term was also used in calculations of the hold size of ships by both the Genoese and the Venetians. Much recent writing on the history of wine and winemaking has been concerned with types of grape and vine stocks and the development of individual vineyards, particularly those which are now greatly renowned as the producers of the most expensive and well regarded wines, with much discussion of the details of especially notable years or vintages. Although Roman writers on winemaking often devoted some space to types of vine and their individual characteristics, this was not a topic which much interested winemakers in the period we are studying, at least it was not one about which they recorded their views in any detail. The idea of good and bad years was appreciated in the Middle Ages in as far as all knew there were disastrous years when the weather undermined all the efforts of the vineyard workers, with late frosts or wet summers or attacks of various blights. It was, however, more or less impossible to keep most wine from one year to the next. Good wine was new wine. There is, therefore, little in what follows about different types of vines or vintage years. There is also some confusion regarding the words used to describe the colour and style of individual wines. This is particularly the case with ‘red’ wines. The term ‘claret’ (cléret or clairet in French) was used for red wine from the Bordeaux region, but in this period it was a light wine more akin to modern rosé wines than modern claret. Wines described as ‘black’ were powerful deep red wines, high in alcohol after a lengthy fermentation. For much of the period we are studying, white wines were the most common and the most popular; there is little indication of their alcohol content but the suspicion is that many were low in this respect. Spiced wines, often mixed with honey, were very popular too and confusingly enough one of these was called ‘clarry’ by the English. This study does not give equal space to all parts of Western Europe. The trade between England and France dominates to some extent largely because it is the best documented and was probably the most valuable. Trade in wine in the Mediterranean, except for that in the expensive and highly regarded sweet wines coming originally from Greece and the islands in the eastern Mediterranean, tended to be of less importance to rulers and

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less productive of tax revenue since production was so widely spread with many drinking their own produce. Wine in bulk, in large wooden casks, was not easy to transport. It was very susceptible to damage from changes in temperature or rough handling and could only too easily be spoiled. Much was probably both thin and sour by the time it reached the consumer. Yet throughout the Middle Ages, demand remained remarkably constant and its reputation as the drink which ‘made glad the heart of man’ was not diminished.

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Roman Beginnings

In the early nineteenth century, sitting under a plum tree in his Hampstead garden on a summer evening, John Keats invoked the pleasures of wine, ‘a beaker full of the warm South’ that tasted ‘of Flora and the country-green / Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth’. He did in the end prefer ‘the viewless wings of poesy’ to the delights brought by ‘Bacchus and his pards’ but his conviction that wine came from warmer climes and was intimately linked with the Classical world was no more than the truth.1 The skills of vine growing and winemaking spread into Europe at a very early date from the civilizations of the near East and soon became part of the fabric of everyday life among all the peoples living on the shores of the Mediterranean and its immediate hinterland. The soil and the climate favoured viticulture both in the Italian peninsula and in Iberia where farmers built on the skills originally developed by the Greeks. As early as 160 BC the growing of vines and the making of wine was treated in some detail by Cato the Elder in his manual De Agri Cultura. This covered in an extremely practical way all the operations necessary to set up a profitable mixed farm, probably in Latium or Campania, run by slave labour. If the site was suitable, nothing surpassed a vineyard able to produce copious quantities of good wine; this type of cultivation was preferable to using the land for growing olives or grain or leaving it to form a meadow. He pointed out that the vines themselves needed to be chosen with care, taking into account the type of soil. He also gave a complete list of the staff and equipment needed for a vineyard of around 66 acres. In addition to 16 labourers, 2 oxen and 2 draught donkeys would be needed to operate the press. The equipment required included not only the vats, jars and strainers, but such details as the number of pruning knives and baskets and the furnishings of the farmhouse. He went on to describe how to construct a winepress in such detail that it reads almost like specifications to a

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builder. He explained, for example, how to make sure that the press beam was exactly in the middle between the two anchor posts allowing for a play of only 1 inch.2 Dressing and pruning the vines was also treated in the manner of an instruction manual with advice given about training the vines on the supports and stripping off the leaves once the grapes begin to deepen in colour. After harvesting the grapes and making the wine, he expected fermentation to be complete in 30 days at which time the wine jars could be sealed. A modern reader might have some doubts about the quality of the wine eventually produced. Cato gave a recipe for the drink given to workers throughout the winter; this was a mixture of vinegar, the boiled must (unfermented grape juice), fresh water and seawater. He remarked that this would last till mid-summer after which it would become ‘a very sharp and excellent vinegar’. Wine with a bad odour could also be

Figure 1.1 Vines growing in the Bordelais. The planting of flowers, often roses, at the end of a row was recommended by Roman writers as a way of discouraging pests damaging the vines. It is still a common practice in some modern vineyards.

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improved by lowering into the jar a piece of roof tile, heated in a fire and coated with pitch. This would be sealed in the jar for two days after which the odour should have gone.3 Later Roman writers looked on viticulture in much the same spirit, often incorporating Cato’s views. The best known are the works of Varro (De Re Rustica written c. 36 BC), Virgil (Georgics, an agricultural poem, 29 BC), Columella (De Re Rustica c. AD 65) and finally those of Pliny the Elder. The subject of wine and viticulture is treated in several books of his Natural History published in AD 79, after his death at Pompeii following the eruption of Vesuvius. In all these works, viticulture and the making of wine are seen as a commercial operation. Even Virgil emphasizes that a vineyard must be planted carefully so that ‘the earth grant equal vigour / to all and stems be able to extend into free air’, comparing the plants to the cohorts of a legion arrayed in long lines before a battle is joined.4 Columella costs the whole operation of acquiring and setting up a vineyard operated by slave labour and concludes that, allowing for depreciation and a loan at 6 per cent interest in the 2 years before wine can be made, a 15 per cent return on capital can be expected, rather more than the return from the highly profitable trade in luxury goods with the East. He asserted that even a vineyard on poor soil should make a small profit but that anything where the yield was less than ‘three cullei to the iugerum’ (equivalent to 60 hectolitre per hectare) should be uprooted. Estate owners who lost money on growing vines did so because they failed to plant good and suitable vines, and then did not tend them carefully enough. He gave equally clear and vigorous advice on the preparation of the site for a vineyard, the planting of the vines, their pruning and propagation, paying particular attention to grafting. He was especially scornful of those who imagined that more or less any cheap slave could be a vine dresser, insisting that it was a skilled job which needed proper training and experience.5 Both he and Pliny spent some time discussing the varieties of grape which were grown in Italy at that time. Over 91 different types existed, suited to different soils, aspects and climates, varying from those that could withstand frost or drought to those which produced sweeter or more long-lasting wines. Some modern writers have also devoted considerable effort to relating the vines named by Columella and Pliny to

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particular vine-growing areas both in the Roman era and in more modern times. It is probably more useful to note the detailed knowledge of each writer of the subject and the careful observations and attempts at classification which lay behind this discussion.6 The fact that wine in Roman times could be aged in an airtight container and remained drinkable for a considerable of amount of time was also of great importance. One especially notable wine from Thrace could be kept, it was claimed, for many years; Pliny mentioned that some made c. 121 BC, (around 200 years before he wrote) had the consistency of honey but a rough taste. It had to be heavily diluted with water to be palatable, but was still enjoyable and much sought after. This Opimian wine, named after the consul Opimius, elected in 120 BC, could also be used to flavour other wines and could command a very high price.7 It is clear from Pliny’s writing how important wine had become in Roman life. He felt that its best effect when drunk, was ‘to cause a feeling of warmth in the viscera and when poured upon the exterior of the body to be cool and refreshing’.8 Certain wines could also have other properties; one Arcadian wine could ensure fertility in women but caused madness in men. Others could be abortifacients or laxatives or be effective against snake bites. In everyday life it was the expected drink. Pliny describes a ‘workers’ wine’ called lora, which was very similar to that described by Cato more than 200 years earlier. It was, as in earlier times, usually made of the skins and other residue of pressed grapes mixed with fresh and sea water and allowed to settle for 24 hours before being sealed in jars. By the following summer it was undrinkably sour but, in fact, only good wines were expected to last.9 Taverns, like the 200 which have been uncovered in Pompeii, a city of around 20,000 inhabitants, would have sold this drink as well as better wines from the first pressing. A pricelist painted on the wall of one offered Falernian wine, from the Campania, at four times the price of ordinary wine.10 This was usually considered the best of all Roman wines but it perhaps was not always wise to trust the label, as it were. At the infamous banquet given by the freedman Trimalchio in Petronius’ ‘novel’ Satryricon, he produced some glass jars ‘carefully fastened with gypsum’ . . . . with labels tied to their necks inscribed ‘Falernian of Opimius’s vintage, 100 years in bottle’. The guests examined the labels carefully but

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Trimalchio then exclaimed ‘Wine is life. I’ve put on real wine of Opimius’s year. I produced some inferior stuff yesterday and there was a much finer set of people to dinner.’11 This banquet, as described in the novel, finally ended with all the guests extremely drunk. Pliny, however, includes a scathing chapter on the perils of drunkenness in his Natural History. As he succinctly puts it, man lavishes enormous quantities of money and effort on a ‘liquid which deprives man of his reason and drives him to frenzy and to the commission of a thousand crimes’. He attacked the kinds of drinking games popular in Rome, like drinking as many cups of wine as the points on the dice thrown by the drinker or a challenger. He described the poor health of the habitual drunkard and the miseries of a bad hangover.12 Diodorus Siculus also attacked the Gauls as ‘being inordinately fond of wine’. They were eager to gulp it down ‘quite undiluted’, unlike the Romans and Greeks who normally added water, only ‘to fall asleep or lose their wits’.13 Neither writer’s strictures had, as far as we know, much effect on the attitudes of Roman society which seems to have regarded excessive drinking as normal and worthy of little censure. Traders, in fact, saw the Gauls’ love of wine as presenting them with a great commercial opportunity. According to Diodorus Siculus, Italian traders were able to exploit the Gauls’ passion to get hold of wine. The merchants brought wine in, by boat along navigable waterways or overland on carts, making enormous profits. Their customers were willing to trade a slave girl for an amphora of wine so that, in effect, a Gaul would free his servant to get a drink of wine.14 The wine trade in the Mediterranean was, of course, not a new phenomenon. As in many other areas of both cultural and economic life, the Romans were building on foundations laid by the Greeks. One feature of the way wine was stored and transported at least until the second century AD has helped greatly in tracing the extent and importance of this trade. Wine was usually made in very large pottery vessels often sunk in the ground called dolia; once fermented it was strained into amphorae, or wine jars, for transport to buyers, whether individuals or wholesale merchants. Both of these types of pottery containers for the transport and storage of grain and liquids are very familiar from the considerable quantities still remaining and displayed in most museums dealing with the period. Dolia

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used for the storage, if not the making of wine, with decorative stamps showing a grape harvester or a pattern of wheat ears, bunches of grapes and vine shoots have been excavated, for example, at the pre-Roman village of Ensérune, not far from Béziers, dating from around the third century BC.15 To give only one example of vessels known to be carrying cargoes of wine, a shipwreck excavated in the waters near Marseille from the second century BC has revealed a cargo of at least 500 amphorae, each of 21 litres’ capacity.16 From the point of view of the winemaker amphorae had great advantages. They were cheap to make, and did not rot or deteriorate easily like wooden containers. They could be given an airtight seal with a mixture of pitch and wax which allowed wines to mature and for the existence of extremely old vintages like the Opimian to be plausible. On the other hand, they were very heavy even before they were filled and not easy to load securely in, for example, the hold of a ship. Many had bottoms, tapering to a point which presented particular problems in this respect. They were also easily broken. The great quantities of potsherds, the remains of amphorae, which have been excavated from both land sites and shipwrecks all over the Roman world have been extensively studied since the nineteenth century. From this work it has become clear that the many different types and shapes of clay vessels can be linked to specific manufacturing sites and trading centres, while often their original contents whether oil, wine or grain can be identified from the microscopic traces remaining. Some amphorae that were used for wine often have tituli picti or identifying marks commonly placed just below the neck. These usually give the weight of the amphora when empty, the name of the merchant concerned and the weight of the contents. Other information can also be found by the handle; this includes a symbol certifying that the amphora had been checked for tax purposes, the name of the estate where the wine originated, the name of the supervisor in charge of loading the cargo and the date. All this allows evidence to be gathered of the structure of the trade in some detail, including the location of the most productive winemaking areas and even the names of the leading merchants. The same mark, M PORCI, that of M. Porcius a wine merchant from Pompeii, found on amphorae at Ensérune, has also been found at Agen and on sites in the Dordogne dating from the early first century AD.17

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Areas in the south of France, along the coast, near the important port of Massilia (Marseilles) and the cities of Narbonne and Béziers began to plant their own vineyards to supply the Roman market as well as local drinkers. Locations along the Via Domitia, the road from Rome to Iberia were soon well developed. The large Roman villa excavated near Ensérune makes much use of interlacing vine shoots in the design of its mosaic floors and was probably the centre of a wine-producing enterprise. Vineyards were also developed by the Romanized Gauls near Bordeaux and in Burgundy as Roman influence spread. Using the evidence provided by establishing the origins of the amphorae found at various sites, it is clear that wine from Béziers and Narbonne, for example, was enjoyed in Bordeaux, Lyon and Ostia while the expensive Falernian wine graced the tables of the rich in Gaul. A description of vine-growing much further north along the Moselle

Figure 1.2 A view over the vineyards near St Emilion which Ausonius felt resembled those along the Moselle. He himself owned land planted with vines in this district of France and one of the leading vineyards is called the Château Ausonne. The terraces along the Moselle are very much steeper than the rolling hills of the Bordelais but the domination of viticulture is similar.

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can be found in a poem written by Ausonius, a native of Bordeaux,a writer and teacher of the late fourth century AD who was in Trier in the 360s. He describes the valley: Nay more the whole gracious prospect made me behold a picture of my own native land the smiling and well-tended country of Bordeaux – the roofs of country houses perched high upon the over-hanging river banks, the hill-sides green with vines, and the pleasant stream of Moselle gliding below with subdued murmuring – river whose hills are o’ergrown with Bacchus’ fragrant vines.

His own property in Bordeaux came to mind: ‘so do my own vineyards cast their reflection in the yellowing Garonne for from the top-most ridge to the foot of the slope the riverside is thickly planted with green vines.’ His picture of happy peasants and boatmen on the river exchanging greetings in a vision of pastoral harmony was perhaps not entirely realistic.18 There is no doubt, however, about the Roman interest in vineyards in the region of the Moselle. The foundations and remains of a Roman winepress from the fourth century AD were discovered in 1985 at Piesport, a village on the north bank of the Moselle. Drinking glasses from the same era have also been excavated in the same area. There was probably a ready market for the light white wines produced in the region in the garrisons and Roman colonies in the Rhine valley and elsewhere in the northern parts of the Empire. Even in Britain, not only was wine imported but there is some evidence that a few small vineyards were planted in places like Silchester or North Leigh near Witney in Oxfordshire.19 Wine, therefore, was found in all areas under Roman rule or which had trading contacts with Rome. It can be considered in the words of one commentator ‘the agent of romanisation’.20 Beer, made from barley, was seen as a semi-barbarous drink by Romans; to drink wine was a mark of acceptance of Roman ways. Domitian was credited by Suetonius of issuing a decree in c. AD 90–92 to curtail the planting of new vineyards both in Italy and the provinces. He apparently claimed that the over-supply of wine on the markets in Rome and the shortage of bread corn could be set right by forbidding the planting of any new vineyards in Italy and uprooting at least half the vineyards in the provinces. There is little evidence that this decree

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was ever put into effect and the motive may have in reality been to protect the markets of producers in the Roman heartlands. Viticulture and the wine trade were soon widespread and well established as important elements in social, cultural and economic life in virtually all the lands of the Empire until the end of Roman hegemony in Western Europe. Patterns of twining vines adorned all manner of objects. Poets wrote of the pleasures of wine. Catullus demanded ‘stronger cups of old Falernian’ and declared that water should ‘be off to the strict’.21 Horace claimed that ‘the god decreed all things hard for those who never drink / and he gave us no better way to lessen our anxieties. / Deep in wine who rattles on about harsh campaigns or poverty?’22 Bacchus was praised as the genial deity who presided over mankind’s pleasures many of which involved the drinking of copious quantities of wine. Even in the most distant parts of the Empire, it was a part of daily life, at least for the wealthy and those of high standing. Did wine maintain its place in European life once the power of Rome had faded? More particularly, did the culture of this one plant and the intoxicating drink made from its fruit continue to fascinate and enrich some, and to bring comfort to many in the years from c. AD 1000 to c. AD 1500? The remainder of this book will consider this question, beginning with a look at medieval viticulture, the topic first discussed over 1000 years earlier by Cato the Elder.

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Vines and Vineyards

The works of Roman writers on viticulture, especially that by Columella, make it abundantly clear that Romans regarded the making of wine as a commercial enterprise, able to produce a good return on the considerable amount of capital invested in the vineyard and all the ancillary requirements needed before a drinkable wine could be marketed. Did this business-like attitude continue after the Roman Empire in the West had collapsed to be replaced by the many states, both small and large, which emerged from the confusions of the barbarian invasions? There is no reason to suppose that the invaders targeted vineyards for particular destruction, since they liked the produce as much as their predecessors. The general lack of security in the countryside nevertheless caused difficulties for a form of agriculture which depended on work spread over a long period and did not bring quick returns. More important, perhaps, was the impact on winegrowers of the disruption to trading networks caused by the collapse of the Empire. The division of Western Europe between many rulers erected barriers to trade, making much more obvious the differences between the peoples of the Mediterranean and those who lives further north. It is also the case that evidence for viticulture on a commercial scale and trade in wine in general is harder to come by than in the earlier period. One reason for this is the increasing use of wooden casks to transport wine from around the third and fourth centuries AD. These casks made it easier to transport wine in bulk, each containing a much larger quantity than an amphora, but, unlike pottery jars or their shattered remnants, they did not easily survive to provide ample evidence for archaeologists. Finds tend to be scattered and accidental like that of barrel staves found lining a well at Silchester.1 Much more emphasis has to be placed on casual mentions of vineyards and wines in documents written for all kinds of other purposes to obtain some idea of the fortunes of viticulture and the wine trade in the early medieval period.

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Looking first at northern Europe, monastery chronicles, for example, record that the Viking invaders of the ninth century pillaged the cellars of Saint-Denis and Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire in 865 but made no attempt to uproot the vines themselves.2 We have already mentioned the poetry of Ausonius; other later examples of writing with incidental comments on winegrowing include the lives of saints (many by Gregory of Tours). These holy men were credited with establishing vineyards near a church or monastery. Saint Germain is said to have planted vines on both banks of the Seine. Two saints, St Leidrade and St Agobard, were believed to have paid for the building of two churches and the repair of the bishop’s palace at Lyon from the sale of wine.3 Legends also grew up at much the same time relating to the importance of churchmen in encouraging the making of wine in France. In one, St Martin of Tours is recorded as learning the importance of pruning vines from his donkey. This animal nibbled all the long trailing shoots off his vines which then bore a larger crop of grapes to the saint’s surprise and pleasure.4 More formal documents like wills and charters also include frequent gifts of vineyards to churches and monasteries. Round about the sixth century a certain Ermentrude left parcels of vineyards, mostly lying to the south of the city, to churches in Paris and to her freed slaves.5 Later in the early ninth century, details of the holdings of ecclesiastical landlords can be found in documents known as polyptiques, inventories of the assets in lands and services of great landlords. Several survive from lands in the Carolingian Empire and give a clear impression how normal it was for vineyards to be found on such estates. Looking at estates situated in Frankish lands, the nucleus of France, one of the earliest of these polyptiques relates to the holdings of the abbey of St Germain des Prés. Among these are listed the details of the estate at Coudray, not far from Fontainebleu. The demesne farm, cultivated directly by the Abbey, produced 230 modii of wine per year from 14 arpents of vines.6 The holdings of the tenants on the manor also included vineyards varying from between two and a half to one half of an arpent of vines. A typical tenant family was that of Teutgrimus and Inberta who, together with their daughter Teutberga, cultivated about one and a half acres of arable land (6 bunaria) and just under an acre of vines (1 arpent) A small amount of their wine was due to the Abbey as rent in kind, along with other produce and

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services including manual labour, cartage and wood-cutting.7 One calculation concludes that St Germain held, at this date, 3–400 hectares of vines as well as about 20,000 hectares of agricultural land. Of the vineyards, half were operated directly by the monks themselves and half by tenants. The total wine produced may have been as much as 13,000 hectolitres.8 Rulers and nobles organized their estates in much the same way. The document known as the Capitolare de Villis, probably written c. AD 800 relating to estates in Aquitaine held by Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son, sets out the duties of the stewards in charge of the vineyards. The vineyards must be carefully tended, with the wine put into bona vascula (good or clean receptacles); the assumption seems to be that these wines may be transported for some distance, perhaps to other properties of the imperial family, since the stewards must also take care that no disasters occur while they are being shipped. They are also given the duty of seeking out and buying particularly good wines if these are needed. Finally their duties included the distribution of cuttings from successful vines to other estates for planting and the supervision of the storage of wine which was part of rents paid in kind.9 A somewhat similar document, the Brevium Exempla, also written either at the end of the reign of Charlemagne, or at the beginning of that of his son Louis, mentions a royal estate which had a cellar and winepress and produced 730 modii of wine.10 The capacity of a modius is not certainly defined but has been estimated at around 8 gallons giving a total of some 5,000 gallons for this estate. The estate produced little else of value, having only a herb garden and an orchard of all kinds of fruit trees, as well as the vineyard and thus may have been specializing in producing wine. As more and more varied evidence becomes available, particularly from France, from the eleventh century on, the fact that many vineyards were producing for the market becomes increasingly obvious. One important indication of this is that most vineyards were situated near navigable waterways. To be a successful commercial wine producer it was essential to be able to transport the wine to the consumers. Transport on a clumsy lurching ox cart of heavy wine barrels was not only slow and expensive but was bad for the wine especially in hot weather. It was much better to take the wine down a river often on flat-bottomed barges to a trading city or to a

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port with access to the open sea. From the ports increasing quantities of wine could travel overseas to northern lands, especially the British Isles and Flanders. A poem written around 1225 by Henri d’ Andeli in the form of a competition or battle between wines to be chosen as the favourite of the king of France, Philip IV Augustus, incidentally provides a great deal of information regarding the location of the most appreciated vineyards and the nature of the wine which was most desired at the time.11 In the poem the wines were personified and all came before the king’s table to make their case. The poet’s conceit was that some wines were to be ‘excommunicated’ by the English priest given the task of helping judge the competition. This fate befell some wines from northern France, including Rennes in Brittany, Le Mans, Argences near the Normandy coast, Tours and Étampes. Those from Argences, Chambelli and Rennes in fact ran away before they could be attacked by the ‘judge’. The poet, however, named with approval a great many small producers from the Ile de France and also wines from Alsace, the Moselle, Moissac, Saint-Emilion, Narbonne, Béziers and Carcassone. It is notable how many of the places named are north of the Loire or in the Seine-Marne valley. At the tine when this poem was written, it is clear that the most renowned wines, those which were traded most extensively and were most desired, came from northern France. The dominance of the Bordelais region did not become apparent until the fourteenth century, while the areas on the shores of the Mediterranean, where winemaking in France had originated, largely grew wine for local consumption only. They lacked the easy access to profitable markets which stimulated the growth of vineyards within reach of Rouen, La Rochelle and, at a later date, Bordeaux and the estuary of the Gironde. The poem is also revealing about contemporary attitudes to wine. As a drink it was considered immeasurably superior to the ale or small beer made by the Flemings and the English, which was referred to as ‘ale (cervoise) from Ypres’ in the poem. Very little is said about the way preferred wines should taste but the poem laid much emphasis on the way wine can (or so it was claimed) affect a person’s health. The ‘excommunicated’ wines did not suffer this fate because they were unpleasant or sour but because, for example, the wine from Chalons gave the drinker flatulence, while that from Étampes caused cramp, and both caused itching. The wine from Epernay claimed to

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cure gout and kidney problems as well as quenching thirst. The wines in the competition were in fact all white (Chablis and Beaune were praised for being not ‘too yellow’) while that from Argenteuil was said to be as clear as a tear drop. In the end, the choice of winner was made by the king himself (the English priest, a co-judge, having tasted every single wine, had by this time passed out, sleeping for the next 3 days). The wine chosen as ‘pope’ was that from Cyprus, (which shone like a star) while a ‘good, pleasing’ wine from Aquila was made a ‘legate’. Three kings, five counts and twelve peers of France were also nominated but the poet, unfortunately, does not name the wines chosen for these positions. Both the winners, the Cyprus wine and the Aquilan were not only imported from the Mediterranean, therefore expensive and a sign of high status, but were very sweet wines made from raisins rather than fresh grapes, very like the best wine served at banquets in Roman times. The poet’s final conclusion was that unlike kings, most people had to make do with the wine ‘given them by God’ while those drinking good wines would never get ill till the day they died! This poem is not, of course, the only writing at the time which touches on the topic of wine in France. There are other writings which include lists of vineyards and some which give some idea of the taste. In one, wine from Auxerre, which had a very good reputation, was said to have no trace of bitterness and to be a clear as a sinner’s tears. Words such as fort, fier, fres (fraiche) fin, franc, ferme and fremiant, were often used to describe the taste of wine, in alliterative verses, while it was also praised for being sweet and pleasant to swallow.12 All this seems to imply that the best French wines were fresh, strong and some perhaps had a hint of sparkle. Heavy sweet dessert wines were imported and had prestige and high status but, at that time no red or even rosé wines were popular. That is to say none were popular at the French Court or in the trade with England, Flanders and other northern countries which is also mentioned in la Bataille des Vins. Wines from La Rochelle are described as going to England, Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway and Denmark, while wine from the Moselle was imported into France from Cologne. In all these areas the light fresh white wines of the north of France were those preferred. The lists of named vineyards and the evidence from charters and other documents make clear that the growing of vines was perhaps more

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widespread in France and other areas in Western Europe by the thirteenth century than at any other period in history. It was not only well established in those areas favoured by the Gallo-Romans, in the south near Narbonne and Béziers, but further north as well. One writer in the 1980s remarked that the people of the Middle Ages loved wine so much that they produced it in the most improbable places, Normandy, England and Brittany.13 This was not the view of medieval winegrowers who seem to have seen nothing odd in locating vineyards as far north as Durham, for example. English vineyards were scattered, in fact, quite widely. In the south and east of England, 42 different manors are listed in Domesday Book as including vine-growing areas. Essex contained the most while there were six in Middlesex including Kensington and Staines.14 Later medieval documents continue to include references to the growing of vines and the making of wine. An eighteenth century commentator, Samuel Pegge, however, sagely pointed out that it is not to be supposed that at any time since the first introduction of the vine here the inhabitants of the island produced enough wine for their own consumption but rather that in all seasons they imported a great deal from abroad.15

It was not, therefore, very unusual for both English medieval noblemen and ecclesiastics to cultivate vines in favoured places but it seems that the wine which was produced was rarely intended for sale. The estates of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Kent perhaps came nearest to producing wine on a commercial scale. A plan of the cathedral and chapter lands at Canterbury dating from 1150 shows a small area labelled vinea next door to an orchard outside the walls. It is facing south-east and protected with a palisade.16 More certainly aimed at producing wine for sale were two estates belonging to the archbishop at Teynham, near Sittingbourne and Northfleet, not far from Gravesend. Rent rolls and accounts from both these manors in the thirteenth century include the expenses incurred in maintaining vineyards. At Northfleet c. 1235, 44s. 5d. was spent on all the various processes; hoeing the soil, layering new shoots to increase the stock of vines, paying the labourers and mending the tools needed to tend the vineyard. Further expenses were incurred in preparing six wine casks, and greasing the winepress ready for the harvest. The total yield is not clear although one tun and one barrel

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of wine were sent to the archbishop’s residences at Otford and Wrotham. Later in 1273–1274 wine from Northfleet was sold for between £1 and £2. 2s. a tun. The vineyard at Teynham seems to have been larger; a custumal of 1283 states that the tenants were obliged to provide 73 men for the vintage with a further 4 men coming equipped with large and small tubs. The earlier account for 1273–1274 mentions the purchase of 20,013 stakes for supporting the vines and the payment of £7 1s 8d to those caring for them. The year 1278–1279 was a bumper harvest on both manors; 24 tuns 1 pipe of wine was sold for a total of £27. 19s. 8d. The price, however, seems low. Wines bought for the Crown at Bordeaux at much the same time commanded well over £1 per tun. Between 1292–1294, 16 tuns 1 pipe of wine from Teynham was sold to the king by the archbishop, but on this occasion the price per tun is not given. The accounts continue to include expenses incurred for the vineyards at both Teynham and Northfleet throughout the fourteenth century although it is clear that both are producing verjuice as well as wine; 4 pipes of wine were, however, sold for £4 and a further three of white wine for 45s. in 1393–1394. In comparison with vineyards in France or the Moselle valley, however, these are hardly large scale enterprises and contributed little to the archbishop’s overall receipts.17 The vineyards in the Moselle valley, like those in France, probably survived the turmoil of the fifth and sixth centuries with relatively little disruption. Prosperity began to return to wine-growing areas in the eighth century and by AD 1000 a period of great expansion of winemaking in German lands began. Vines were cultivated on the left bank of the Rhine from the Nahe to Alsace, on the shores of Lake Constance and in the valley of the Aur. There is some evidence that the Teutonic Knights attempted to establish vineyards along the Vistula while others were planted around Erfurt by colonizing villagers.18 The polyptique relating to the estates of the Benedictine Abbey of Wissembourg not far from Suttgart dated 818–819 gives some idea of the extent of the vineyards of a wealthy abbey in the Rhine valley. The document includes details of 25 separate land holdings, the great majority not far from the mother house; of these all but 7 produced wine. The yield of individual holdings is usually estimated by the cartload or carrata. It is not clear whether this applies to grapes before they were pressed or to wine with perhaps 1 tun per cart. The estate as a whole produced more than

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230 cartloads which must equate with a considerable quantity of wine, certainly more than could be consumed by the community itself. Individual tenants also paid dues in kind in wine; for example, in a manor called Weinholdsheim, on the river itself, all the farmsteads owed wine to the abbey in amounts varying from 5 to 20 situli.19 It is hard to see this as other than a commercial enterprise with the wine destined for the market at Cologne where wine barrels were transhipped from river craft to sea-going vessels bound for England or towns along the Baltic coast. Given that viticulture certainly seems to have thrived in Western Europe in the years after AD 1000, what is known about the methods employed by winegrowers? Roman methods were set out in detail in the works of the various writers already discussed; did medieval winegrowers prove themselves able to develop or improve on the old ways? There is very little evidence that they did so; a Campanian peasant of the second century AD would very probably have found himself slipping easily into the work patterns of a vineyard in the Bordelais in the fourteenth century. In many areas the systems and methods set out first by Cato and then elaborated by Columella still dominated practice in European vineyards. There is not, however, the same volume of writing on any kind of agriculture in this period as there was in Roman times; what there is on the subject of winemaking and viticulture is firmly based on classical models. Alexander Neckam included a chapter De Vinea (chapter CLXVII) in his encyclopaedic work De Nartura Rerum but, apart from remarking that wine was the most delicious and most delightful of drinks making glad the heart of man, he concentrated on the ritual use of wine not its production.20 The most notable practical medieval treatise on agriculture was probably the Liber Commodorum Ruralium written by Pietro de’ Crescenzi or Pierre de Crescens21 (both the Italian and the French versions of his name are frequently used) in 1303 which includes in book 4 a lengthy section on viticulture and winemaking. Although Columella’s work was not easily available in Italy until the fifteenth century, Crescens quoted him by name in a section on pruning vines. He probably knew the work not directly from the copies, surviving from earlier times in the libraries of the

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Figure 2.1 Working in the vineyard, picking the grapes. An image from a version printed in Venice of the De Aricultura by Pietro de Crescenzi

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Figures 2.2 and 2.3 Treading the grapes and barrel making; woodcuts from a version printed in Speyer in 1492 of Pietro de Crescenzi’s Libri Commodorum Ruralium

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abbeys at Corbie and Fulda, but via the intermediary of the De Re Rustica of Palladius from the mid-fourth century AD, which largely consisted of extracts from Columella’s work. This was quite widely available at the relevant period often in a compendium with extracts from the writings of Varro and Cato. Another source probably used by de Crescens was the translation, dating from the late twelfth century, by Burgundio of Pisa of the Liber Vendemie a Byzantine treatise on winegrowing from the tenth century.22 Pierre de Crescens, himself, wrote his work at the request of Charles II of Anjou; producing, however, not merely a summary of classical works but also incorporating the fruits of his own experience as a farmer and vine grower on his property at St Nicholas near Bologna, his birthplace. Its practical worth was recognized almost immediately by his contemporaries leading rapidly to translations into both Italian and French from the original Latin. The first French translation, Le Liure des Prouffitz Champetres et Ruraux was particularly notable, being made especially for King Charles V of France in 1373.23 Its popularity continued into the fifteenth century when it was printed in 1471 in Augsburg in Latin; printed versions in Italian and French soon followed, with the work remaining in print well into the sixteenth century. It even became one of the most important sources for the winegrowing sections of Olivier de Serres’ Le Théatre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs, the standard work for French agronomists and winegrowers in the early modern period, first published in 1600. De Crescens’ advice was both clear and easy to follow. He noted that vines are supported in different ways in different areas, some on props, some on trellises, some clambering up small trees. It was essential to plant the most suitable type of vine for the climate, orientation and soil type of the vineyard. For example, the one called (in the French text ) sclave produced heavy bunches of round white grapes and did best on poor soil on a hillside. The resulting wine was tressoubtil et cler, fairly strong and kept well.24 When it came to harvest time for the grapes, he pointed out that those treading the grapes should not only have clean feet but they should take rests so that their sweat didn’t spoil the wine.25 The casks should also be well cleaned to receive the new wine, the best method being to wash them out with salt water. If they were filled too full there

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would be no room for the fermentation. The cellar also needed to be kept clean since any bad smells would spoil the wine. It was essential to avoid this particularly for wine made for apothecaries for use in medicines.26 Like the great majority of his contemporaries, Crescens was convinced that wine was very important as a factor in maintaining good health. Much of his treatise after his practical advice to vine growers elaborated on the way in which wine was of benefit to all. For the young, in particular, it was a food as well as a medicine. It had a particular power to cleanse and clear the blood. In his view, wine comforted the body and rejoiced the heart; it took away sorrow from the soul. The only danger was overindulgence; in moderation it changed vice to virtue, cruelty to pity, avarice to generosity, conceit to humility laziness to diligence and fear to courage.27 With such an endorsement it is not surprising that his work was so popular with growers. Wine merchants may perhaps have regarded him with less favour since he warned buyers of the way in which merchants sometimes gave them salty nuts and cheese to taste before trying the wine, thus making it easier to palm off inferior produce on them.28 At much the same time as de Crescens wrote on the whole science of agriculture, Arnold of Villanova, the physician at the Aragonese court, wrote a short treatise called simply De Vinis. This was concerned only with the medicinal use of wine and the way spoiled wine could be improved. It was, however printed in 1478 in a German translation with the addition of material about viticulture which is very similar to de Crescens’ work and may in fact have been based on a copy of that work or the Liber Vendemie.29 The section on the restoration of spoiled wine creates an alarming impression of the condition of much wine in medieval times and the measures which were taken to rectify problems. There are recipes using milk and wheat mixed to a paste or adding the beaten whites of 24 eggs to each affected cask to clarify cloudy wine. Wine with a bad smell could be helped by, he claimed, suspending a bag of sage, hops and galingale in the barrel. Wine could be made stronger by adding caraway seed, sugar, and shavings of hartshorn or it could be changed from white to red by adding powdered poppy flowers in a small bag.30 The conclusion is perhaps that any wine buyer had to be very wary of what he was offered. Even if he managed to avoid the salty titbits offered

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Figure 2.4

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The title page of the book on wine by Arnold of Villa Nova printed in Germany in 1519

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by the vendor he might still be offered wine that had been subject to all manner of ‘improvements’. Apart from the writing on viticulture, we can also get some idea of the methods used in medieval vineyards from the accounts and other documents relating to particular estates. The basic calendar of the vine grower’s year was also, of course, well established in popular custom. The depictions of the labours of the month, which are a popular typos represented in many art forms at this period, usually include the pruning of vines as the activity for March or February while harvesting the grapes or pouring the new wine into casks are those for September or October. These images can be found, for example, on the floor of the Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, again on the floor in mosaics in the Duomo at Otranto, in paintings on the vault of the Basilica of San Isidro in Leon and on the side of a lead font at the Church of St Augustine in Brooklands on Romney Marsh. The most accomplished images are those carved by

Figure 2.5

A carved representation of pruning the vines, the labour of the month for February, from Notre Dame in Paris.

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Niccolo Pisano and his son Giovanni on the lower basin of the Fontana Maggiore in the piazza at Perugia. Here September’s two linked images show a workman bringing grapes to the man treading them in the vat and, in October, one man is decanting the new wine into barrels while his companion hammers on the hoops. Such images are also often found in books of hours, (personal prayer books with prayers for all the seasons of the year) included in the illustrated zodiacal calendars which are a feature of these books . Some of the best known and most beautiful are those in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry produced by the Limbourg brothers for Jean, Duc de Berry at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The March picture shows the Chateau de Lusignan in the background with vines being pruned in an enclosed vineyard outside its walls; other peasants also plough with oxen and tend sheep. The September image is a magnificent representation of the grape harvest in vineyards at the foot of the walls of the Chateau de Saumur. A woman stretches herself from the back-breaking labour of picking the grapes, a man tastes a small bunch while both an ox cart laden with tubs and pack mules wait to collect the picked grapes.31 Documents concerning individual landholdings also provide evidence of the methods adopted by winegrowers in this period. The evidence for the manors of Teynham and Northfleet gives the impression that work in the vineyards was organized in the traditional manner; a list of expenditure, as we have seen, includes payments for cutting back old roots, propagating by layering, digging and hoeing between the vines and erecting the stakes to support them. All these operations were carried out by a skilled vine dresser who was paid a wage. The man in charge at Teynham in 1273–1274 was provided with a robe to the value of 8s (a considerable sum) and had an underling called Lambert. The Kentish vineyards were also equipped with presses whose moving parts had to be greased with wax and soap. The only work which was apparently carried out as an element in feudal service was the transport of wine barrels and the provision of grape pickers.32 The realization that the production of wine was a skilled business requiring much preparation from the first clearing of the site for a vineyard and the planting of the first vine cuttings to the production of the first barrel of

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wine probably led landlords to understand that the customary obligatory labour of feudal tenants was ill suited to the management of a vineyard. As early as c. AD 700 the countryside near Trier was devoted almost entirely to vine growing largely tended by specialist growers operating under an early form of metayage. Also in the Rhineland large landowners, often monasteries, were prepared to divide their lands into smaller holdings held on leases with rents in both money and wine. In the eleventh century, the winegrowers on the estates in Luxembourg of the Abbey of St Maximilian at Trier were fortunate in obtaining leases on favourable terms since their payments whether in cash or in kind were not fixed but varied with the success of the harvest. Generally the rent would amount to one third of the wine produced.33 Metayage contracts were normally for a term of years and were found in Italy and France as well as in German lands. This system, which continued in use in some areas till the twentieth century, probably grew out of the earlier use of complant agreements, often used to establish new vineyards. Under this system the landowner granted a plot to the tenant who cleared the ground, planted and tended the vines for the 5 years normally thought to be necessary before the vines began to bear sufficient fruit for the making of wine. At this point the land was divided with half reverting to the landlord and half remaining with the tenant who, in fact acquired secure legal ownership of his share of the holding. Metayage agreements, usually for a term of years, involved the landlord providing the land and the capital for the vineyard while the tenant provided the labour. The wine produced would be divided between the two often on a half and half or two-thirds / one-third basis. Increasingly from the thirteenth century on, despite the widespread use of the metayage system, landlords were inclined to keep some land in their own hands to exploit for the production of wine produced for sale, as well as that needed for their own consumption. In yet another system, that of the closier, often used by monasteries which owned considerable areas under vines, the landlord provided an experienced vine dresser with a house for himself and his family, as well as all their food and a wage for the worker himself, which was not dependent on the hours he worked. This provided an unusual degree of both security and independence for the family of a master vigneron since such agreements were rarely terminated.34 Later at the end of the fourteenth century

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the old form of contract, the complant, was used once more by landlords. It had originally been used to extend the cultivation of vines into areas being settled by colonizing peasants; at this later period it was used in a somewhat similar way. The fall in population caused by the plagues of the fourteenth century had led to many vineyards being abandoned. Landlords who wished to restore viticulture as some degree of economic stability returned now made agreements with growers who would pay nothing while the vineyard was planted and established and who would acquire half the property once wine was being produced. Agreements of this kind can be found around Toulouse. Orléans and Quercy in the fifteenth century. The terms, however, became steadily less favourable to the peasantry as population levels recovered and the landlords wished to hold on to increasingly profitable assets.35 Attempts to estimate the costs of running a vineyard from year to year are problematic. There are so many variables to take into account. A disastrous frost could affect one property and not that only a short distance away. Either too much rain or drought at crucial times of the year could have similar effects. Markets conditions could vary greatly while external events like the disruptions of wars or civil strife might disproportionally affect certain areas and not others. In the areas of France which suffered from the incursions of English armies particularly in the fourteenth century, a whole year’s production might be lost or the vineyard might even be completely destroyed. The evidence there is tends to be valid only for a particular vineyard or the lands of a particular owner. Accounts for estates run by paid labour give some indication of wage rates and costs in a similar way to those for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s estates already discussed and also similarly allow an overview of the work needed to keep the vines in good heart. It was necessary in some years to make provision for the purchase of dung which would be spread in the spring; for propagation whether by taking cuttings or layering, for the making and erecting of the stakes for the vines, and then tying in the new growth, for digging round the vines, weeding and removing leaves in the summer (to avoid them casting a shade over the grapes), and for the harvest. All this was hard manual labour. Additional expenses on any vineyard related to the purchases of barrels and baskets for the harvesters. Grease for the press was

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also needed and provision for the costs of the transport of the barrels, first of all to a cellar or similar wine store, eventually perhaps to a river or sea port for onward transport to the consumers. The wage rates of becheurs de vignes (those preparing the vineyards in the spring) in the Anjou region rose considerably in the 1360s when the population was suffering from the effects of the Black Death and the great chevauchées of the English armies destroyed any security in the countryside. This was not compensated for by a rise in the price of wine, leading some proprietors to abandon viticulture altogether. Conditions improved in the fifteenth century with vineyards being restored. Labour costs fell; becheurs who had received as much as 36 deniers per day in 1361 now received around 15 deniers per day, while women and children who were largely employed in removing leaves shading the grapes in the summer got around 7–10 deniers per day.36 An attempt to relate the wage costs of the vineyard workers with the cost of wine at Angers in various years between 1360 and 1444 seems to confirm that the workers in the 1360s were paid very well even though the price of wine was low: by the 1440s wage rates had not markedly declined but the price of wine had more than doubled restoring the profitability of vineyards.37 In the case of the vineyard in the Lyonnais belonging to the abbey of SaintRomain in the Saône valley the cost of work in the vineyards for 1 year in the late fifteenth century can be broken down: manuring, including the cost of the dung and the baskets needed to transport it cost around 17 florins (this work was not needed every year and some vine growers actively discouraged the use of dung for fear of tainting the taste of the grapes); digging cost around 19 florins. The most expensive of all the operation was the staking of the vines at over 52 florins but this included the cost of the stakes, their transport to the vineyard, the ties needed, pruning done at the same time and food for the workers as well as their pay. Even the expenses on harvesting the grapes which involved 62 pickers, 48 porters, and 11 men working on the winepress only came to around 17 florins. The total costs averaged around 153 florins in the years 1466–1475. In the same period the wine produced could be sold for 210–260 florins giving a reasonable margin of profit.38 Another perspective on the work and the workers in vineyards in France is provided by the apprenticeship records of the city of Orléans. This city

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included quite extensive areas of vineyards within its boundaries especially in the parishes of Saint-Marceau and Saint-Jean-le-Blanc; thus the city records include details of those apprenticed to winegrowers along with those apprenticed to the more usual urban trades of carpenters, shoemakers and other artisans. A close study of these records in the fifteenth century, however, has revealed some peculiarities about the young men who apparently wished to learn the skills of the vigneron. First of all, many were older than those apprenticed to the usual crafts being often around 18 years old, not the more usual 12 or 14; not boys but young men. Most came from rural villages in the Loire valley, places which themselves frequently contained vineyards where the skills of the vine grower might as easily be acquired as in Orléans. Rather than a premium being paid to the master of the apprentice as was the case in most crafts, these young men received salaries of between 3 and 5 livres tournois per year along with working clothes. This has lead to the belief that no real teaching of the art of growing vines or making wine was involved. The winegrowers needed a work force strong enough to dig and dress the vines in the cold of winter and do all the other work in the vineyard, sometimes having sufficient knowledge to graft the vines as well. Using apprenticeship contracts to bind the workmen to them was to the masters’ advantage since the wages offered were low. The young men who accepted these contracts were, it is claimed, prepared to accept these terms because they at least ensured a minimum standard of living and a degree of security.39 This state of affairs says more about the desire of the masters to exploit a vulnerable work force than it does about the notion that growing vines was a skilled trade, needing a lengthy apprenticeship. At least in the Loire valley in the second half of the fifteenth century, it seems that vineyard owners were hard-headed business men looking for the profitable exploitation of their assets. The total area under vines in France at the end of the fifteenth century undoubtedly declined from the peak in the late thirteenth century. In Normandy, apple orchards for cider had been planted in areas where vines had once grown. Many aristocratic landowners in less favourable climatic regions had given up viticulture as unprofitable. Peasants producing only a little wine in these areas might, on the other hand, still find it advantageous to cultivate vines since the sale of wine brought in welcome ready money.

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Winegrowing also declined generally in regions where there was no easy access to a market; this was the case in the Camargue. Conversely near Lyon winegrowing flourished to supply the markets in the city which sat astride a major trade route. The vineyards in the Rhine and Moselle valleys and the adjoining areas may similarly have declined in extent at the same period. Here the competition in the market was not from cider but from the beer enriched with hops which was becoming the drink of choice in Flanders and many German communities. Hops were planted, for example, around Aix la Chapelle and Ingoldstadt.40 Another problem unique to vineyards in the steep valleys of the Moselle region was that cultivation had spread so far up the steep slopes of the hills in the boom years of the late thirteenth century that the terraces were difficult to work. Some vines were not supported on stakes in these conditions but allowed to scramble along the terrace itself with slates placed under the fruit.41 The fact that at least some of the vineyards in such locations continued to be profitable gives some idea of the hold these white wines had on the market. The cultivation of vines in southern Europe, particularly in medieval Italy, faced rather different challenges. Even if the area devoted to the growing of vines decreased in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Empire and the trading networks which had bound the Roman world together, by the tenth century vineyards were profitable and the area under vines was increasing in the countryside near large towns and trading cities like Florence or Bologna. Ecclesiastical landlords undoubtedly helped in this expansion. By the end of the twelfth century in Tuscany vines were planted not only on the slopes of hills facing south or east but also in the plains which had at one time been considered too marshy for viticulture.42 The same increase in vineyards on lower flatter ground was also evident around Bologna. The wine produced was not normally intended for distant markets but to satisfy the considerable thirst of the townspeople. In Bologna the presence of the university and its large student population may have been another factor in increasing demand.43 It has also been suggested that the improvements in transport in the late fourteenth century, the fall in freight charges and the widespread adoption of more sophisticated systems of tolls and customs which differentiated between bulk and luxury commodities helped Italian vine growers to increase their

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profits. It was no longer of prime importance to grow the vines and make the wine as near as possible to the market even on unsuitable land.44 Growers could now more easily cover the costs of transport from the best winegrowing locations to their markets. In a large and wealthy town like Florence in the fifteenth century it became possible to find wines not only grown locally but those from specialist producers in southern Italy, Crete or the Aegean Islands. The methods by which the vines were grown were in general very similar to those used further north. Crescens, whose writing on agriculture was so influential in France as we have seen, was perhaps regarded as even more of an authority in his native Italy. Although it is not entirely clear how much of his work reflects his own experience as a vineyard owner and how much is derived from the classical models he followed, it is clear that, when he describes the virtues and drawbacks of no less than 41 different vine slips, he is discussing those grown in the Italy of his day, particularly those successful in his home region of Emilia. For each, he describes the hardiness of the plant, its suitability for particular locations and the type of fruit it produced. He made some mention of table grapes but his main concern is the quality of wine produced with more attention paid to white wine than red. He even discussed vines which yielded poorly in his part of the country but did exceedingly well in other areas like the Vernaccia of the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian Coast. Near Bologna, the white grapes called Sclava and Albana sprouted late avoiding the danger of late frosts, while the red grapes Grilla and Ciciga stood up well to the hot damp summers in that part of Italy.45 When it came to the methods of viticulture Crescens largely favoured the intensive culture of vines in specialized enclosures in rows supported on stakes even though there were many different ways of organizing a vineyard used in Italy in the fourteenth century. The most characteristic was perhaps what was known as coltura promiscua or mixed cultivation, the system which had grown up on the flat lands around cities, in Umbria, Tuscany, Emilia and Romagna. It was much favoured by peasants with small holdings held under the metayage system. In this method of cultivation, a row of vines supported on living trees often pruned to accommodate them, or on trellises, would be planted among areas of ploughland or in an orchard with

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olives or other fruit trees.46 After the Black Death, this form of cultivation tended to be replaced near large cities by more profitable crops like olives, saffron or wheat. Perhaps the most striking difference between Mediterranean and more northerly vineyards was that, while both were undoubtedly commercial operations with marketing the wine a matter of considerable concern to the owners, in France and Germany wine was largely consumed by those who had some standing in society, whether in a town, the Church or as noblemen, while around the Mediterranean it was the everyday essential drink of all whether rich or poor, lay or ecclesiastic. French or German wine was also much more likely to be transported for some distance before reaching the eventual drinkers than wine made in the South. The way wine was made, however, was broadly speaking the same whether in northern vineyards or those around the Mediterranean. There were, in fact no essential differences between the methods used in our period and those employed on the properties of Varro or Columella in Roman times. Crescens’ book and the accounts and other documents already used when discussing work in the vineyards make this clear. The way in which a medieval grape harvest would seem unfamiliar to those from earlier times related not to the making of the wine itself but to the organization of the harvest. This reflected the social system of the medieval countryside where a vigneron would normally owe allegiance either to a lay or ecclesiastic landowner or was under the control of a town guild or corporation. The dominant landowner of whatever nature usually had the authority to declare a date for the start of the harvest or vendange. This could usually be estimated with a degree of accuracy from the date on which the vines bloomed but was, of course subject to the vagaries of the weather in any one district in any one year. The records which exist for the start of the grape harvest in certain places for quite long periods incidentally allow deductions to be made about the climate over the same time span.47 Certain terrible years clearly seared themselves into local memory; for example, in 1468 the winter was so cold that wine froze in the barrels in the merchants’ stores and work could not start in the vineyards till much later than usual, thus delaying the harvest too. Vendange records are probably most plentiful for French vineyards but the system described could be found with only minor differences in most wine-producing areas.

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Once the ban or date of the beginning of the harvest was announced, the vineyard proprietors could not pick any earlier on pain of heavy fines and guards were often appointed to ensure that the ban was observed. The only exception was the seigneur or landlord himself who sometimes started harvesting the day before everyone else and was thus able to have the choice of the best and cheapest labour. The harvest involved all available people, both men and women, so that it was frequently almost a communal effort with a carnival atmosphere although itinerant workers might also be employed. As the picking proceeded, the next steps in the making of wine depended on whether it was intended to make white or red wine to use the modern terms. Garrier has pointed out that the authors of L’Agriculture et Maison Rustique, published in 1561 had ten words for the colour of wine, the palette beginning with pâle (more or less colourless) and ending with noir (so deeply coloured as to appear black) taking in tawny, yellowish, reddish and ruddy on the way.48 Any wine in the ‘white’ spectrum might be made of either white grapes alone or a mixture of white grapes and black grapes with white juice; growers were advised by, for example Olivier de Serres, that a mixture of different vines could produce the best results. The grapes were collected in baskets which were then tipped into large vats, usually in some sort of shelter near the vigneron’s house. Here the first rough pressing, from treading by workers or by using planks of wood took place, and some juice was collected. After this in most cases the mass of squashed grapes or marc was taken to the press and pressed at least once more to extract all the must. At this point the experience and skill of the vigneron came into play. By varying the number of pressings he could alter the eventual taste and colour of the wine since each increased the acidity of the must. The must ran off into barrels in which it fermented in a matter of days. These barrels needed to be kept in a barn or similar building where the temperature would not drop lower than about 15˚ or rise much above 20˚; if it was too cold fermentation would not take place, but too much heat also stopped it. This was an anxious time for the vigneron since fermentation could cause a barrel to explode if there was not an outlet for the gas produced. It could also be difficult to keep the must at the right temperature especially as the only guide that the vigneron had was experience.49

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It is not surprising that most of the wines produced in more northern districts were white in view of the range of temperatures required to ensure successful fermentation. This may have been a particular problem for the Moselle and Rhineland vineyards, in years with bad summers and bad harvests. This may well have led to the production of what was known as gefeuerter wein or ‘heated wine’. This is mentioned in documents relating to the Rhine valley around the villages of Kaub and Bacharach in the fourteenth century, and later also to producers in the Moselle region. There is some suggestion that wine merchants in Cologne, the major market for Rhenish wines, often organized, or themselves undertook the process. It involved heating the buildings where the barrels of must were stored; this increased the speed at which fermentation took place, heating up the must considerably. The result was sweet wine similar to, but cheaper than, the sweet wines from the Mediterranean which had won d’Andeli’s Bataille des Vins. This product was quite distinct from ‘cooked’ or ‘boiled’ wine (in German gesotten wein) which was the basis of spiced drinks, great favourites at this period.50 Red wines were more complicated to produce. Black grapes were a necessity for this but even so these wines varied from those hardly coloured at all (sometimes called ‘gris’ or ‘grey’) to the intensely dark ‘black’ wine. The basic difference from the making of white wine was that fermentation could take much longer and that the tint could be varied by controlling the amount of contact between the must and the skins of the grapes. Removing the stalks from the grapes before pressing them was another way of controlling the type of wine finally produced; without the stalks the wine had less tannin and less acidity and was ready to drink more quickly. The picked grapes, if the weather was very warm at the time of the harvest, could begin to ferment even before they were tipped in the vats. The rapid fermentation in the vats meant that it was very important for the vats not to be filled to the brim; otherwise they could overflow. It was also necessary to ensure that the men treading the grapes in the vats always had their heads well above the brim of the vat otherwise they could be overcome by the carbon dioxide produced by the fermenting grapes. This did on occasion lead to the death of the men employed.51 Once fermentation was well under way (usually after a matter of hours) the vats were covered over with planks. On the top of the fermenting must

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there collected what French winemakers called le chapeau, all the skins, pips and other debris. The number of times this was pushed down into the must controlled the final colour of the wine; also important was the length of time the must was allowed to ferment in the vats. This could be varied by the vigneron and fermentation would also cease if the vats became too hot. The longer the period of fermentation the more heavily coloured the wine.52 What was known as vin clairet, produced in the Bordelais largely for English customers, was like a modern rosé wine. To make this, fermentation in the vats lasted usually no more than one, or at the most four days. The wine was then drawn off into barrels. There is some evidence that the second stage of the process, the use of a winepress, was not commonly undertaken in the Bordelais until c.1590.53 In other winegrowing districts tinted wines drawn off like this straight from the vats were known as vin de goute. Once this had been done, the crushed grapes and other matter remaining in the vats (the marc) were lifted out by forks and taken to the winepress. Here the marc could be pressed as many as three times with the resulting wine becoming more bitter with each pressing. Sometimes this second quality wine was mixed with the vin de goutte; sometimes it was sold off more cheaply; sometimes it was used by the vigneron himself for the refreshment of his workers. This was not, however the end of the process. The mess of crushed grapes and debris, by this time more or less devoid of any juice, could then be mixed with water in a container and left for 2 or 3 days. The result was a low alcohol (2–3%) barely coloured drink called by different names in different regions, piquette, boisson, retrovinum, buvande, for example; it was drunk by workers or the poor or if the only alternative was water.54 Even this was not the final use made of the residues from winemaking. The last remnants were used as mulch for the fields or mixed with straw and the like could be used as winter fodder for animals. Medieval winegrowers did not store their produce on their own premises for long periods. The aim was to get it to market as quickly as possible with responsibility for storage being the concern of the merchants and shippers. Consumers demanded new wine and clearly regarded old wine (that from the previous year) with grave suspicion. Very often the wine casks needed topping up within a relatively short space of time because of losses due to

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evaporation or leakage from the barrels so that often a merchant buying, for example, 20 casks of wine would be provided with 21 so that there was wine available for this purpose. The need to top up the casks was legitimate but it provided opportunities for sharp practice by either winegrowers or merchants. It was only too easy to top up casks of good wine with inferior produce. There were also no very effective means of filtering wine so it could easily contain ‘foreign bodies’. Although the need to clean casks, vats and all other tools and requisites before the harvest began was well known, wine was only too easily spoiled by the action of bacteria and unwanted yeasts, a danger only eliminated in fact in recent times by the stringent controls in a modern winery. The ever present risk of wine spoiling is only too clearly illustrated by the recipes for clarifying or altering wine in bad condition which are found in the works of all the contemporary writers on wine, some of which have already been mentioned. There were also instances of actively dangerous substances being added to wines, like mercury and lead. In the German winegrowing areas particular use was also made of sulphur. This could involve the use of linen soaked in sulphur being suspended in the wine barrels or the use of sulphur to halt fermentation.55 The likelihood of the spoiling of at least some wine from every harvest was perhaps the major reason why growers wished to get their produce into the hands of merchants as quickly as possible. Few, if any, vineyards had other than rudimentary means of storing wine. Consumers and merchants in distant markets were those most likely to have cellars below ground level where some degree of temperature control was possible. In Winchelsea excavation of the old town has lead to the discovery of 33 cellars, some with vaulted roofs. It is not certain that they were used for bulk wine storage but this seems their most likely purpose since they are too damp for high value goods like silks but very suitable for perishable goods which needed a constant cool temperature.56 By the end of the fifteenth century, the cultivation of vines and the making of wine was a major agricultural and commercial activity in many areas of Western Europe. In England an interest in vine growing was uncommon and confined to certain favourable districts. Around the Mediterranean, wine remained an essential and unremarkable part of daily life with the methods used to produce it little changed since Roman times. In France

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and the Rhineland all the activities associated with making wine were of great importance to both landowners and peasants and also to the merchants who traded in their produce. As a commodity with a ready market, which could command a good price, and which often had high status, wine could not easily be replaced as a source of revenue for both vineyard owners and rulers. The fact that it was also a source of comfort and pleasure to many was perhaps an additional bonus.

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3

Regulating the Wine Trade

By the end of the fifteenth century, winemaking was clearly established as a profitable activity for growers, and vintners. It was also regarded with approval by the authorities, whether local corporations or national rulers, who could impose and collect dues and taxes on the production and traffic in wine. The need to safeguard the quality of the product or, alternatively, the authority of landlords over tenant vignerons, so that this important source of revenue might be protected, was also well understood. The complex regulatory system which grew up as a result in major wine-producing and consuming areas developed gradually over the period 1000–1500 AD, in many ways reflecting the changes in society and in the machinery of government over the same time span. Many of these developments regarding wine producers are best illustrated by evidence from France where both viticulture and the trade in wine was most fully developed and documented. In the eighth and ninth centuries the Church, particularly the bishops and the most important monasteries, was the body most likely to be the proprietor of considerable areas under vines. It has often been suggested that this reflected the need for wine to be readily available for ritual use, particularly, of course, in the ceremony of the Mass. While this may have influenced the planting of vines in remote places off the usual trade routes, not normally thought of as suitable for viticulture, it is clear that many ecclesiastical landowners even in this early period produced far too much wine for this to be the only purpose behind its production. Another suggestion is that the grandees of the church, whether bishops or the abbots of important monasteries, were often part of a web of hospitality giving not only food and shelter to important travellers and officials, but offering them the honour due to their status. An inescapable part of this was the serving of wine in lavish quantities at meals and other suitable occasions. When a ruler might travel with a train of several hundred courtiers and

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servants, all of whom required appropriate entertainment, this could be a heavy obligation. In mitigation of this, there was often an expectation that the landowner could recoup the expense at least to some extent from grants of lands or other favours from a grateful monarch or other important guest. Similarly nobles were also expected to offer and receive similar entertainment from their peers or superiors; this may sound like a fairly trivial matter to be a factor in driving the development of an activity like the production of wine but this perhaps underestimates the way in which status was displayed at this period and the importance of the demonstration of elite status to as many people as possible.1 The extent of the hospitality which could be expected of a well-known monastery is illustrated by that exacted from Cluny; between 1244–1257, this monastery entertained Pope Innocent IV, the bishops of Senlis and Évreux, the king of France, Louis IX, his mother, his wife Blanche, his brother and his sister, the Emperor of Constantinople, the king of Aragon and the son of the king of Castile, all of them attended by large suites of nobles, servants and clergy2. The fear of finding the cellar lacking in sufficient supplies when entertaining elite guests probably also lies behind the stories of sudden miraculous discoveries of fresh wine by possibly embarrassed hosts. In one, coming from the tenth century, the Count of Rennes was discomfited to find he could only offer beer or water to envoys from the Count of Anjou. His prayers were answered, however when a peasant appeared to tell him that an enormous cask full of good wine had been unexpectedly discovered at a port on a nearby island. The story is recorded in the cartulary of the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur de Redon which received all the count’s rights over the island in gratitude for this apparently miraculous event.3 It is the case, however, that wine was early and correctly perceived by the Church as a highly marketable commodity, particularly if the vineyards were adjacent to an easy means of transport to markets and consumers. The abbeys of the Cistercian order which, in England became major producers of raw wool, in France turned to viticulture not for their own consumption since their rule was an austere one, but for profit. In Burgundy the vineyards of Meursault, Musigny, and Clos de Vougeot among others were established by this order. Their experience and skill in winemaking were renowned, while the monastery at Vougeot created a cellar over 100

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feet long, capable of storing at least 2000 barrels.4 The vineyards of the Cistercian abbey at Longport, near Soissons have been studied in some detail. From this it is clear that the abbey first acquired a vineyard in 1143 as a gift from a canon of Soissons. Within a relatively short space of time the abbey had at least 13 vineyards stretching along the right bank of the Aisne to the north of Soissons itself. Some of the original gifts to the abbey contained limitations on the use of the wine made by the monks. It was to be used for the Mass and in the refectory of the abbey itself, and further, to succour the poor and to refresh travellers. By 1228, however Longport had cellars at Noyon and was actively selling wine not only there but also at Presles and in Soissons itself.5 In the county of Auxerre the Cistercians at Pontigny produced such good wine that the Franciscan friar Salimbene de Adam, who wrote a chronicle of his travels, described it in 1245 as ‘white or sometimes golden, aromatic and full bodied with an exquisite taste which fills the heart with joy and confidence’.6 Both noble and ecclesiastical landlords, who were also feudal lords or seigneurs, drew other benefits from wine apart from the sale of that produced on their estates, whether coming from vineyards they managed themselves, or from rent in kind from tenants. Their right to require feudal tenants to use the siegneurial winepress could also be valuable. These presses were relatively expensive to set up and operate and thus probably out of the reach of most small producers. The compulsory use of the lord’s press could, nevertheless be a burden for his tenants. One major problem was that access to the press depended on the good will of the lord or his servants, not on the needs of the small producer. At the very moment when the grapes were ready for winemaking access to the press might be denied. There were some regions where this right did not exist and a few instances of local vignerons establishing their own press as happened in 1473 in the village of Saint-Dos in Béarn. On the other hand, when this right was suppressed at the time of the French Revolution, there were some places where the local producers complained vociferously that, despite all the disadvantages, there was no alternative to their dependence on the seigneur’s press.7 Some seigneurs had further rights especially the valuable banvin enabling them to monopolize the local markets for a set period; during this time no other wine could be offered for sale. As new wine carried a premium, this

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was considerably to the lord’s advantage. The banvin, or ban des vendanges as this right was also called, was sometimes used more widely to ensure that the wine produced by the burgesses of a particular city had a similar monopoly in the local market for a set period.8 The various stratagems which a town community could employ to attempt to control the growing of vines and the marketing of wine within its territory are clearly demonstrated by the development of the vine-growing area associated with Bergerac on the Dordogne.9 Vines had first been grown in the neighbourhood of the town by the abbey of Beaulieu in the ninth century. By the fourteenth century the vignoble of Bergerac was a precisely defined area of vineyards belonging to townsmen and burgesses of Bergerac, at first, mostly to the east and north of the town, but later also spreading to the south. The town authorities or Consuls had the sole power to announce the ban de vendange, the date on which the harvest would begin. This was backed up by draconian punishments even going as far as the death penalty for breaches.10 This date was normally in the second half of September. Guards were appointed to watch over the vineyards to prevent either theft of the grapes or unauthorized picking. There were also watchers at the town gates to prevent the entry into the town of either grapes or must from vineyards outside the Bergerac vignoble, (known as la Vinée), before 11th November (St Martin’s day). After that date such produce paid a toll. Furthermore, only wines made by burgesses, (which might or might not include must from outside la Vinée) could be sold between Martinmas and Christmas. Within the town itself the retail sale of wine in taverns was also strictly controlled. In theory only burgesses could do this but both foreigners and nobles could acquire this right by paying a toll known as pougèzes, something which provided a useful addition to the town’s income.11 Similar regulations could be found in other towns in wineproducing districts. In fact the rapid growth of corporate town life and government in France in the thirteenth century has been linked to the economic success of wine production. The communal action required in successfully managing burgesses’ vineyards and the revenue which this could produce were strong motives to seek a borough charter. The Consuls of Bergerac, however, had to deal with another pressing set of problems at the time of the vendange in the late fourteenth century.

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This was because of the position of the town in the midst of the area of south-west France disputed between the English and the French Crowns throughout the Hundred Years War. English armies were frequently in the area, prone to loot cellars or destroy crops. When this was the case the Consuls had recourse to the tactic of paying off the English commanders and ensuring the safety of the vendange by offering them large quantities of the new wine. In 1378 immunity from attack was purchased by an immediate delivery of 8 pipes of wine, followed up by the promise of a further 30 pipes and a sum of money when the harvest was complete. In 1414, it was agreed that 35 tuns of both white wine and clairet would be delivered to the English to ensure immunity from damage to the vineyards and the town for the next 4 years. If no pati, as this kind of agreement was called, could be agreed on, a tax on the local wine producers was imposed to pay for a militia to guard the vineyards.12 In Liége and its surroundings the first vineyards were established by the cathedral chapter and local monasteries. Gradually, however, many of their tenants became leaseholders and also rich merchant families in the city began to invest in the local vineyards. One prominent burgess, who was an échevin (bailiff ) in 1349–1387, and mayor in 1355, leased at least. three vineyards in the 1370s; he, and others like him, employed skilled vignerons to run their properties. As early as 1343 a guild of vignerons existed in the town although this group of workers were neither very wealthy nor powerful in the government of the town. Much more prominent were the so-called vintners or wine merchants some of whom served as échevins, and who owned land around the city. Their wealth however came from trade in better quality wine from more distant places, not from the sale of the vin du pays. Trade in this within the city was carefully controlled. An assize of wine set prices, which applied for one league around the city. All sales to those from outside Liége had to take place in the Marché or Quai de la Goffe. The topping up of casks of good wine with inferior produce was forbidden. Wardens enforced the regulations, their duties including the right to inspect all wine cellars once a fortnight. Any fines imposed for breaches of the rules were shared between the wardens themselves, the cathedral chapter and the city échevinage. It is not clear if all these rules were rigorously enforced but their existence is testimony

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to the important place held by the business of wine in the city and its potential to be profitable both for individuals and the authorities.13 The efforts of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, in 1395 to ban the cultivation of a particular vine stock, the gamay grape, and to outlaw the use of manure in Burgundian vineyards were much less usual if not in fact unprecedented. His decree of 31 July declared wine made from the gamay to be ‘very bad’ and ‘very harmful to human beings’. He accused winemakers in his territories of adding hot water to the casks where the wine was fermented in order to sweeten it. He claimed that the result was ‘quite foul’ and because of this, sales of Burgundian wine had declined. His purpose in doing this has been interpreted as a ‘landmark measure in consumer protection and quality control’. When his decree is put into context, however, it has been suggested that his intentions were rather more complex. First of all, despite its good reputation, it was true that the sales of Beaune, the wine principally affected by the decree, had been declining in the years before 1395. This, however, probably had little to do with whether gamay grapes were used and more to do with the economic consequences of the recurrent plague epidemics in Burgundy and Western Europe generally in the late fourteenth century and the confused political situation in the immediately prior period in the Duke’s domains. Neither the use of this particular vine stock nor the manuring of the vines with dung were new practices in 1395. A close look at the records for wine sales in Dijon and the fortunes of individual families prominent in the wine trade gives a strong impression that the Duke’s decree far from helping the market for Beaune, in fact, depressed it further. Merchant families who had previously done very well out of the wine trade were, in some cases reduced to penury. This may have suited the interests of the Duke who had faced many problems with the leading townsmen in the cities in his more northern possessions like Flanders and their demands for freedom from ducal control, but did nothing for the prosperity of Burgundy and the sales of its most renowned wine.14 In contrast, the turbulent politics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries worked to the great advantage of Bordeaux and its surrounding countryside, the Bordelais. In this area, which, by the fourteenth century, was one of the most productive wine-producing regions in France, town

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authorities, landlords and rulers all tried with varying success to regulate the making of wine and the trade in this valuable commodity. Their efforts did not, however, undermine the expansion of the cultivation of vines in the valleys of the rivers feeding into the Gironde. Vineyards in the ownership of the Church, whether the Archbishop of Bordeaux or the most important abbeys, continued the tradition of vine growing dating from the time of Ausonius into the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was most notably the case with the estates of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, those belonging to the canons of Saint-Seurin of Bordeaux, and to the great abbey of La Sauve Majeure in the district later famous to connoisseurs of wines as Entre Deux Mers, between the rivers Dordogne and Garonne. The monks of La Sauve Majeure were primarily responsible for clearing the extensive forests in this region and planting vineyards in their stead.15 The extent of the influence that the early development of winemaking on

Figure 3.1 A capital on a pillar in the ruined church of the Abbey of La Sauve Majeure. The abbey was a pioneer of the development of viticulture in the region known as Entre Deux Mers in the thirteenth century.

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a commercial scale by the Church had on vine growing in the Bordelais is demonstrated by the fact that the all-important boundary between the Bordeaux region and the so-called haut pays followed that of the archdiocese of Bordeaux. By the early fourteenth century this distinction was fundamental to the dues paid on wine leaving the country by way of the Gironde. Wines from the haut pays were normally defined as all those produced upstream of Saint-Macaire, a town which grew up around a Benedictine monastery. It owed its prosperity to its ability to control traffic on the river Garonne which flowed past the town, including many vessels carrying wine. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, despite the ecclesiastical origins of the vineyards of the Bordelais, control over the sale and production of wine was claimed by the burgesses of Bordeaux.16 Superimposed over their regime of regulations and taxes, was the system of dues and customs payments administered by the officers of the Duke of Aquitaine. From 1154, when Henry II of England married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, the administration of the Duchy was in the hands of the English Crown. The revenue raising potential of the Bordeaux wine trade was, perhaps not fully apparent to English royal official until control of La Rochelle and its surrounding districts passed to the French in 1224. Until that date, the wines of Anjou and Poitou were those preferred in England and indeed were those lauded in La Bataille des Vins. King John favoured Bordeaux wines and purchased them in some quantities for his own table from the first years of the thirteenth century. As well as the loss of English control of Poitou, this royal preference perhaps was part of the motivation for the charter granted to Bordeaux in 1235 by Henry III from which date the trade in these wines between Bordeaux and English ports began to increase noticeably. His son Edward I reorganized the government of the duchy in 1255, and this marked the beginning of a great boom in viticulture around the city and in its hinterland. Under this regime, the Constable of Bordeaux, a royal official, was responsible for the Grande Coutume des Vins imposed, in theory, on all wines of whatever origin passing through the port of Bordeaux, and also for a duty known as issac imposed on all wines which changed hands in the city.17 From the point of view of the Crown, the great advantage of both duties was that the rates at which they were paid could be varied by the

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Constable annually and also the currency in which they were charged, (the possibilities were either English or ‘Bordeaux’ pounds, shillings, pence/ livres, sous, deniers) could be altered, usually of course to the benefit of the Crown. Like many medieval imposts, moreover, exemptions from these dues also presented the Crown with opportunities to attract or reward supporters. This could be a valuable weapon for a regime which was inevitably involved in the many disputes which arose in the region. Some involved legal or political issues but others were essentially over matters of commercial advantage, with those involved seeking to protect their own interests against those of rivals. In the case of the city of Bordeaux the burgesses claimed for themselves certain privileges. First of all they claimed to be

Figure 3.2 The ramparts of Saint-Macaire with the priory church visible in the background. In the fifteenth century and earlier the Garonne ran at the foot of these ramparts and the town marked the limit of the privileges of the wine growers of the Bordelais and the beginning of the haut pays. The town was a major port and trading centre on the river. The river now flows some distance from the walls.

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exempt from both the Grande Coutume and the issac on all wines made from grapes which were produced on land owned by burgesses lying within the limits of the archdiocese. The existence of this privilege was accepted and confirmed by the Crown in the charter of 1235. Initially, less securely backed by a royal grant was the burgesses’ claim that their wines alone could be sold in or exported through the city before St Martin’s day (11th November). In 1241, for example, the jurats of Bordeaux on their own authority, not that of the Crown, purported to grant free passage to wines from Agen after Martinmas. The final royal confirmation of this privilege did not in fact come until 1373.18 It was of such importance to the burgeses of Bordeaux because it meant that all wines from the haut pays above SaintMacaire, coming by barge down the rivers Tarn, Garonne and Lot, were excluded from the city until that date. This restriction, which ensured that the privileged group secured the best prices for their new wines, was not unusual as we have seen in the case of Bergerac. In Bordeaux, however, especially when the wine trade boomed in the fourteenth century, it was undermined by royal grants of exemptions. Those who first benefited from these royal exemptions were groups in Bordeaux itself who were not burgesses. This included the Hospital of Saint-Julien in 1289 and the canons of Saint-Seurin and their tenants also in the reign of Edward I.19 The same king concluded a much wider-ranging agreement, offering some relaxation of the customs system, with the cities of Toulouse, Rabastens, Montauban, Moissac, Bars, Gaillac, L’Isle and Villemur in 1285 despite some of them being a considerable distance from Bordeaux itself. Edward was to some extent compelled to do this after the cities’ plea for relief from the consequences of the customs regime at Bordeaux had been heard and decided in their favour in the highest court of the French Crown (the feudal overlord of Aquitaine; as Duke, Edward I was a vassal of the king of France). This agreement fixed the rates to be paid by producers from these districts for the Grande Coutume and the issac at 5 sous 4 deniers per tun for the Coutume and half that rate for the issac no matter what rate was set by the Constable annually. Other wine-producing towns, some at a considerable distance from Bordeaux, including Bayonne in 1288 and even Paris in 1293, obtained the same preferential treatment.20 After these special arrangements were set up, those left at the greatest

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disadvantage was the small group of wine producers in the Bordelais who were not burgesses and not members of any group enjoying the privilege of the fixed rate. The ‘special rates’ amounted to a considerable saving for wine merchants since, for example, the rate set by the Constable varied between 7 and 9 sous per tun, with the issac being charged at 3 sous 9 deniers, at the time these exemptions were agreed.21 Commercial pressures could also undermine the privileges of Bordeaux; if a poor harvest had led to a shortage of new wine in the city, it was not always advantageous for merchants to insist on the exclusion of high country wines before Martinmas. (This was probably the reasoning behind the exemption granted to wines from Agen.) Exporting merchants needed to dispatch their purchases promptly, in order to catch the top of the market in England and other northern places, while sailing too late in the season could also increase the risk of storms at sea and the total loss of the cargo. In these circumstances the high country wines, which, in fact came to make up a high proportion of those exported from Bordeaux, might be allowed into the city at an earlier date.22 There was also the additional complication that wines coming down the Dordogne, principally those from Bergerac and Saint-Emilion, were not caught by the Bordeaux system of dues and privileges because this river entered the estuary of the Gironde to the north of Bordeaux outside the limits of the port. One of the reasons for establishing the new port of Libourne in the 1250s at the confluence of the rivers Isle and Dordogne was to enable the English Crown to tax this traffic in the same way as that passing through Bordeaux. Edward I set up a system of tolls in 1268 to the fury of the wine merchants exporting by this route who appealed to their ultimate overlord the king of France to annul the dues. This conflict was one element in the outbreak of war between France and England c. 1294–1303. Only after the rebuilding of Libourne, following the conclusion of peace in 1302, was the passage of wine down the Dordogne re-established and the merchants prepared to accept the payment of dues to the English Crown.23 Nevertheless, despite the number of exemptions, as late as the reign of Louis XVI, the king’s financial secretary accused the Police des Vins, as the privileges of Bordeaux were then known, of oppressing the winegrowers of Languedoc and Périgord, Agen and Quercy to the great advantage of the burgesses of the city. He attempted

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Figure 3.3 The bridge over the Dordogne at Libourne. A great deal of wine was brought down this river, principally from Bergerac, for export to England and beyond. Wine exported by this route was exempt from the duties charged at Bordeaux.

to remove the privileges in his Six Edicts presented to the Conseil du roi in 1776.24 For the rulers of the duchy, whether the English Crown or the French king after 1453, the duties on the traffic in wine were highly productive despite the many exemptions and preferential rates. For the merchant the exemptions from royal dues which could be claimed were clearly of great importance. However, it is probably the case that no one, no matter how privileged their status, could avoid all imposts and restrictions. Small local dues and privileges, each with its own system of rates and exemptions existed alongside the systems of major rulers and the biggest corporate towns. It would be a fortunate merchant indeed, who could claim exemption from all of them. The sale of wine was also taxed and regulated by the authorities of consuming nations as well as those of producers. Wines, whether exported from vineyards in France or the Rhineland, faced the same regime when

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they were landed at an English port. The most ancient exaction was the prise of wines, (the right to part of a wine ship’s cargo) part of the royal prerogative of purveyance by which the royal household had the right to obtain supplies for its maintenance usually at a favourable price or even without payment. The royal butler anciently had the right to 1 tun of wine from ships carrying from 10–19 tuns of wine and one from before and one from aft of the mast in ships carrying larger cargoes. Up till 1302 all ships entering English ports whether freighted by denizens (Englishmen and naturalized aliens) or aliens (all other foreign merchants) were subject to this levy; from 1302 first Gascons and later other aliens paid in place of the prise a duty of 2s. per tun collected as part of the New Customs.25 The old system was reinstated from 1309–1322 but after that date all import duties on wine paid by aliens, including the charge in lieu of the prise, were collected together as the New Customs. Denizens generally continued to be subject to the prise of wine although there were, as usual, exemptions including those granted to the merchants of the Cinque Ports and of the city of London.26 Some idea of the way the prise of wines operated, and its relatively minor importance in the provision of wines to the king and his court can be gained from the account of the king’s butler, John de Wesenham for wines largely procured for the king, mostly by purchase, in 1347 for the consumption of those involved in the siege of Calais. This gives a very clear picture of the scale of the activities of the butler when war added to the usual needs of the royal household. Wesenham received a total of £2150. 14s. 8d. from the Exchequer. The value of wines procured under prise rights was only just over £109, even though wine landings at a wide range of ports were detailed in the accounts. Notable exceptions were London and Sandwich (both of which technically exempt from the prise) where, or so it was claimed, no wine ships put in, in the relevant period. Wesenham bought most of the remainder of the wine needed for Calais at Sluys, where more than £1000 was spent, and the rest at London, Sandwich, Southampton, Hull and Lynn; an overall total of over 700 tuns of Gascon wine, 8 of ‘coloured’ and 1 only of sweet Romeney wine. He then had to account for porters’ and freight charges and the use of a hoist to load the barrels for transport to Calais. He had to pay for the stowage of the cargo and also the rent of a

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cellar for storing wine not immediately shipped to France and deal with leakage and losses from evaporation. Finally, he bought the necessary material to colour 32 tuns of wine which had presumably deteriorated in the casks. It would seem likely that much of this wine was not of sufficient quality for the royal table but intended for the army camped somewhat miserably in the marshes around Calais. Even this was not the end of Wesenham’s duties; he also provided the wine for gifts from the king to royal officials and for royal alms going on this occasion to abbeys at Westminster, St Denis at Southampton, Beaulieu and Waverley in Surrey.27 Wesenham himself had close connections with the Crown as a successful grain merchant and provider of loan finance and would have had no difficulty in financing the provision of wines for the Crown out of his own pocket in the hope of future repayment.28 The mid-fourteenth century also saw the first levy of a new tax on wine imports in England. Tunnage and its usual ‘companion’ poundage, taxes on general goods and wine passing through the ports, were first introduced as a form of emergency taxation in 1347 when the Crown was facing the enormous expense of Edward III’s war in France, particularly, the siege of Calais. This impost was initially approved by the Great Council but not by the House of Commons, something which caused much indignation in the parliament of the following year.29 Under Richard II, however, this ‘exceptional’ tax was well on the way to being accepted as an integral part of the system of taxes on trade. By 1401, in the reign of Henry IV, the charge of 2s. per tun of wine appeared in the Parliament Roll along with the grant of a tenth and fifteenth ‘for the defence and governance of your said kingdom’ with no additional comment, the penalty for avoidance being double the usual charge.30 It had become an accepted part of the system of imposts on trade. By the mid-fifteenth century the rate was 3s. per tun of non-sweet wine and 3s. per tun of sweet wine. The only long-standing exemption from tonnage was claimed by Hansard merchants, who often dealt in Rhenish wine. This was not the final payment faced by English wine merchants on imports; there was also the gauger’s penny, nominally a fee to the official who checked each tun of wine at the ports.31 This fee might also be charged in Bordeaux. In 1348, it was claimed that gaugers in Aquitaine were taking the fee without checking the level of

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wine in the tuns. Many were in fact being loaded not properly filled. Losses from this fraud amounted to from one-sixth to one-fifth of what the owners ‘should rightly have from each tun’.32 Having dealt with all the royal dues imposed on imports, a wine merchant was not able to carry on his business free from further regulation and taxation. Local customs duties might be due (although there were numerous exemptions from these charges); this was the case at both Exeter (4d. per tun with one-third going to the Earl of Devon who controlled the wharf at Topsham where wine was unloaded)33 and Southampton. At Southampton, by the fifteenth century, the local custom was charged at the rate of 4d. per tun on wine brought in by sea, with a further 4d charged on wine sold in the town which was later re-exported by sea. The higher rate of 8d. per tun was also due on wines which changed hands in the town and which left through the Bargate overland. There were also other small charges such as that for the use of the crane to unload a vessel or for tying to the wharf.34 Other restrictions on trading in wine within the bounds of corporate towns existed. Some had their origin in the general belief at the time that goods should be sold at a ‘just price’, a belief that was deeply embedded in both Christian theology and popular morality. A trader or an artisan could in justice recover his costs plus a reasonable reward for his labour but issues relating to the value of an item or the strength of the demand for it carried less weight.35 In England, the Crown regularly issued proclamations fixing the price of wine, (as was also the case with the price of bread or ale) while enforcement of the decree was in the hands of the town authorities. The Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London note, for example, the receipt in September 1354 of the writ regarding the king’s proclamation fixing the price of wine at 6d. per gallon.36 Earlier, in 1342, the price was lower; John Beauflour was imprisoned by the City authorities for selling wine at 6d. rather than 4d. per gallon and for repeating the offence as soon as he was released.37 Detailed control over the sale of wine in the City was, however, largely in the hands of the guild or mistery of vintners. This undoubtedly existed as early as the twelfth century but became prominent in London affairs from the late thirteenth century. The mistery certainly elected two wardens to oversee the wine trade from 1257. Edward I supported their activities by granting them the use of a wharf on the Thames

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not far from Billingsgate in 1283. Their control over the retail sale of wine from Gascony was confirmed by the grant of a monopoly in 1364. Foreign merchants were confined by law to wholesale transactions.38 Although the vintners’ powers did not extend to sweet wines or those from other places particularly the Rhineland, they controlled the way Gascon wine was treated when it reached London and its sale in taverns. When a wine ship docked, the wine casks had to be tested by the royal gauger. The casks were then transported to the owner’s cellar where they had to remain for three days during which only wholesale transactions were possible. After this time it could be put on general sale but all negotiations had to take place via elected brokers for a fee. Once the wine was on sale in a tavern, each cask had to be assayed and the value and type of wine clearly marked on the front. Ordinances drawn up by the mistery in 1370 (although probably more a consolidation of existing practice that new rules) made clear that old wine must be entirely removed from a tavern before any new wine could be sold. Taverns which sold Gascon wine were strictly prohibited from selling wine from any other source. Cellar doors had to be kept open so that the customer could see his wine being drawn from the cask into his pot. All drinking vessels had to be of the standard measures with a seal showing they had been authorized. It was a serious offence to attempt to evade the price regulations laid down by the City and prosecutions could and, in fact, did lead to the imprisonment of the offending merchant.39 The City authorities in conjunction with the mistery of the vintners also had the right to search cellars to ensure that the regulations were being observed In 1375, for example, 6 vintners for the district to the east of Walbrook and 6 for the district to the west were appointed to search for ‘corrupt and unhealthy wines in taverns and cellars and to pour out in the street those they condemned’.40 Despite all these elaborate provisions it is clear that many breaches occurred. The requirement to ensure that all customers could see the potman draw their wine from the cask seems to have given rise to frequent disputes. In 1350 two taverners ended up in prison for refusing this right to a customer.41 Accusations of the adulteration of wine produced some disturbing evidence. A proclamation in 1419 outlawed the production of counterfeit Romeney (sweet) wine. It was suggested this was made by collecting

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together the dregs of wine from barrels from a variety of sources in casks which were then scraped to make resin stick to the sides. Pitch, cobblers’ wax and ‘other horrible and unwholesome things’ were then added to produce ‘a pleasant colour and a likely manner drinking of Romeneye to smell and taste to the deceit of all’. One William Horold was sent to the pillory in the parish of St Martin in the Vintry shortly after the issue of this proclamation for in fact attempting to turn old feeble Spanish wine into sweet expensive Romeney. This did not stop others trying to get away with similar frauds. In 1454, a certain Austyn Cassyn adulterated 6 pipes of white Rochelle wine with a red Spanish wine, eggs, alum gum and other ‘horrible and unwholesome things’ with the intention of producing a red wine, with a pleasing savour.42 These regulations can be represented as having some benefit for consumers. The vintners, however, were also very concerned to maintain their own position in the wine business and to achieve dominance over overseas merchants. This applied particularly of course to Gascon wine merchants. Under Edward I, merchants from Gascony enjoyed the marked favour of the Crown. This probably stemmed from the king’s need to ensure support for English rule in the duchy and the desire to ensure the continued healthy receipts from the wine customs in the territory. This favour infuriated English vintners, especially those in the City of London who, like many medieval merchants, harboured grave suspicions of aliens and their trading practices. In 1280, the king exempted the Gascons from the general requirement on all alien merchants to spend no more than 40 days in the country; from then on they had 3 months to complete their business. When the privileges of London were suspended by the king in 1285, the vintners became even more angry when the Gascon merchants were also permitted to live permanently in the City if they so chose and given the right to sell their wares to all comers not just London citizens. The Gascon hold over the king seemed to be even clearer when by the terms of the charter of 1302 they were exempted from the prise of wines in return for the New Customs already discussed. These merchants also no longer had to reside with an English host; they could sell wine wholesale at will, and their rights to redress by the courts in contractual disputes were made explicit.43

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These rights were confirmed and supported by the Crown in the first half of the fourteenth century but by the accession of Edward III, the London vintners had successfully asserted their dominance of the wine trade with Bordeaux. This was probably as much the result of many small acts of niggling aggression and unpleasantness on the part of the Londoners as any dramatic changes in policy. By 1350–1351 over 60 per cent of the wine coming into London was traded by denizens, a share of the market which increased steadily.44 In 1453, when Gascony was absorbed into the kingdom of France, some Gascon merchants nevertheless moved at least temporarily to England and continued to be active in the wine trade. Equally leading to trouble in London were the regulations which tried to separate the trade in sweet wine from that in the less expensive Gascon wines which normally furnished Londoners’ tables. These sweet wines, those that had carried away the prizes in the thirteenth century Bataille des Vins, came from the Mediterranean particularly from Southern Italy, Greece and Crete. Made by methods first developed in classical times, their great advantages were that they kept much better than other wines, that they were almost cloyingly sweet at a time when all sugared or honeyed foodstuffs were luxuries and that they were very expensive and thus a signifier of high social status. In 1373, for example, in obedience to a writ of Edward III issued just before Christmas, the Mayor and Sheriffs of London set the following prices for sweet wines: ‘Vernage 2s. per gallon, Ryvere, Mawvesie and Romeneye 16d. per gallon; Candye, Mountrosse, Greek, Province and Clarre, 12d. per gallon.’45 This was from two to four times as much as ‘ordinary’ wine commanded. The sale of sweet wines also had by law to take place on different premises from the sale of other wines. In 1365 an even more restrictive royal ordinance laid down that the retail sale of sweet wine could in fact take place in only three taverns in London; One in Cheap, one in Lombard Street and one in Walbrook at fixed prices with the profits (so it was said) going to the repair and cleaning of the City’s walls and ditches. This decree may have been inspired by the desire of Richard Lyons, a prominent vintner and alderman, and a very wealthy man, to control the trade to his own advantage. He certainly engaged in attempts to manipulate the duties due on the export of wool and the repayment terms on royal loans. He was also very close to John of Gaunt, who may have

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influenced the king in his favour. Within only three months of the decree being issued all three taverns had been leased by the City to Richard for a term of ten years.46 This monopoly was probably highly profitable and in 1373 was extended to include John Pecche, another wealthy merchant and alderman with close connections with the court, including the provision of loans to the Crown. Pecche was also a business associate of the Bardi the Florentine merchant house and other Italian merchants from Lucca, something which would have been to his advantage in the sweet wine trade since these wines were largely produced either in Italy itself or in Venetian or other Italian colonies in Greece or the Aegean. This arrangement seems to have infuriated the vintners in the City who were excluded from the trade and its profits. The Good Parliament of 1376 mounted a general attack on the corruption and sharp practice which had grown up at the court of the aged and semi-senile Edward III. Richard Lyons, John Pecche and the mayor of London Adam Bury were among a group of courtiers who were all impeached on corruption charges. Pecche was attacked specifically on the issue of his operation of the monopoly in the sale of sweet wines being accused of extorting an unauthorized 3s. 4d. per pipe of wine (which amounts ‘to a great sum of money’ in the words of the aggrieved Commons) from all buyers. His defence that the mayor (in fact Adam Bury at the time) and aldermen had agreed to this was rejected and he was sentenced to prison, fined and stripped of his privileges as an alderman and freeman of London.47 He was luckier than Richard Lyons, who was caught by the rebels during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 in Cheapside and murdered. Pecche died in his bed in1380. The sale of sweet wines remained, until the end of the period of our study, outside the remit of the Vintners Company. These wines continued to be on sale at fixed prices at separate taverns licensed by the corporation of London. Those who dealt in wine, therefore, at this period faced many difficulties in bringing their goods to market. It could be argued that this was always the lot of the medieval merchant whatever commodity he dealt in. The fixing of prices was deeply embedded in the minds of both rulers and people as something that was both moral and necessary. The price of commodities essential to life could not be left to the operation of the market, to Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ but must be determined by rulers. Similarly the

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imposition of dues on passing traffic, along a river, entering a town or a new domain, was an expected burden on traffic no matter how much it impeded trade. The fact that kings imposed similar imposts at higher rates on international traffic was not surprising given the fact that this source of royal revenue was both remunerative and elastic. What is perhaps more surprising is that, despite all the regulations we have considered, and other petty ones which have not been discussed in detail, wine became by the eleventh century probably the most widely traded commodity in Europe, enriching merchants and winegrowers and deeply influencing both culture and social life. It is to the trade itself that we will now turn.

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4

The Anglo-French Wine Trade

In England, in the period from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, wine from France was not the only kind commonly available. Rhenish, the name given to wine from the Rhine and Moselle regions, sweet wines from Italy and the eastern Mediterranean and wines from Iberia were also known and enjoyed. French wines, however, were imported in much larger quantities than any originating from elsewhere. The records of this traffic and the way it operated are also more copious and more varied than those for any other trade during the same period. It will, therefore, be looked at in some detail in this chapter. The documents which enable us to have a clear view of the extent and value of the trade in wine between these two nations are primarily those relating to the tolls on trade or the Customs. Their complexity at once reminds us of the multilayered regime of regulation which has already been described. We are not concerned with two simple national administrations, those of the kingdoms of England and France but with town records, the records of princely domains which lost their autonomy centuries ago, and finally, royal governments. Each class of documents has its own problems regarding survival; gaps in the records and the format of the records themselves. If we look first at England, the earliest records relating to the wine trade can be found scattered among the financial records of the Crown on the Pipe Rolls and in some early town records.1 From the reign of Edward I the administration of Customs dues imposed by the king was established on a much firmer footing and as a result the surviving records are much more plentiful and informative. One important group of documents, kept by the king’s butler, is that associated with the royal prise of wine. This was the king’s right to receive either one or two tuns of wine, according to the size of the ship, for the use of the royal household from every vessel carrying wine docking in an English port, discussed above.

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From c. 1279 to 1302 the details of wine ships arriving in English ports, whether laden by denizen or alien merchants, should be found in these records; after 1302 only denizen merchants were liable to this exaction. By the mid-fourteenth century merchants from London and the Cinque Ports, both major wine importers, were exempt from the prise: arrivals of wine ships in Chester, North and South Wales and Cornwall were also recorded separately and less reliably. Nevertheless it has been asserted that, despite these limitations, the direction of trend of denizen imports can be deduced from the figures in the butler’s accounts.2 Imports by aliens can be found in the records of the New Custom on the Enrolled Customs Accounts from 1322–1327, and thereafter, also on the chief butler’s rolls. More precise and easily understood figures for the volume of imports by both denizens and aliens only become available once tunnage became a regular impost, generally payable by all wine merchants, in the fifteenth century.3 From 1403 the totals of sweet and non-sweet wines imported into England were recorded separately in the Enrolled Customs Accounts allowing for an overview of the state of the trade as a whole. The six short periods largely in the 1420s when denizen merchants did not pay this subsidy fortunately do not greatly affect the general reliability of these figures.4 There are also, of course, records of the dues paid as wine was exported from the producing region. The most complete and informative series are the records of the Constable of Bordeaux which run from the reign of Edward 1 until the loss of Gascony by the English in 1453. Because of the exemptions and privileges associated with the payment of the major dues, the Grande Coutume,and the issac, already mentioned, these records allow the amount of wine leaving Bordeaux produced in the Bordelais, to be differentiated from that coming from the haut pays. Furthermore the towns in the haut pays shipping wine through Bordeaux are frequently identified. In the Constable’s register for 1306–1307 no fewer than 45 wine-producing towns or villages are named and the volume of their production is also indicated. The records also include the names of the ships and their masters, and the merchants who owned their cargo but do not give any indication of where the wines will be eventually delivered. There are, of course, some gaps in the records; the wine coming down the Dordogne and its tributaries via Libourne, from places like St Emilion and Bergerac, is not

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always included in the ledgers, nor that exported via Bayonne; but, even so, these are by far the best records for any wine-producing area in this period.5 The only further problem in dealing with these records, whether kept in England or at Bordeaux, is the need to remember that very seldom do ledgers or rolls kept by different clerks in different periods follow exactly the same format. In general the essential information, the amount payable, is present, but each clerk to some extent added or omitted details like the names of ships masters, the tonnage of ships or the names of individual merchants to suit himself. A very good example of this are ‘the particulars of account’ (an early more detailed version of the accounts on which the final enrolment was based) of the collector of the New Custom on wine in the first year of Edward III’s reign. This begins as if all the information will be in a standard form with separate columns for the name of the ship, her master, the names of merchants shipping wines and the total of wine imported in tuns and pipes, but this format is soon abandoned, with the entries for ports outside London including only some of the information on ships and masters. This is not surprising or unusual; all the clerk needed to know was who would pay the due and on how much wine. Further details included in the account particulars were often left very much to the whims of individual clerks.6 The earliest trade in wines across the Channel of which there is some detailed knowledge is that which went through the port of Rouen. This is usually described in documents as the wine of France, that is, at this period, wine produced in the Ile de France, in the hinterland of Paris in the valley of the Seine and its tributaries. The light acid white wines of the region were well liked by the English and could be carried by flat-bottomed boats down the rivers to Rouen where the wine tuns were loaded onto sea-going vessels. From the Norman Conquest until the reign of King John, Rouen was situated in English territory so that it is not surprising that Henry I had his own cellars in the town, while in 1175, Henry II granted the burgesses of Rouen a monopoly in the export of wine to England.7 Some idea of the size of the trade at the end of the twelfth century can be gained from the grant of 300 tuns made by Richard I to the Church of St Mary in Rouen to compensate it for losses suffered in hostilities against Philip IV Augustus of France.8

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The Rouen monopoly, however, gradually became of less value as the port faced strong competition from the wine-producing regions of Poitou and Anjou and the port of La Rochelle. Although La Rochelle is not on a major river itself, both the Sèvre and the Charente enter the sea only a short distance from the port. The situation of La Rochelle in the channel behind the Ile de Rè and the neighbouring Ile d’ Oléron, created a safe and sheltered anchorage, easily accessible to sea-going ships. The growth of the wine trade through this port has been linked with the fact that mariners from both England and Flanders, the main importing nations, already frequented the area from the late eleventh century to load the allimportant Bay salt, produced in the salt flats of the adjoining coast. It has also been asserted that improvements in ship design at much the same time, leading to larger more sea-worthy vessels, allowed mariners to undertake the voyage from England southwards round the difficult Brittany coast with more confidence. The larger ships were also able to load more profitable cargoes. These may well have been factors in the success of the wine trade through La Rochelle but probably of greater consequence were the shifting political fortunes of the rulers in the region. Duke William X, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Guyenne seized control of what was then an insignificant coastal village in 1130 and in 1137 granted it extensive privileges to attract enterprising merchants to what became his new town of La Rochelle. This policy was continued by the succeeding Duke of Guyenne, Henry II of England who ruled, from 1154, by right of his wife, William’s daughter Eleanor. La Rochelle became a major port sending the very popular wines of Saint-Jean-d’Angely (which reached La Rochelle via the river Boutonne) and other areas in the hinterland of the town to much of northern Europe.9 Richard of Poitiers, a French chronicler writing in the second half of the twelfth century commented on the success of La Rochelle saying that a great number of ships came there from many places because of its trading advantages.10 After the loss of Normandy by the English in the early thirteenth century, the appeal of La Rochelle increased for merchants who sought to obtain wine in a region still closely linked to the English Crown. Much of the produce on sale was the same slightly acid white wine which had been imported

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the anglo-french wine trade

Map 2

63

The Bordelais wine-producing region.

from Rouen and which had a ready market in England. In 1224, however, the town and the region of Poitou were reconquered by the French. The port was closed to English ships by decree of the French Crown. English merchants had to look elsewhere for a source of wine. Bordeaux and the surrounding countryside were still in the hands of the English Crown as part of the Duchy of Aquitaine; the wines were already known in England and had a good reputation. This region thus became and remained for almost the next two centuries the focus of the wine trade between England and France. Bordeaux was not at first sight obviously attractive as a major trading port. It was in fact a considerable distance from the open sea. To this day the Bay of Biscay is notorious for stormy weather; there was little if any shelter for sailing vessels between the Ile de Ré and the estuary of the Gironde and all the manifest dangers of a lee shore with the prevailing wind coming from

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the west. The Gironde itself was not only hard to navigate with shifting sandbanks but vessels bound for Bordeaux were open to attack and demands for tolls from the often lawless inhabitants of small settlements along the shores of the estuary, not necessarily owing allegiance to the Duke of Aquitaine. The burgesses of Bordeaux themselves were, moreover, not attracted to life at sea. During the whole period of the booming wine trade with England and other northern states very few of the great mass of ships loading cargo at the quays in the town were owned or crewed by men from the city or from the Bordelais. Ships from England, the ports in the Low Countries, Northern France, Brittany and Bayonne in contrast were all heavily engaged in the trade11 Bordeaux’s great advantage as the centre for the wine trade lay: in its political importance as the centre of English authority in Gascony, the capital of the Duchy of Aquitaine; in its population of enterprising merchants and traders and in its excellent inland communications by water via the Garonne and its tributaries with wine-growing areas as far away as Toulouse, Gaillac and Albi. The city also benefited from the great support and loyalty it offered to the English ruling house until the final catastrophe of the victory of Louis XI at Castillon in 1453. This support was first evident after 1224. When Louis VIII mounted his invasion of English Poitou, Niort, Saint-Jean-d’Angely and La Rochelle all surrendered. Bordeaux, however, avowed its loyalty to the government of the young King of England and Duke of Aquitaine, Henry III whom the burgesses pledged to serve as long as they lived.12 Gascon wine had been imported into England in small amounts before this date; King John, for example had included 267 tuns of Gascon wine in his purchase of a total of 348 tuns in 1212 and had died owing large sums to wine merchants in Bordeaux.13 With competition from La Rochelle removed, however, trade between England and Bordeaux increased very rapidly. One apparent consequence of this was that not only did Gascon wines, as wine from Bordeaux was commonly called, become the vin ordinaire of late medieval England but light red wine began to dominate a market once almost wholly given to white. This wine called clairet was more like modern rosé wine than modern claret and was soon very popular in northern Europe.14

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The close analysis of the records of the Bordeaux Customs carried out by Margery James has clearly revealed the peaks and troughs of wine exports from the Gironde. The early years of the fourteenth century saw an enormous boom; some vignerons must have made fortunes and, one suspects, were able to unload, on what looked for a time like an insatiable market, some very inferior wines. Up to 100,000 tuns of wine were exported annually between c. 1305–1306 and 1329–1330; this included wines grown by the burgesses of Bordeaux, the non-privileged growers of the Bordelais and the haut pays, the privileged growers in the haut pays and also the wines loaded at Libourne, and other small ports on the Gironde below Bordeaux like Blaye and Bourg.15 One calculation of the amount of wine exported annually in these years has put it at the colossal total of 850,000 hectolitres.16 Even given that it took a minimum of 5 years for a new vineyard to become productive, this was a long enough period of booming exports to stimulate greatly the extension of the area under vines along the valleys of the Dordogne and Garonne and in the marshy Medoc on the south side of the estuary. There were, of course, some bad years; production in 1315– 1317 (for which there are no Bordeaux Customs accounts surviving) probably suffered from the generally atrocious weather which caused famines and high death rates in northern Europe. Shipments to England certainly declined noticeably in these years. Trade had recovered by 1318 when 232 wine ships liable to pay dues docked in one year in English ports.17 It was, however, the case that at this period the English market took only a relatively small proportion of the total exported, probably not more than 20–25 per cent. The remainder went to northern France and along the Channel to the major trading centres of Flanders. From Bruges, Gascon wine went even further east to the Baltic and north to Scandinavia in the hands of Hanseatic traders. The varying fortunes of the English and French royal houses in southwest France had given Bordeaux the opportunity to dominate the export of wine from the region. The development of the trade in the remainder of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries continued to owe much to the power struggle between the two. The trade was not of course immune to the effects of more general economic and social trends; in particular, the

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advent of the Black Death in 1348, and its frequent return visitations especially in the 1360s and ‘70s. The subsequent demographic collapse in both the Bordelais and the areas buying Bordeaux wines produced a severe contraction in both its production and its sale. Equally important, however, for both merchants and winegrowers was the renewed outbreak of war between England and France. This began in 1324 with the war of Saint-Sardos, often considered the precursor of the Hundred Years War. From this date until the battle of Castillon in 1453 anyone connected with the wine trade could never really put the wars at the back of his mind. There were periods of truce when trade could proceed in greater security but the changes of allegiance among landowners and corporate towns, the shifting frontiers of English Aquitaine, the advance or retreat of the authority of either the French or the English monarch placed continual obstacles in the way of trade. Along the line of march of any army, vineyards were vulnerable to pillage and destruction as were stores of wine in besieged or sacked towns and cities. The exaction of dues and tolls, the granting or withdrawal of privileges became even more complex and liable to sudden change. The quarrel over the lordship of an insignificant priory at Saint-Sardos in the Agenais which precipitated the outbreak of war in 1324 ended in the fall of La Réole on the Garonne to the French in late September just as the vendange was getting under way; in practice this meant that more or less all the haut pays was now under French control.18 Alien imports of wine dropped for this year’s trading by half and remained depressed until 1327 when peace was temporarily restored.19 One noticeable trend seems to be the gradual shifting of the trade with England from the hands of Gascon merchants to those of Englishmen, principally citizens of London. This .of course makes it more difficult to be sure of the level of imports in the 1330s and ‘40s. The rise in wine imports by denizens is poorly recorded compared with the decline in imports by aliens especially after 1327 when Londoners’ shipments were exempt from prisage. The royal butler in fact claimed in 1330 that more than three and a half thousand tuns of wine landed in London in the autumn of 1329 had escaped this exaction.20 There is no doubt, however, that renewed military activity in the Agenais and Bordelais from 1337 made things extremely difficult for winegrowers. The

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French poet who wrote, ‘Soit la mer borne et dessevrance / De l’Angleterre et de la France’,21 did no more than express the view common among Frenchmen from the mid-fourteenth century that the English had no place as rulers south of the Channel. Around 1340, in fact, the area completely under English control in Gascony had shrunk to a narrow strip of territory following the line joining Blaye, Libourne Saint-Emilion, Saint-Macaire and then further south to Bayonne although there were isolated English garrisons in strongholds further east. As far as wine production went, this meant that in fact the wines of the haut pays which had come down the Garonne, and those from the Dordogne valley were now hardly seen on the quays of Bordeaux. The administration of the king/duke was impoverished by the consequent fall in the Customs revenues and thus less able to finance the adequate defence of the remaining lands from French invasion. Requesting help whether in money or in men from England itself frequently met with little response, since Edward III was also faced with pressing military demands in northern France, Brittany and on the frontier with Scotland, as warfare intensified. The sea routes from England were also very insecure with French ships, and Castilian galleys in the pay of the French, based at La Rochelle. Inland from Bordeaux the authority of both royal governments was undermined by outbreaks of feuding and private warfare among the nobility and the depredations of companies of routiers or bands of unpaid soldiery living off the country.22 In this situation it almost seems hard to believe that the wine trade could continue at all, given the settled conditions necessary to cultivate the vines, make the wine and transport it to consumers. Yet the figures for alien imports to England which are reasonably complete show no year when no wine at all reached England although in both 1346–1347 (the year of the French defeat at Crécy) and 1348–1349, (the year of the first plague epidemic) as little as around 450 tuns was recorded. Moreover, in both cases, in the succeeding years imports jumped to nearly 3000 tuns in 1347–1348 and nearly 1500 in 1350–1351.23 The figures for wine leaving Bordeaux have more gaps, including unfortunately 1346–1347; in 1348–1349 just under 6000 tuns are recorded compared with 16,577 tuns in the preceding year. The collapse in the trade in wine moving down the Garonne from the haut pays

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is very clear with none being recorded in 1350–1351 and 1355–1356 and very small amounts overall in the 1350s. Exports from Bordeaux and the Bordelais also decreased markedly; the average for the 1350s was c. 18,000 tuns compared with totals of from c. 102,000 tuns to c. 50,000 tuns between 1305 and 1335. There was a noticeable recovery in the 1360s to annual figures of c. 30–40,000 tuns.24 Margery James has also related these figures for exports to the price of wine in England, using the evidence of the assize of wine which set the retail price, and evidence of the prices paid by the royal household which bought in bulk. These reveal a strong upward trend in prices in the second half of the fourteenth century with the average price per tun paid by the royal butler rising from c. £3 in the early years of the century to £6 by its close with a peak of £9 in 1370–1371.25 The conclusion seems to be that despite the successful campaigns of the earl of Derby from 1345 which resulted in the recapture of both La Réole and Bergerac by the English and the extension of English control into the Agenais, the devastation of vineyards caused by the activities of both roving bands of brigands and by royal armies was not entirely remedied. Some of this reluctance to replant was perhaps the result of the rapid decline in population during the plague years; where would the labour be found to undertake the work of caring for the vines? It was also the case that many of the companies of routiers who devastated large areas of central France including the Auvergne at this period were made up of young Gascons. It was a more exciting way of life to be a member of a company feared by all, collecting wealth by means of patis (the payments made to marauding soldiery by desperate communities to save themselves from pillage), and looting rather than working in a vineyard in the cold of winter and the heat of summer.26 It was also debatable whether there was any advantage for vignerons in replanting devastated vineyards. The huge quantities of wine produced in the early years of the century could no longer be absorbed by the much reduced market. From the point of view of the vigneron, reducing production was perhaps the most profitable reaction to this state of affairs Even in the years of truce following the battle of Poitiers (1356) and the Treaty of Brétigny in 1361, the price of wine in London did not fall; it was 6d. per gallon in 1361 and 8d. per gallon in 1362. It seems very likely

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that both merchants and growers found they could make a good living without undertaking the hard task of restoring some of the lost acreage to production. There is also the point that during these years the Black Prince was resident in Aquitaine, for much of the time in Bordeaux itself. John II, king of France, a prisoner of the English since the battle of Poitiers, was also lodged in the palace of the Archbishop of Bordeaux until May 1357, where he held court in a suitable manner for a monarch, albeit a captive one.27 All this would have boosted the market within the city itself for wines and very probably reduced the amount available for export. Certainly when warfare broke out again in 1369–1370 exports of wine from Bordeaux fell precipitously from over 28,000 tuns the previous year to just under 9,000 tuns in 1380–1381 despite some temporary respites. Little of this came from the area known from 1375–1376 as the Pays Rebelle, those places in the high country which were no longer loyal to the English. In the fifteenth century the available figures convey the same story; exports from Bordeaux recorded in the ledgers of the Grande Coutume continued a trend of slow decline even though the final year of English rule (1452–1453) showed the respectable total of nearly 10,000 tuns.28 These figures, however, which seem to depict a trade heading steadily downhill, do not tell the whole story. The total wine production of the Bordelais and the surrounding districts had certainly declined markedly from the peak reached in the boom years at the beginning of the fourteenth century, but the nature of the trade had also radically changed. The Gascon merchants who had largely controlled the trade in the early years of the fourteenth century had gradually been almost totally excluded by English merchants from c. 1340s. By the fifteenth century and for the remaining period of English rule the Gascon wine trade became virtually an English monopoly. Only small amounts of this wine reached other markets in northern Europe or more distant parts of France. Most of the vintage was shipped to England and unloaded to a great extent on the quays of London, Hull, Bristol or Southampton. When war broke out again in 1415, the action was largely confined to northern France. It was not until c. 1449 that aggressive moves by the French against English-held territory in the south west began to cause real anxiety for winegrowers.

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Table 4.1

The export of wine from Bordeaux 1402–1452

Tuns of wine exported from Bordeaux 1402–1452

Tuns of wine exported

43 14

36 14

31 14

28 14

24 14

18 14

14

02

5 per. Mov. Avg. (tuns of wine exported)

Source: From Appendix 5, pp. 55-9 in M. K. James (1971), Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Before this date, fluctuations in supply were more often caused by events like the unusually cold winters in 1406 and 1437–1438, on this occasion also followed by a summer of plague, and the outbreak of disease and pests in the vines in 1427–1428, than the passage of armies.29 Significantly the price for the retail sale of wine varied little in the same period being from c. 6d. to c. 8d. per gallon. During the 1440s, the king and his advisers were well aware of the danger posed to English Gascony by the increasing success of Charles VII in restoring his control over his ancestral domains. In 1442–1443 prolonged but unsuccessful negotiations were entered into for a marriage between Henry VI and the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, an alliance which would have increased the security of Gascony.30 The attempt to give the Duke of Somerset almost vice-regal powers in the duchy to cope with the French advances was largely abortive doing little to alleviate the atmosphere of dismay even despair which was becoming evident in Bordeaux itself. Envoys reported in 1442 that the town was,

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as sorrowful a town and as gretly dismayed and discoraged as any might be in th’erth as poeuple desolate and cast out of al comfort of any socour to be had from your said mageste ayeinst your enemies that ben in this country in grete puiseaunce.31

Things did not improve. In 1449, the situation in Normandy deteriorated rapidly. The English lost Rouen in October 1449 and, in April 1450, were decisively defeated at Formigny. Charles VII could now turn his whole attention and his considerable, well-armed, well-organized forces against Gascony. The French had already laid siege to Bayonne and taken the surrounding Landes in the spring of 1450. In the autumn of the same year, as the grape harvest began, they attacked and took Bergerac. Little or no help could be expected from England in this desperate situation. Henry VI, an ineffectual monarch at the best of times, had been faced by Cade’s rebellion in Kent and London in the summer; the council was deeply split between opposing factions and the Treasury was empty. The French laid siege to Blaye and Bourg on the Gironde cutting Bordeaux off from the sea in May 1451. The castle of Fronsac, a major defence of the city, was taken in early June. Some 3 weeks late Bordeaux itself opened its gates to the besiegers.32 At first the merchants of Bordeaux could congratulate themselves on obtaining good terms from the French king. Their privileges were to be preserved; those who did not wish to swear allegiance to France had 6 months to leave with all their goods. They would not be liable for new French taxes or expected to serve in any army outside the duchy. Safe conducts were also made available to English traders so that some 6,000 tuns of Gascon wine reached England in 1451–1452. In January 1452, 26 English ships were listed as docking at Bordeaux for the spring wine fleet.33 Initial French attempts to conciliate the population, however, seemed to be waning in the summer of 1452. There was also a considerable body of Gascon exiles at the English court, egged on by many Englishmen, with commercial interests at stake as well as knowledge of unrest in the city itself, urging attempts to regain Bordeaux. A force was put together led by John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, a commander of great ability. He was able to enter Bordeaux without needing to use force and re-establish English rule in the immediate vicinity. The effect on the wine trade was almost

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immediate; over 9,000 tuns were exported despite French garrisons still remaining at Bourg and Blaye.34 In the spring of 1453 the French once more advanced along the Dordogne laying siege to Castillon, near St Emilion. On 17th July Shrewsbury attempted to raise the siege but was utterly defeated in a battle in which he lost his own life. English rule over Gascony finally came to an end with the capitulation of Bordeaux in October. There was now much less reason for the French king to conciliate his new subjects who had in his view acted treasonously in 1452–1453 and could therefore no longer be trusted. The wine trade with England was not prohibited except for a short period beginning in October 145535 but the city was no longer welcoming to English merchants, all of whom needed expensive safe-conducts. The volume of trade fell significantly as might be expected, with merchants facing harassment from French royal officials. English ships had to put into port twice on their voyage down the Gironde, once at Soulac to get permission to proceed and again at Blaye where all arms had to be unloaded. When they reached Bordeaux a stay of only a month was permitted; other regulations required them to use only certain lodgings, to observe a curfew and only to travel outside the city to sample wines if accompanied by a Frenchman. All these restrictions also required the payment of a hefty fee. Earlier, before the final French victory in 1453, according to a memorandum in the British Library, arms were unloaded at Blaye, but once in Bordeaux there were few if any restrictions so that at times there were as many as 7 or 8,000 English merchants and mariners in the town. The English could, moreover, travel where they liked in the country round Bordeaux, in the Médoc, and Entre Deux Mers, and were on very good terms with the vignerons. After the Battle of Castillon, English merchants were forced to wear a red cross on their clothing once they had disembarked so they could be identified. They were not permitted to buy wines outside the city. If they wanted to go out to the suburbs they had to be accompanied by an archer and have special leave from the mayor.36 Their status as unwelcome visitors was abundantly clear. The outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in England further impeded trade especially as in 1461–1463, and 1469–1471 Louis XI of France was actively supporting the Lancastrian cause against Edward IV. An agreement made at St Omer in 1463 restored some normality to the trade but by this time

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many English ship masters and merchants had ceased to travel themselves to Gascony and had left much of the carrying trade in the hands of Bretons and mariners from Northern Spain. Gascon wine still found a ready market in England but was imported for the most part in foreign ships. The treaty of Picquigny in 1475, and its commercial counterpart signed in 1476, improved matters for both English traders and Gascon producers removing some of the more irksome restrictions.37 The trade, however, improved only slowly and was still far from the levels of the 1430s and ‘40s. The table shows the total amount of non-sweet wine imported to England in the fifteenth century and thus includes small amounts of wine from Spain and the Rhineland as well as Gascony but even with this taken into account clearly reveals the generally declining fortunes of the trade. Measures like the passage of acts of Parliament in 1485 and 1488 requiring wine from Gascony to be imported in English ships crewed by Englishmen seems to have done little to boost the trade beyond the level of c. 10,000 tuns Table 4.2 Non-sweet wine imports to England by both denizen and alien merchants in the fifteenth century Non-sweet wine imported to England 1403–1499 20000

Tuns of Wine 5 per. Mov. Avg. (Tuns of Wine)

18000 16000

Tuns of Wine

14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000

14

0 14 3 0 14 7 1 14 1 15 14 1 14 9 2 14 3 2 14 7 3 14 2 3 14 6 4 14 0 4 14 4 4 14 8 5 14 2 5 14 6 6 14 0 6 14 4 68 14 7 14 2 7 14 6 80 14 8 15 4 8 14 8 9 14 2 96

0

Years

Source: From Appendix 6, pp.55-9 in M. K. James (1971), Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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imported annually though there were small signs of some gradual improvement.38 The boom years of the early fourteenth century were now no more than a fading memory. The use of an Act of Parliament to try to reverse the decline in the number of English ships in the wine trade with south-west France is, however, testimony to the place which this particular trade route held in English maritime affairs. There has long been a somewhat sentimental tendency among the English to think of themselves as a nation with an almost visceral connection with the sea, an island people forever voyaging across the oceans of the world, fearlessly trading and finding new lands. This is not something which sits easily with the facts of English maritime enterprise in the period of this study. The majority of mariners ventured no further than across the Channel or the North Sea to France and Flanders. Voyages through the Sound into the Baltic were rare while the longest voyage normally undertaken by an English vessel was that to Bordeaux, for wine or when conscripted into a royal fleet carrying supplies and reinforcements to the Duchy. Those ship masters who made successful trips to south-west France on more than one occasion were accounted the most skilled and respected among the generality of mariners. As the fifteenth century progressed, English ships also went to Iceland, Lisbon, Bilbao, southern Spain and even Madeira by the 1490s, but, if there was a nursery for English seamen, it was the voyage to Bordeaux. The vagaries of the weather in the North Sea and the Channel had always made it desirable that any vessel setting forth from an English port was well found and seaworthy no matter where it was heading. The distances involved on the voyage to south-west France were, however, longer, and the navigation and seamanship required to cope with strong currents and dangerous tides, more taxing. Only the voyage to Iceland from England, undertaken much less frequently, was comparable in its demands on the skills of a ship master. The evidence for a particular type of ship being developed for the voyage to Bordeaux is very scant. A careful analysis of the registers of the Grande Coutume for the early years of the fourteenth century reveals that the clerks checking each vessel as it prepared to leave the city used the terms ‘cog’ and ‘nef ’ almost interchangeably; the Notre Dame of Harwich

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appears as a ‘navis or nef ’ in 1308 and as a ‘cog’ in 1309. A similar apparent transformation is apparent in records relating to the Sainte-Marie-delCarmino of Bayonne. Small craft plying the estuary of the Gironde or engaged in coastal traffic are more precisely identified as a ‘flayn’ or as ‘pinacia’ but that is all. Much more informative is the care with which the home port of each ship is noted. This information reveals that between 1303–1304 and 1308–1309 over half of the ships in the trade came from England. Fewer than 2 per cent were from the Bordelais, while most of the remainder came from either Norman or Breton ports or from Bayonne. The English vessels came from most of the ports on the Channel and North Sea coasts from Falmouth to Lynn with a small group based on the Severn Estuary including Lynmouth, Bridgwater and Bristol.39 The clerks’ main concern was, of course to set down the duties payable on each cargo and they thus took careful note of the amount of wine in tuns and pipes loaded. This provides a reasonably accurate assessment of the size of each ship since the great majority carried few other goods and would have been unlikely to leave Bordeaux without a full cargo. Most of the larger vessels were from Bayonne averaging around 140 tuns, followed by those of the Bretons and Normans. English ships were on average somewhat smaller, around 100 tuns. The reason for this difference is not obvious and may just be a consequence of the much larger numbers of English ships making the voyage to Bordeaux. Ships which docked at Exeter with cargoes of wine from the new vintage in the autumn of 1304 carried from 60 to 121 tuns, and were all based at local ports.40 There is no other evidence which suggests that Basque or Breton ships were, at this date, as a rule larger than those of the English. In the late fifteenth century somewhat similar information about the ships in the wine trade has been extracted from the records of Bordeaux notaries. The striking difference revealed by these records is that by this time Breton and Flemish vessels dominate in the Gironde with comparatively few English ships present.41 No matter from which port he had set sail, it was essential for a ship master on the route between Bordeaux and the Channel to be a competent navigator. The passage around the rocky coasts of Brittany was complicated by very strong tides and currents while that further south in the Bay of Biscay was exposed to the Atlantic swell and violent storms off a lee shore

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(since the prevailing winds were westerly), something which still causes problems for sailing craft. To navigate in such conditions by hugging the shore, as is often suggested was the usual custom of medieval mariners, was fraught with dangers. If, however, a vessel kept out of sight of land for some considerable distance, how was the course set by the ship master and how could he ascertain that the vessel was in fact proceeding on the chosen heading, which would bring him safely to port? Our knowledge of navigation before the use of instruments and tables is limited. As the science of navigation developed mariners were able to use the magnetic compass to establish directions and tables and instruments (at first an astrolabe, later a backstaff ) to calculate a position, as regards latitude, by the height of the sun above the horizon at noon. By the sixteenth century, in conjunction with a chart and tide tables, these procedures made voyages such as that from Bristol to Bordeaux or further afield into the Atlantic, much less hazardous. Without these aids a ship master had to rely on his experience and such things as his understanding of subtle changes in the sea surface and the appearance of the sky, the position of astral bodies particularly the Pole Star, the moon and the sun, and wind direction. The long distance voyages of the Vikings in northern waters demonstrate what was possible with virtually nothing in the way of navigational instruments. We can only admire the skills of mariners who were capable of such voyages, and had the ability to repeat them, with really only experience to guide them.42 By the end of the fourteenth century, the magnetic compass, housed in a ‘bittackle’ or wooden container could be found on many ships in both southern and northern waters. In the Mediterranean, the use of a compass in conjunction with charts or portolani, embellished with rumb lines, allowed courses to be set with a fair degree of accuracy. There is evidence of the use of ‘altitudes’ as a navigational aid by the Portuguese at least from the second half of the fifteenth century, while the Florentine captain of a galley fleet en route to the Channel in 1429–1430 mentioned observations of the height of the Pole Star in his diary of the voyage, although navigation was not one of his responsibilities.43 Written sailing directions or rutters may also have been used by some ship masters in northern waters in the early fifteenth century although the oldest surviving English

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document of this nature dates from the mid-fifteenth century. It includes directions for a voyage from the Gironde to Ouessant and on to Beachy Head; this, of course, would largely be the course followed by wine ships heading for the South Coast ports, Southampton and Sandwich. Among other sections of the rutter there is one which gives courses from northwest Spain to the south and west coasts of England. This includes directions for the voyage from Cape Finisterre to Land’s End and then up the Severn estuary to Bristol, useful for wine ships making for that port.44 One very noticeable feature of the directions is the frequency with which soundings are mentioned. This help to navigation consisted of dropping a weighted and greased ‘sounding lead’ overboard from a vessel attached to a line measured in fathoms. This procedure was well known to English mariners from at least the early fifteenth century and could be a valuable guide to establishing a vessel’s location. Off the Gironde, the rutter states, ‘ther is wose and sonde togedr and it is bein xiii or xvi fadim deep; up on pertus mamoschant (Potruis de Maumusson) there is stynkyne wose and xii fadim deep’.45 Masters of ships bound for Bristol were informed that having sailed north east from Cape Finisterre when they came into sounding (that is the water was shallow enough to allow a sounding lead to be used, this was normally when the water was around 600 feet deep), ‘yf ye haue an c fadim deep or ellis iiiix (80) and x than ye schal go northe un til ye sownde ayen in lxxii fadim in fayre gray sonde’.46 At this point the ship should alter course for the Severn Estuary. Information on the direction of the tides at different stages of the lunar cycle is also included, something of crucial importance off the Breton coast and in the Severn Estuary. A recent attempt to plot the courses suggested on modern charts with modern tide tables reveals a reasonable degree of accuracy in the sailing directions although not all entries are easy to interpret. The result, a course of 260 nautical miles from the Gironde to Ouessant, is virtually all out of sight of land and avoids many of the manifest dangers of this coast.47 While there are some problems with the rutter and the reliability of its directions and there is, of course, no way of knowing how widely these sailing directions were used, it is reasonable to conclude that at least by the fifteenth century the sea route to Bordeaux and on to Bayonne was well understood by experienced English, Basque, Breton and Flemish

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ship masters, using at least some basic navigational aids as well their accumulated experience. As well as the existence of common navigational knowledge among the maritime community of the period, there was also a widespread common understanding of the legal responsibilities of a ship master to his crew, and to the merchants whose goods he carried. These were largely set out in the laws of Oléron, more a collection of case law than a law code in the conventional sense, which were accepted in more or less all the maritime nations of Western Europe. The provisions for jettisoning the cargo to save the ship and her crew in a violent storm specifically mention wines from Bordeaux and were probably formulated to deal with gales in the approaches to the Channel or in the Bay of Biscay. The same applies to article 11 of the Laws which, when setting out how damage to a cargo must be dealt with, uses as the exemplar the case of leaking wine barrels caused either by bad weather or poor seamanship. Just as the wine trade between northern Europe and Bordeaux probably acted as the stimulus to mariners to develop a more reliable method of navigation, similarly, the volume of the trade and the value of the cargoes made it essential for the respective responsibilities of merchants and ship owners and masters to be clearly defined in legal terms.48 Navigational errors or bad weather were not, however, the only dangers faced by seamen and merchants on this trade route. Wine ships at any point of their voyage were at risk of attack from enemies of various kinds. Some were mere opportunist robbers for whom pirates is a fair description; others could claim some kind of legal cover from commissions issued by a local or national ruler, depending on the state of relations between the parties concerned. Matters were complicated when the owner of the goods taken was not at war with the assailants while the owner or master of the vessel was. Truces were often of a relatively short duration leaving a master genuinely in ignorance of their existence, or perhaps deciding to take the risk of ignoring an agreement made far away from the deck of a wine ship off the coast of Devon or the rocky shores of St Mathieu in Brittany. Merchants who lost their cargoes to sea robbers made energetic attempts to recover their property or receive adequate compensation. Royal records from the period contain frequent mention

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of cases brought in the courts or petitions to the king himself or commissions of inquiry set up to try and discover the whereabouts of missing goods or to find the truth from conflicting evidence and tangled complex tales of skulduggery in the port towns. We have no way of knowing what proportion of voyages ended in this sort of incident but must suppose that, though always a matter of concern, it never reached a level which rendered the trade unviable. A case from 1441 well illustrates the kind of incident which peppers the records. A ship the Christopher of St Servan carrying a cargo of La Rochelle wine and salt, the property of two Breton merchants, was on its way to England when, off the Isle of Wight, it was taken by two balingers from Falmouth and forced into the harbour of Newport on the Island. This sounds all quite simple, but the men who later bought the stolen wine claimed on their part that the wine was in fact lawfully seized as the property, not of Bretons (who at that date had a trade agreement with England), but Hollanders and Zealanders who were the king’s enemies. Moreover, the ship itself was from Dieppe, a French port, and therefore also lawful prey. The Bretons pleaded that the wine tuns carried their merchant marks and were thus clearly in their possession, but it is not at all clear that they were eventually successful in either regaining their property or being compensated for their loss.49 Another case, which gave rise to not only to proceedings in Chancery but also commissions of inquiry under the privy seal, related to an incident in about 1460. On this occasion a ship called the Marie of Dordrecht (also known as the Marie of Danzig, which implies that she may have belonged to a Hanseatic ship owner) was attacked off the Scilly Isles en route to Bristol with a cargo of Gascon wine, and also other valuable goods, woad, iron and saffron. The cargo was the property of Bristol merchants and had a value of over £2,700, an enormous sum. The leader of the attack was Sir Hugh Courtenay, a member of a well-known West Country gentry family who, only about 2 years later, was commissioned to find ships and crews for the king’s fleet. The ship’s ownership is not clear but the cargo was undoubtedly the property of fellow Englishmen.50 There was apparently no social stigma against what was piracy to any modern observer, nor were all sea rovers using the flimsy cover of

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attacking only the king’s enemies. Equally, when a stolen cargo reached port there was no trouble in finding buyers for the goods. When a vessel, the St Yves of Concarneau, carrying wines belonging to one William Moyne of Nantes was taken by pirates into Beaulieu in 1442 14 purchasers snapped up the cargo, including Margaret, Lady Popham of Buckland and local innkeepers who sold the wine in their taverns. Perhaps, even more reprehensibly to modern eyes, the purchaser of most of the wine, the enormous quantity of 20 tuns (around 4,500 gallons), was Thomas Glede of Tavistock acting for the Abbot of Tavistock. This abbot not surprisingly was a notorious drunk. Even when the names of the purchasers were uncovered by a commission of inquiry held at Liskeard in 1443 the chances of any of them in fact being committed to prison until they made restitution were not high.51 More effective than costly and slow legal proceedings once a cargo had been lost was probably the employment of various tactics to increase the security of the wine ships and other vessels and to protect trade in general. There were clearly particular points on the voyage where attacks were more likely. For vessels going up Channel to London, the east coast ports or Flanders, the first was in the vicinity of the Isle of Wight. Vessels often lay to here to shelter from bad weather, await favourable winds or to take on board victuals or water. Dartmouth, Fowey and Falmouth were likewise not only good anchorages but home to many seamen who, while courageous and bold in the king’s service, were also not averse to enriching themselves by piracy if opportunity offered. The Hawleys, father and son, both called John, were at various times holders of royal commissions and also before the courts for robbery at sea. The elder Hawley was pursued through the courts over a cargo of wine valued at £398 but was also mayor of Dartmouth 14 times and an MP in the 1390s and 1402. His son was both an MP and a JP, took part in sea keeping patrols for the king with Sir Hugh Courtenay and was also accused of seizing the ship and goods of a Scots merchant valued at £220.52 The creeks and harbours of Brittany, particularly those near St Mathieu, were another frequent stopping place for merchant ships for both shelter and victuals. Breton mariners were equally renowned as both legitimate ship masters and successful sea robbers.

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Merchants could obtain safe-conducts or licences from the Duke of Brittany or the English king but perhaps the best protection was to sail in company and to arm the ship and its crew. Although English ships can be found arriving at Bordeaux in any month of the year, most certainly arrived for the new vintage in October or November or for the spring ‘racked’ wines in February or March. In 1372, a year when the Castilian fleet of galleys and carracks was at sea in the service of the French Crown and the English royal ships had suffered a crushing defeat in June at their hands off the harbour at La Rochelle, Edward III issued letters ordering protection for the October wine fleet. An escort of armed ships paid for by a levy of 2s. per tun on all wine which reached England safely was to be put together. Richard II attempted something similar by requiring vessels bound for Bordeaux to assemble off the Isle of Wight before setting out.53 The Dukes of Brittany, however, made much more sustained efforts to provide protection for ships in the wine trade from the second half of the fifteenth century, the period when the English were no longer the dominant force in the trade and Breton ships were those most often found at Bordeaux. In the summer months the Duke’s Council consulted merchants and mariners as to the situation at sea. Once the decision had been made that some protection was necessary, and merchants and mariners again consulted, the dates were announced for the sailing of the wine fleets. In most years three fleets would go south, in the periods September to November, January to March and May till June. The costs were met by a tax on wine imported from La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Bayonne. If this did not raise enough money the extra costs might fall on the home ports of the ships concerned. Each wine fleet would be escorted by around eight of the biggest and best armed ships available with as many as 800 to 1,000 armed men involved. The September escort in 1483 comprised seven ships ranging from the Lion of 200 tuns to the Pinasse of St Malo of 40 tuns with a force of 803 armed men available. The wine ships congregated at St Mathieu; ship masters were both forbidden to sail alone if a convoy system was in operation, and to leave the convoy before reaching their destination under pain of confiscation of both vessel and cargo. The convoys did undoubtedly provide some protection for the wine fleets and of course ensured that the Duke of Brittany had the nucleus of a naval squadron in being, should more serious hostilities occur.54

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Once a wine ship was safely at anchor at its destination, merchants then needed to organize the distribution of the cargo and its sale to consumers. In London, which was increasingly the major English market for wine during the fifteenth century, the Vintners Company controlled retail sales as we have seen. The wine ships came into either Queenhithe or Garlickhithe, the wine landing quays. They could not be unloaded until the royal gauger had tested the cargo; the tuns were then taken to their owner’s cellar where they remained for at least 3 days before sales to taverners could begin.55 In other wine ports, Southampton or Bristol, the wine once landed very often had to be transported for some distance to its ultimate consumers. The local port books of Southampton, which record the dues payable to the town corporation, clearly show how active the coastwise trade in small amounts of wine, 1 or 2 tuns or a single pipe, was. In March 1440, Robert Sprott of Winchelsea took iron and one hogshead of wine on board. His destination is not recorded but may have been any of the small harbours to the east of Southampton. Three other vessels with similar mixed cargoes including wine, ginger, alum, madder, fruit and soap left at much the same time.56 In May the prior of Christchurch sent his own boat to collect 1 pipe of wine, presumably for himself and the guests at the priory.57 Southampton also has in the Brokage books a record of goods which left the town overland by the Bargate on the main road north. Occasional loads usually of either finished cloth or of dyestuffs and fixatives either came from or were bound for places as far away as Coventry and Bristol. Luxuries imported by Italian merchants went to London. The bulk of the wine, always of course in barrels, a heavy and awkward load on a cart and liable to spoil, left the town for Winchester and Salisbury. John Coteler sent 4 pipes of wine to Winchester in late November 1443, each in a different cart, newly landed from that year’s vintage.58 In all about 194 pipes of wine went by road to Winchester in this year. Salisbury’s thriving cloth industry depended on Southampton for its supplies of woad and alum but the clothiers and merchants also slaked their thirst with copious quantities of wine from Gascony; There were of course fluctuations in demand but an average of 250 pipes per year from 1339–1492 were carted along the roads of Hampshire and Wiltshire to the city.59 Sometimes the more expensive malmsey, a sweet

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wine from the Mediterranean, was sent along with the more usual Gascon wine. Six barrels left Southampton on 27th December consigned by an Italian merchant Andrea of Pisa, perhaps intended to add to the Christmas and New Year festivities which continued till 6th January, since Andrea also shipped dates and fruit to Salisbury along with the wine.60 Wine also went overland to London despite the fact that much reached the city directly by sea. This was only rarely the more expensive sweet wines and one can only presume it suited an individual merchant’s convenience to send wine along this route. The consignor of the cargo was usually a London vintner. Romsey, Oxford, Gloucester, Reading, Newbury and Andover also all received regular shipments of wine from Southampton overland giving a clear idea of the web of trade centred on the port. A further idea of the way wine was distributed throughout England can be gained from the household accounts of aristocratic families. The stewards of the Talbot household at Blakemere, near Whitchurch in North Staffordshire bought most of the wine needed from Shrewsbury and Chester, some of it specifically stated to be ‘against Christmas’. The wine from Chester had most probably come by sea from Bristol, while that from Shrewsbury may have come up the river Severn, perhaps being transshipped onto small river barges at somewhere like Gloucester . On one occasion the rare and expensive Tyre wine, (probably from a region on the Tyrrenian Sea, not the city of Tyre) was brought from London.61 The steward of the Lady Elizabeth de Burgh of Clare in Suffolk in 1350–1351 bought most of the wine for this household in Ipswich with occasional parcels from Colchester and London. Some of it was described as Rhenish but most was simply called red wine, probably from Gascony. The steward had to hire a boat to take the wine from the ship anchored in the harbour at Ipswich to the shore. Once loaded there on carts the journey to Clare took two to two and a half days for a journey of around 30 miles. It may be a reflection of the state of the roads that the journey to London, around 70 miles, apparently took much the same time.62 It is hard to get any idea of the personalities of individual merchants in the Anglo-French wine trade, whether from Gascony or from England. London merchants in the wine trade were not by any means all members

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of the Vintners Company; their monopoly related to the retail sale of wine and the control of the taverns not to the import of wines. Many London merchants whose main business was the export of cloth or the import of dye stuffs would also ship wine from Bordeaux, sure of a ready sale. Gregory de Rokesle who was nominally a goldsmith became royal butler to Henry III in 1275. His imports of wine were on a par with those of Henry de Waleys who became mayor of Bordeaux in the same year and who was a member of the Vintners’ Mistery. His rise to the peak of social eminence in the City was clear when in 1299 the King’s Great Council met in his hall at Stepney.63 By the 1320s the Vintners shared their dominance of the wine trade with the fishmongers both of them profiting from their ownership of ships. There were, however relatively few in a really large way of business with many lesser men importing small parcels of wine. In the reign of Richard II the best known vintner was Richard Lyons whose involvement in the court intrigues at the end of Edward III’ s reign led to his wide unpopularity in the City. His will, and the inventory of his goods, however, give some indication of the level of wealth a merchant of his standing could attain. Lyons lived in a large and well-appointed four bedroom house with a great hall, parlour and private chapel. In his bedchamber there was a set of hangings to screen his bath tub, an unusual luxury; the bed itself was hung with red and blue curtains embroidered with lions, while leopard and ermine skins provided even more evidence of his luxurious lifestyle.64 No other vintner was able to live in such splendour which may of course have owed as much to his connections with the court as to his more mundane trade in wine. There is some evidence of family links between vintners’ families some of which continued in the trade for some time. The Doget family began as taverners in the thirteenth century but were associated with the Vintners Company right to the final decades of the fifteenth century. The Gisors family (whose surname may imply a French origin) were linked by marriage to that of the Picards, again a French name. Similarly the Wakeles, Sodeyes and Vanners, all families which had obtained aldermanic status, were inter-connected by marriage.65 In Gascony a study of the names of those shipping wines along the rivers to Bordeaux in the early fourteenth century has revealed that very few wine growers came from outside the Bordelais or haut pays. One or two names

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seem to imply immigration from Picardy, Flanders or Normandy. Perhaps more surprisingly, given the complications of the wine trade with its confusion of tolls and regulations some growers were happy to ship only 1 or 2 tuns down the rivers, while a larger group would dispatch 20 to 50 tuns. There was apparently little correlation between the reputation of a winegrowing area and the economic status of the winegrowers. This is most notable in the case of Moissac. This region sent nearly 3500 tuns of wine to Bordeaux in 1308–1309; this considerable quantity was, however, shipped by over 130 different producers of whom Pons de Barrane alone was responsible for 125 tuns and three others for more than 100 tuns.66 Bordeaux merchants in the first half of the fourteenth century frequently travelled to England with their cargoes, a fact which, as we have seen, roused the jealousy of English merchants. Few if any seem to have settled in London or elsewhere in this period. After the English defeat in 1453 some did take the opportunity to leave Bordeaux with their goods and settle in London or Bristol. Men like Arnold Makanam and John Dorta continued in the wine trade in their adopted country with some success. When conditions for trade between Gascony and England improved after 1475 some seem to have returned home. This may have been a reaction to the hostile reception which some endured especially in the 1450s and ‘60s. Robert John, a London Vintner deliberately started a case for recovery of a debt against the Gascon Pascau Parant knowing that the court in Southampton, where he brought the charge would be biased in his favour. Another Gascon, Graciane Bukkay, had a similar unpleasant experience in Southampton. He faced a trumped up accusation of trespass and debt, was fined and imprisoned without bail.67 Perhaps the best way to gain a final impression of the way trade between Bordeaux and England was carried on in the last years of the fifteenth century is to look in some detail at the way the Cely brothers of London, whose main business was as wool merchants trading to the Staple in Calais, handled the affairs of the ship they bought in March 1486, the Margaret Cely of London, originally the Margaret of Pennmarke in Brittany.68 The ship set out in late August or early September 1486, in order to arrive at Bordeaux in good time to buy the new wine of that year’s harvest. Equipment was bought before the voyage in Erith, Thames Street, London and Gravesend

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where the voyage began.69 The vessel always carried arms of some kind, though perhaps not always as much artillery, cannon, serpentines and arquebuses as well bows and arrows, as was loaded for a voyage to Calais, earlier in the year, when the Margaret acted as an armed escort to the wool fleet. For the voyage to France, she was thoroughly provisioned with meat, salt fish, bread, biscuits and beer. More fish was bought at Plymouth where the vessel put in before setting course for France. The next recorded stopping place was La Rochelle for more provisions before entering the Gironde. Here she had to unload all her arms at Blaye and get the necessary permission to go up the estuary to Bordeaux. She probably arrived there around the beginning of October, somewhat early for the new vintage necessitating a delay of some 4 to 5 weeks. This time was not wasted as some repairs and refitting of the ship was necessary. On the return voyage she carried nearly 56 tuns of wine. The ship may have run into a storm on the way home since she was delayed in Plymouth for some 11 weeks, something which greatly annoyed one merchant with cargo on the ship.70 She probably left Bordeaux in the middle of November but did not finally dock in London till around mid-February, thus missing the Christmas market and of course increasing the risk of the wine spoiling. The following year the Margaret’s voyage to Bordeaux began at Sandwich in the second week of October but by the beginning of December she had only reached Southampton. She then made much better progress getting to Le Conquet near Penmarch 10 days later and Bordeaux on Christmas Eve, having as usual stopped at Blaye to unload the arms and ballast. She was probably in port about a month and by 14th February was back at Le Conquet to load provisions. She then made a rapid passage to Plymouth, reached on 19 February. Her arrival in London is not dated but this time there does not seem to have been any undue delay. The cargo was 53 tuns three hogsheads of wine and 2 tuns of woad. The 1488 voyage followed much the same pattern. The Margaret sailed from Gravesend on 14th September, put in briefly at Queenborough and Dartmouth and by 28th September was at Falmouth. Here perhaps the weather turned hostile with contrary winds since by 5th October the ship had retreated to Plymouth where repairs were undertaken on the rudder, lasting some 5 weeks. She then crept along the coast to Fowey for a further 2 weeks’ stay but finally enjoyed a fast passage reaching

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Blaye, about 3 days after leaving Fowey, on 16th November. A week later the vessel was at Bordeaux where she was prepared and provisioned for the voyage home. This was swift and uneventful; the Margaret left about the 2nd of January and docked safely in London 2 weeks later with a cargo of 58 tuns 1 pipe of wine. The way the accounts were kept both by George Cely, as the major shareholder in the vessel, and by the pursers on board on all three voyages, makes it hard to be sure about the profitability of these wine voyages. One complication is that it is often not clear what currency was being used, whether Flemish, English or French, or the exchange rates. The wine on board was also mostly the property of other merchants not the Celys themselves with a very small amount being the trade goods of the crew, a common perquisite at the time. The careful analysis by Alison Hanham of the surviving papers reaches the conclusion that the money received by the owners from freight charges on the Bordeaux run was insufficient to cover the considerable running costs of the vessel, let alone allow anything for recouping the capital cost of the ship. If there was any profit it came from the sale of wine imported by Cely himself. He dealt, however, only in small quantities, a tun here or there, so this profit never amounted to more than a small addition to his income. It is not fair to deduce from this one example of involvement in the wine trade that all merchants and ship owners faced a similar outcome; the Celys tried to diversify into the freight business and the wine trade at a time when their general financial situation was under great strain and they lacked experience in this particular trade. More important is the picture found in their accounts of the uncertainties and difficulties of operating long distance sea-borne traffic in the fifteenth century. A merchant needed patience, confidence in his ship master and crew, and an element of luck to bring each adventure to a successful conclusion. It is a tribute to the skills and determination of both the English and Bordeaux merchants of the period that so many were prepared to risk their livelihood in such an enterprise. Gales at sea, changes in royal policies, the unwelcome attention of pirates and privateers, all had to be overcome as well as more mundane difficulties like the state of the markets at home or abroad and the fluctuations in the price of wine in London taverns. Their success can

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be seen in the fact that for over two centuries the wine trade between England and Bordeaux was the most notable in Western Europe. It stimulated the maritime skills of the English, changed their taste in wine and established a monoculture of vines in the Bordelais which endures to the present day.

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5

Other Routes and Other Wines

If the destinations of ships with cargoes of wine leaving the estuary of the Gironde at the end of the seventeenth century are mapped, a very different pattern of trade, from that we have described in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is revealed. Few, if any, ships were headed for an English port; some made for Ireland or Scotland but the majority sailed to the Netherlands and a sizeable minority on, through the Baltic, to Hamburg, Copenhagen and Konigsberg.1 Even if the domination of the trade between Gascony and England by English wine importers had almost been forgotten by this date, there was nothing new in a trade between northern ports and Bordeaux. Nor, of course, was the wine of the Bordelais the only wine exported from France at both earlier and later periods. There were other wine-growing regions with produce to sell and other styles of wine apart from the clairet so popular in England. This is illustrated very clearly by the trade between France as a whole and the Low Countries. The political relationship between these two areas was undoubtedly complex. Some states within the area loosely called the Low Countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire; others were at least nominally fiefs of the king of France. The leading trading cities, particularly Bruges and Ghent, at times almost seemed to act independently of their ruling nobles. The ascendancy of the dukes of Burgundy over more and more lands in this general area, from the last decades of the fourteenth century to the death of Charles the Bold at the battle of Neuss in 1477, could be interpreted almost as the emergence of an independent realm in the region.2 These shifts in political control and allegiance could influence the ease with which trade overland between the region and its neighbours was conducted. Similarly trading and political relations with England varied over the period from close interdependence to hostility and trade embargoes. This state of affairs impacted particularly on trade

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Map 3

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The most important trade routes used by medieval wine merchants.

by sea since vessels from the Low Countries or travelling there were vulnerable to attacks by pirate vessels in the Channel as the many cases of robbery at sea involving Flemish goods or Flemish ships in English records testify.3 Wines intended for customers in Flanders, Brabant and provinces further to the north and east, often came largely from the Ile de France, the area to the south-east of Paris, those known in the Low Countries, as they were in England, as ‘french’ wines. The usual route taken by wine intended for export was down the river Seine or its tributaries to Rouen, and then by sea north along the Channel. Those cargoes destined for Flanders and Brabant would often be unloaded at Bruges or its out port Damme. At least one cargo, bought by the bishop, was said, in later years, to have gone as far as Roskilde. A smaller amount went largely overland, following the Oise as far as Compiègne and then being taken by carters on to Flanders. Wine from the Auxerrois, a little further to the south of Paris, and from

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Burgundy, which included the area producing Chablis, was also exported both by sea and overland. These wines had a good reputation at the time, indeed Auxerre wines were often preferred to those from Burgundy. Salimbene d’Adam, the Franciscan friar and ‘travel writer’ of the mid-thirteenth century, described wine from Auxerre as a white or sometimes golden wine, which had both body and aroma, and a full and exquisite taste which rejoiced the heart of man. He was also most impressed by the way in which a virtual monoculture of vines dominated the landscape in the valley of the Yonne.4 Auxerre itself was the centre for trade in wines from the region with clearly set out conditions of sale. Earlier around 1158, a similar opinion of the quality of the wine of Auxerre was expressed by Nicholas of Clairvaux. He wrote asking the Bishop of Auxerre, a personal friend, to send him some local wine praising its colour, bouquet and taste unlike that of the wines made around his monastery which had no reputation. He was even prepared to send a cart to Auxerre to collect the wine and was concerned that the casks used should be clean and well made in order to preserve ‘so noble a drink’ on its journey back to Clairvaux.5 The available records give the impression that most of the business of buying and selling wine in Auxerre was conducted by merchants from Paris rather than burgesses of the town themselves. The merchants in the Low Countries also actively inquired at the time of the wine harvest what prices were likely to be in Auxerre, Compiègne and Burgundy to ensure they got the best bargains. Some of the wine went down the Yonne (which at this period was navigable from Cravant) to its junction with the Seine and then on to Rouen for shipment by sea. The boats used were flat-bottomed slow river craft normally reaching Paris from Auxerre in around 10 days.6 Some undoubtedly changed hands in the Parisian market at the port du Grève, the only place where wholesale trading was permitted. There were also controls which insisted that only merchants who were members of the Hanse (association) de l’eau de Paris could transport goods between Paris and the bridge at Mantes.7 Any Auxerre wine that was sold retail in the city fetched from 9 to 10 écus for a muid of 160 litres, a good price compared to the 5 or 6 écus paid for wine from Issy and Meudon. It is hard to give any precise idea of the quantity of wine which followed this route and

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whether this changed over the period as a whole. The traffic was subject to all manner of tolls imposed by the various authorities who controlled the territory through which it passed on its way to the sea, as well as taxes in Paris. Few if any series of records of these tolls still exist, although there are records of exemptions granted at various times for particular wines. There are, however frequent references to the wines from Auxerre in the records of the vicomte de l’eau at Rouen, making it certain that they followed this route for export to the Low Countries.8 Wine which went overland to Flanders faced travelling by the route via Beauvais through Picardy and Artois and finally Flanders, usually going by way of Peronne, Bapaume, Arras, and on to Valenciennes or Cambrai. Some was sold in these towns to the Flemings while from Valenciennes it was possible to load the casks on to barges on the Scheldt.9 The difficulties of a route which involved loading and unloading large unwieldy wine casks from carts to river boats and back to carts is easily imagined. In one petition in 1469 merchants from Beauvais complained that so many wines were being brought along the route following the Oise to Pontoise that there was an acute shortage of carts and carters leading to delays of up to 6 months. Given the poor keeping quality of wine at this period this would in fact mean that it was very likely to be spoilt before it reached its destination. The roads, particularly in the autumn, the time of the wine harvest and the making of new wine, were usually in a very bad condition. It was expected that a four wheeled cart would need eight horses at least in order to draw a load weighing around 3 tons, made up of four wine casks containing about 27.6 hectolitre of wine (3 muids) each. In 1497 a cart arrested with its driver by the authorities for a misdemeanour at Bapaume was carrying around 1,000 litres of wine in two barrels and was drawn by five horses.10 It is no wonder that the sea route was that usually preferred. Once this wine had reached its destination its price, if sold retail by the inn keepers, was virtually always fixed by the town authorities. At Douai in 1286, Auxerre wine was sold for the same price as wine from La Rochelle, 20 deniers per serving (undefined) while ‘french’ wine could be sold at half this price. There is some evidence that the relative difficulty of getting Burgundian wines to the markets in Paris compared

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with wines from Auxerre made them less favoured by merchants. Those from Beaune had to travel overland to Cravant or Vermenton on the Yonne, a distance of around 140 kms, to reach the river route to Paris and eventually Rouen. In this case much of the wine produced was probably consumed locally. A particularly clear understanding of the problems of transporting wine over relatively long distances by a mixture of river and overland transport comes from the records of the cathedral chapter at Nivelles in Brabant. The chapter had acquired extensive property in the valleys of the Rhine and the Moselle including productive vineyards. Detailed records were kept of the expenses of each journey, its duration and difficulties met on the way when wine was brought back to Nivelles or when members of the chapter went to inspect their lands. Three main routes were used, varying in length between 250 and 380 kms; the main reason for being forced to use the longer route was most frequently the presence of armed men and obvious danger for either clerics or consignments of wine on the more convenient way. This was the case in 1456 when there were problems between Aix-La Chapelle and Cologne, in 1459 when rutres (bands of brigands) roamed around Guelders and in 1476 when the chapter at Nivelles feared that their wine would be sequestrated en route by the Landgrave of Hesse. Other problems might arise from damage to the carts, missing river boats at Namur on the Meuse or severe frosts with ice floes blocking the Rhine at Cologne as happened in 1459– 1460. Most of the journeys bringing the new wine to Nivelles took place between 30th September and 10th October although the harvest could be as early as the beginning of September or as late as 16th October. Difficulties in getting wine to Nivelles could also be caused by the lack of uniformity in wine measures with those used by the vineyard differing from those used by toll collectors and the sheer number of wine casks waiting to be loaded or unloaded from the river boats by the crane on the wine quay at Cologne. This could apparently be got round by a discreet gift of wine to the crane master. The route normally taken at harvest time by the chapter’s officials ran from the neighbourhood of Linz (where the Nivelles lands were situated) down the Rhine to Cologne; then overland to Maastricht usually by way of Julich and Aix, then up the Meuse to

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Namur. The final leg of the journey was again overland to Nivelles itself.11 Bordeaux and La Rochelle wine could also reach the flourishing markets in towns like Saint-Omer, Bruges and Ghent by the voyage round Brittany and east along the Channel also used by vessels making for Sandwich, London and the English East Coast ports. The problems with this route were in many ways as much political as practical. In the fourteenth century, when English rule in Gascony was most firmly established, Flemish ships and traders were not welcome at Bordeaux although they were an important element in the wine trade at La Rochelle and Saint-Jean-d’Angely. Flemish rulers actively promoted this trade granting special privileges to merchants from Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis in Gravelines and Damme. Fair prices were set for the boatmen taking wine from the large cogs anchored off shore to the quays and for the porters taking the wine casks to the merchants’ cellars. The Frenchmen were also empowered to collect any debts owed by Flemings. These rights originally granted in 1262 were confirmed by Louis de Nevers in 1331 and in fact lasted till at least 1502.12 There were, however, no Flemish vessels recorded in the records of the Grande Coutume at Bordeaux for the years 1303–1309.13 It is, of course, impossible to know if some of the Breton or Norman ships, which were listed, were in reality taking wine to the Low Countries. The fact that the recorded total quantity of wine leaving the Garonne is much larger than that found, as imports, in the English Customs Accounts gives some ground for thinking that this must be the case.14 Later in the fourteenth century, in the 1370s and 1380s, the English made some spectacular attacks on fleets bound for the Netherlands carrying wine and Bay salt from La Rochelle. In 1371 the English took a large Flemish fleet in the Bay of Bourgneuf. The chronicles claimed that 25 ships and 4000 men were lost, probably exaggerated figures.15 Another noted attack was that which took place in 1387 at a time when Philip the Bold of Burgundy was on bad terms with England. Off the Flemish coast between Blankenberge and Sluys, despite the fact that the Flemish ships were carrying a large party of armed men, the English overcame a fleet of around 60 to 70 cogs and took, according to Froissart, over 9000 tuns of wine. Although this is also an improbable figure, the amount of cargo

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seized was clearly very substantial leading to a steep fall in the retail price of wine in London, again according to Froissart.16 Some of the wine which had ended up in the hands of the English was originally intended not only for Flemish drinkers but also for those further north in Holland and Zeeland. Merchants from the towns of the Hanseatic League were well established in Bruges and other ports in the Low Countries including Kampen on the Zuiderzee where they bought wine for onward transit to these provinces. The opportunity for Flemish merchants to trade openly at Bordeaux, in large numbers, as they had done for many years at La Rochelle came with the English defeat in Gascony in 1453. English ships and merchants were only barred from the Gironde for a very short period by the French, and the trade continued especially after 1463 when Louis XI restored some of their rights but they did not dominate the market as they had done earlier. Notarial records for 1497 reveal the presence at Bordeaux of vessels from Veere in Zeeland, (also known to the English as Campfer), Zieriksee, and Middelburg while Breton vessels were also carrying recorded as carrying wines which were being shipped by merchants from the Low Countries. The Magdalene of Penmarch carried wines owned by nine named merchants; two are stated to be from Campfer and Middelburg, one from Bordeaux and three others are probably French from their surnames. In a similar way in the same year the Nicholas of Royan in Brittany carried wines owned by merchants from Saltash and Plymouth.17 The very important wine market at Middelburg, which by this time had replaced the silted up port of Damme as the main centre for the trade, now had no difficulty in getting supplies direct from Gascony. From this and other trading centres merchants of the Hanseatic League as well as Flemings distributed wines from both Gascony and La Rochelle to northern states and into the Baltic. One profitable northern market was Norway. Ships coming from La Rochelle often carried not only wines but also Bay salt, the indispensable necessity for preserving fish, one of the most important commodities in trade with the north. In the first half of the thirteenth century King Haakon IV Haakonson had established that special permission was needed to import wine which had to be certified as to its quality by royal officials with a tax payable to the king for each tun.18 By

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the fourteenth century merchants from Lubeck had s firm grip on trade with Norway via their trading base (kontor) at Bergen and included wine among their imports. The most important trade between the kingdom of Denmark and the Hanseatic League at this period was that centred on the herring fishery off the western coast of Scania. The herrings were caught by Danish fishermen but were salted and prepared for sale largely by Hanseatic merchants from Lubeck and other Wendish towns in special areas, vitte, set aside for the purpose at the Hanseatic kontors at Skanör and Falsterbo. The large quantities of salt needed for this process came mostly from the Bay of Bourgneuf just to the south of La Rochelle. The frantic pace of the work gutting, salting, packing and selling the herring in the 3 months of the fishing season created a great demand for wine which the merchants of Lubeck could also meet. The wine shops were controlled by them as well as the preparation of the fish.19 Wine in the north and the Baltic, however, did not only come from Gascony or Poitou but also from the winemaking areas along the Rhine and Moselle and in Alsace, always known collectively as Rhenish by medieval drinkers. It is hard to be sure how the market was divided between these two sources of supply. Wines from both areas were available to merchants of the Hanse towns at major trading centres like Middelburg, Bruges, Kampen and Dordrecht and the origin of wines paying tolls and taxes was seldom clearly stated. The way in which goods of very different origins could easily be found by merchants at the most important trading centres is well illustrated by the cargo carried by the George of Beverley in 1464 en route from Zeeland to Hull. The precise details are known in this case because she was probably captured by the Danish pirate Olav Olavesson in the North Sea. Her cargo included expected items from the Baltic region like Swedish osmund and fine Holland linens but also exotic spices from the East including pepper and cloves and 14 tuns of wine all but one of which was stated in this case to be from Gascony.20 Hanseatic merchants were well placed to profit by the opportunities offered in Bruges and Flanders as a whole to trade in every kind of merchandise. Their kontor there was very well established and the count/duke had granted them extensive privileges so that their position differed little from that of indigenous burgesses. Those trading in wine,

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many coming from Cologne, could sell wine retail as well as in bulk so that it was worth their while to rent cellars for use as wine shops. Wine was exported by Hanseatic traders to most Scandinavian and Baltic ports even going as far as Moscow generally as one item in a mixed cargo. Ships trading principally in wine cannot be found, and total imports to an individual destination were relatively small like the 800 litres a year brought into Reval between 1426–1435. Wine, most of it from the Rhineland, in fact made up only a very small proportion of goods traded at Lubeck in the 1360s. The total value of wine imported and exported came to only 2,200 Lubeck marks compared to the very much larger sums involved in the trade in more important goods like cloth, fish, salt, butter and other foodstuffs. The total for cloth alone came to around 165,000 marks. Other evidence from the records of the Teutonic Order in Prussia shows that, in 1400, French wine sold for around one-third more than Rhenish although there is nothing to show whether this was the usual price differential between the wines.21 Before, however, Rhine wines reached the hands of Flemish merchants or those from the northern Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast, trade in this commodity was tightly regulated. The burgesses of Cologne,(a town which was an important member of the Hanseatic League) were able by the thirteenth century to exercise almost total control over the traffic in wine on the Rhine and enforce staple regulations which set out the way in which trade in wine should be conducted in great detail. Their attempts to do so had begun in the twelfth century when they faced competition on the Rhine from merchants coming up stream from Flanders. The Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, had tried to keep free passage on the Rhine open to all by declaring in 1165 the river to be ‘libera et regia strata’ (a free royal highway). In 1173 he also explicitly granted the Flemings the right to go freely up and down the river. These rights, however, proved to be unenforceable. Although the Archbishop Philip von Heinsburg had attempted to arbitrate in the matter granting both Cologne and Ghent the right to regulate traffic on the river in 1178, the Cologne merchants gradually squeezed their rivals out. In May 1259 the Wine Staple at Cologne was confirmed by decree of the Archbishop Konrad Hochhausen. There were no further legal impediments in the way of Cologne becoming the

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acknowledged centre of the trade in Rhenish wine and particularly the Weinhaus of the Hanseatic League.22 The Staple benefitted not only from the legal protection of the archbishop but from the commercial expertise and knowledge of the wine trade possessed by the merchants of Cologne coupled with the fortunate geographical position of the city. It had grown up at the point where the Rhine changed from a swift flowing shallow river with a strong current to a gentle placid stream with deep water channels making its way with many meanders to the open sea. At Cologne’s quays it was the custom to unload the wine from the so-called oberlaender schiffen, narrow vessels of shallow draught with a high stern steered by a single oar, well-suited to the upper reaches of the river, and to transfer the cargo to Dutch ships much like sea-going cogs with beamy hulls, fixed rudders, and powered by a single sail. These vessels could make the voyage down the Rhine to trading centres like Dordrecht on the Waal, which also possessed staple privileges, and Kampen on the Ijessel. Before this could occur, however, it was necessary for a merchant to comply with the detailed and complex rules of the Staple. The main aim of these was to ensure that Cologne’s considerable income from the dues and taxes on the wine trade was maintained. This revenue amounted to 10–13% of the town’s annual income. A vessel carrying wine from the vineyards along the upper Rhine or from Alsace had to anchor at the Salzgassentor. The cargo of wine could only be sold in the first instance to a burgess of Cologne; foreign merchants had to reside with a host (also a burgess) who often acted as a middleman in later transaction in which the wine was sold on to the foreigners. All transactions, in fact, whether involving buying or selling had to go through the hands of a Cologne merchant; it was forbidden for foreigners to deal directly with each other. Once a sale had been made the Cologne merchant and the seller informed one of the two Rheinmeisters who recorded the transaction and took careful note of the taxes due. The barrels (still on board the Oberlaender ship) were then inspected for the quality of the wine and the quantity in the cask by town officials called Röder. They were then marked accordingly by an incised symbol on the top of each which was called the Koelner Ritzung. This mark was well respected and accepted by authorities further downstream so that no further inspections were necessary. Once

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all this had been done the barrels could be unloaded by the town crane and taken by porters to the new owner’s Keller or warehouse. As the carts went through the Salzgassen gate a town official noted the number and ownership of the barrels and compared his notes with those of the crane operator who had also recorded the number taken off the ship. At this point some of the dues might be paid though merchants with large shipments often paid in lump sums at intervals. Once the barrels were safely ensconced in his Keller, the merchant and his family might enjoy some of the wine themselves. If, however they wished to sell wine in the city itself or to export it down the river there were yet more regulations to comply with. Retail sales were reserved for members of the Weinbrudershaft. This was not a formally established guild with a charter but an association of leading citizens to whom the Richerzeche (the group of elite families which controlled the government of Cologne) had given this right. Wine was sold in taverns identified (as in other cities including London) by the display of a branch above the door. An organization called the Weinschule supervised the sales and also provided the Weinrufer who promenaded through the city publicizing the virtues of the wines on sale. If the wine was going to be taken out of the city for sale in more distant markets, the Rheinmeister had to be informed, special permits issued and the barrels concerned marked. Once all this was done the barrels were taken down to Salzgassen gate, where the fact that the excise tax had been paid was noted on the dorse of the permits. With all this paper work complete, the Cranemeister could organize the loading of the consignment for the journey downstream, usually into the Dutch ships waiting at the quay. There is no doubt that the operation of the Wine Staple was important economically to Cologne. At first it had been largely in the hands of the oldest established families but the shift of the majority of the trade into the hands of rich merchants of lesser social standing was one of the causes of the upheavals of 1396 which largely destroyed the power of the Richerzeche in the city. At times when there was an especially good harvest, as in 1442, almost all the burgesses, no matter what their status, took part in the trade and as the Köln Year Book records ‘pelzer ind shomecher so we dat si wairen, it galt allet win’.23

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By the fifteenth century, however, as at Bordeaux, the passage of Rhenish wine through Cologne had declined from the peaks reached in the fourteenth century. On average, 13–14,000 tuns of wine passed through Cologne in these years with a peak of 23,729 in 1391. This was roughly equivalent to the enormous quantity of around 21 million litres. By the first half of the fifteenth century the number of tuns had declined to 12,000 and fell further to 7,000 tuns by 1486. The number of Oberlaender ships at the quay, able to load cargoes of around 38 tuns each, reached 800 in 1391, with 150 arriving in January alone. By the end of the Middle Ages around 185 ships per annum were recorded, mostly reaching Cologne in the second half of the year.24 Some merchants dealt in large quantities; in one day in 1420, Johann Frewer, Johann Buschelmann and Clais Verkenmesser were responsible for the reception in the city of 74, 90 and 104 wine casks respectively. It has been calculated that around 400 workers, with their families (4% of the population), were employed in the wine trade in one way or another at this time. Wine merchants who sent wine over much of northern Europe kept the business firmly within the family. Often the head of the firm remained in Cologne itself while his sons or other younger relatives took charge of selling the wine in Flanders, Brabant or even further afield. The Merl family business was headed by Johann von Merl and his brother in law Arndt von Stakelhusen. Johann was based in Bruges and Arndt in Cologne. Later Johann’s brothers Peter and Thomas joined the business with two more brothers-in-law, Johann Frydach and Peter van Wyntern, trading all over the Netherlands and Westphalia.25 The inclusion of brothers-in-law is an indication of the way that women in Cologne were not excluded from family affairs often taking over when widowed. Grietgen van Merll, possibly a relative of Johann, was active in the wine trade at much the same period with her daughter and son-in-law Gerard von Wesel.26 Even if the amount of wine available at Cologne clearly decreased in the course of the fifteenth century it has been suggested that this did not in itself necessarily mean that the supply of Rhenish as a whole was similarly affected. Evidence from Nijmegen suggests that merchants from the Lower Rhine were able to avoid the Cologne Staple and ship their wines directly to the Netherlands. South Germans traders were also increasingly taking wine

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overland to Antwerp again avoiding Cologne altogether. Most importantly the whole market for wine in northern Europe was changing; as hopped beer became more popular especially with working people. Wine became the drink of choice of the nobility and the wealthy. Its price rose steadily so that a merchant could maintain the same standard of living from the sale of a smaller quantity of wine. Rhenish had possibly lost its mass market but the prosperity of the trade as a whole had been maintained.27 The most expensive and the most prestigious wine on the market in medieval times was not, however, either the light red wines of Bordeaux, which had captured the English market in the fourteenth century, nor the thin white ‘french’ wines which had been most popular in the thirteenth century nor Rhenish which seems to have been of the same general type. The wine which was given the highest accolade in d’Andeli’s Bataille des Vins and which commanded the highest prices throughout the period was that commonly known as ‘sweet wine’ or more particularly in English records as malmsey, Romeney, Vernage, Tyre, muscadel or Greek wine, which was produced for the most part in the eastern Mediterranean. Why did it have this exalted reputation and how did it reach the tables of kings, nobles and high placed clerics in the West? This wine came originally from mainland Greece, known frequently in this period as Romania, (hence Romeney) since for most of the period it was part of the Roman Empire in the East with its capital at Constantinople. Malmsey, the usual English name, although it was known as Malvoisie in France, with various alternative spellings, was originally either made in the immediate neighbourhood of or exported through the Venetian port of Monemvasia, in the Peloponnese. An English traveller, Sir Richard Guylforde, on his way to Jerusalem in 1506 stopped at ‘a cyte called Malvasia where firste grewe Malmesye and yet dothe; how beit hit groweth nowe plentously in Candia and Modone and no where ellys’.28 Romeney was often regarded as of lesser quality than malmsey and by the fifteenth century came mostly from the Ionian islands. In 1462, William Wey, however, also on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, recorded that his ship put into ‘Axtis’ (Methoni in the Peloponnese) ‘whence comes the wine called Romney’.29 Malmsey, which may have been the name of a type of grape as well as of wine, was by the same period produced in Crete, (as the sixteenth century commentator

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noted) often exported through the port of Candia, and also made in Cyprus when both islands were Venetian possessions. Vernage got its name from the little town of Vernaccia in the Cinque Terre south of Genoa while Tyre may have come from the islands of Ischia and Capri in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Finally ‘Greek’ when used of sweet wines, usually meant wine made in the Greek style from vines grown in southern Italy, while muscadel was the name of the grapes used to make this particular wine, white, sweet with a distinctive and delicious flavour. The principal characteristic of all these wines was that they were made from late harvested grapes which had been semi-dried in the sun to become more like raisins than the juicy grapes used further north. This gave the wine not only an intense sweetness but greatly increased its alcohol content. Unlike the wines of Bordeaux and Poitou which seldom lasted from one season to the next this wine could be stored for much longer periods without fear of its spoiling. The very fact, of course, of its high price and exotic origins increased its prestige and desirability as a luxury only affordable by those of high social standing. By the end of the fifteenth century, the skill of making sweet wines from locally grown Malvasia grapes had begun to spread to Roussillon and the far south of Spain. The Spanish wine, a forerunner of modern sherry, was imported to England as sack, the tipple which anachronistically was the favourite of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The old soldier’s praise of this drink which in his view made his brain, ‘apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes’, and warmed his blood making, ‘it course from the inwards to the parts extreme’ would probably have been echoed by many of those drinking malmsey in medieval noble houses.30 The trade in sweet wines from the Eastern Mediterranean was at first almost a monopoly of the Venetians; the greater part of the production of this desirable drink took place in lands controlled by the Serenissima and most of the wine was at first consumed in the city itself. In the early fourteenth century, however, the demand for malmsey, now made to a large extent in Crete, increased. By around 1342 it was accepted by the authorities that Cretan malmsey was indistinguishable from that made in the Peloponnese. More and more land in the island was given over to viticulture instead of the grain which had formerly been its major export. The

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wine from the new vineyards found a ready market all over Western Europe (an Irish pilgrim in 1332 said it was carried over the whole world) largely because of a welcome development in ship design in the region. The Venetian state had relied on swift galleys for both warlike purposes and for the rapid reliable transport of high value cargoes from the Black Sea, the Levant and Alexandria back to Venice itself. Round ships were used in some bulk trades, like that in grain, operated and owned by private traders. The design of these vessels improved markedly in the course of the fourteenth century and fifteenth centuries so that they became much larger and thus able to carry more goods, and also more seaworthy. Like all vessels they needed to be loaded with care with due attention paid to the need to ballast the hull. This could of course be done with sand or stones which were not intended for sale. It could also be done by heavy cargo stowed away in such a way that it helped the trim of the vessel. This role was ideally suited to the heavy casks of malmsey wine. Round ships could load these barrels as a base in the capacious holds of the new coque and carracks and put lighter cargoes, cotton and skins on top. Salt from Cyprus and alum from Chios could also be used in the same way but wine commanded a higher price on European markets and improved the economics of these voyages. Another advantage was that on the outward voyage from Venice to Crete these round ships could take empty wine casks or the wooden barrel staves, lids and other materials needed in the wine trade. The empty casks could also be filled with other goods destined for Crete. Exports of wood from anywhere in the Adriatic to Candia were authorized from 1445 for the making of wine butts and also for ship repairs as demand grew. Originally shippers had been compelled to bring their wines back to Venice itself before sending them on to more distant destinations. From around 1446, however, the Flanders galleys and other vessels, going by way of the Straits of Gibraltar and Lisbon to Southampton and Sluys, were able to finish loading cargoes in Crete and set sail to the West without further delay. Just as the wine tun of Bordeaux had been adopted as the standard measure of a ship’s capacity in northern waters so the botta of Crete served the same purpose for Venetian and other Mediterranean ships. A butt was reckoned by the English to contain around 126–40 gallons about half the capacity of the usual tun.31

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Not all wine voyages from Crete to the north had happy outcomes. In April 1431, the round ship Querina, (the property of a leading Venetian family, commanded by Piero Querini) sailed for Flanders, calling in at ports on the Barbary Coast and then passing the Straits of Gibraltar. Her cargo was 800 botte of malmsey, raw cotton, pepper and ginger. This was the beginning of what proved to be a terrible voyage. The ship had the misfortune to strike rocks off Cadiz but managed to reach land safely, was repaired and continued on her way. By this time it was the middle of July. From this point on she ran into a series of fierce summer storms. First of all she was driven south almost to the Canaries. Then when back on course to the north a further storm caught the ship off Cape Finisterre. She ran before the winds for weeks losing masts, sails and finally her rudder. At a point somewhere off the coast of Ireland the crew, reduced to utter misery and in terror of their lives, decided to abandon ship for the small boats still intact on the deck. They also of course abandoned all the valuable cargo. It was now the depth of winter and those on the only one of the two small boats to survive a further storm had exhausted their supplies of food and water by the time they made landfall on an uninhabited island completely covered in snow. Here the survivors, after some weeks sheltering in a hut made from the wreckage of their boat, were found by chance by fishermen from a neighbouring island. They were in fact off the coast of Norway; they made their way to Bergen and eventually home to Venice arriving about a year after they had first set sail.32 It is perhaps too easy to forget the dangers that could overcome a vessel at sea at this time. Disaster could strike in the English Channel as well as in the North Atlantic. One particularly unfortunate vessel in 1497, commanded by Hieronimo Tiepolo successfully beat off an attack by Frenchmen from Normandy off Lisbon by using their cannon only to lose the ship and her cargo somewhere off the English coast. On this occasion the owners of the cargo were compensated by the Venetian state.33 The intricacy of the commercial aspects of international trade in the sweet wines of Crete is also revealed by the business correspondence of Marco Bembo in the 1480s. His trading empire extended from Crete to Syria and on to London and Bruges. He corresponded with factors in Lyon, London, Ancona, Bruges, Constantinople, Salonica and Damascus among

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other places. He would dispatch bullion and goods from Venice in order to have the funds to buy wine in Crete, including malmsey and sweet muscat, often supplying the butts needed; in July 1482 he was writing urgently requesting large and small barrels from Venice as he had wine waiting to be dispatched. He seems to have normally bought sweet wines in lots of from 300 to 800 botte from a variety of producers. Much of this wine was destined for the markets in England or Bruges but his aim was always to seek out the most profitable destination.34 The trade in sweet wine with northern states seemed to be on a relatively sound footing from the exporters’ point of view in the first half of the fifteenth century, but underlying Venetian concerns to promote profitable trade always lay the overriding anxiety of the rulers of the Republic to ensure that Venetian shipping and shipbuilding were in good condition and able to contribute to the defence of the city and its overseas possessions. When Genoese vessels and merchants, driven out of their Black Sea trading posts by the Turkish advance, began to be involved in this trade, loading wine at Cretan ports, it caused anxiety in Venice. The Genoese had developed particularly successful and seaworthy trading vessels known as carracks which would frequently have the capacity of over 500 tuns. They could load large cargoes and were very familiar with the voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar to Southampton and on to Flanders, presenting formidable competition to Venetian traders. This increased after the Turks began to interfere with the operation of the alum mines on Chios which had been the backbone of the bulk trade of the Genoese . Alum was also discovered in the Papal States at Foglia in 1461. Trade in this alum was largely in the hands of Florentines, another blow to Genoese trade, further increasing their interest in shipping wine north. Freight rates for wine from Crete fell sharply from 7–8 ducats per tun to 3–4 ducats in the 1470s, probably as a consequence of this competition.35 The appearance of an English trader buying wine in Crete in 1457–145836 may have caused some surprise in Candia but it was the intervention of the Genoese and their large carracks which led the Venetians to take action not only to protect the trade but also to ensure that Venetian vessels continued to dominate it. A tax of 5 ducats per butt on all wine loaded in foreign ships was imposed in 1473, lowered to 4 ducats in 1488. The building of large round ships was also

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encouraged by the Republic offering subsidies from 1486 to finance their construction.37 The new Venetian duty on the export of sweet wine in other than Venetian ships was seen quite differently in England, a major market. In Southampton, imports of sweet wines had been an important element in the town’s trade since the first decades of the fifteenth century. Paolo Morelli, a Florentine, acted as agent in the town for Italians from Genoa, Florence and Venice; in 1432 among other luxury goods including dried fruit, and olive oil he had paid the customs duty on 5 butts of sweet wine. In 1438–1439, this increased to the customs on 105 butts. He was still active in 1442 when he acted as agent for Andrea Corner in the sale of 66 buts of malmsey to leading Southampton burgesses. Much of the wine probably went overland to London though a little went to Salisbury (3 butts in June 1444 and 1 butt in July) or Winchester (1 butt in September 1444) for example. By the 1480s Southampton had a virtual monopoly in direct trade with Italy and thus in the import of sweet wines from Crete. The character of trade between England and Italian ports had, however, changed radically since the 1440s. The Florentine state galleys no longer made the voyage and Florence had opened the port of Pisa to English ships. Genoese trade had suffered badly from the problems in the alum trade already discussed. The centre of Genoese trade with northern Europe shifted from Southampton and London to Flanders, principally Antwerp since by this time the outports of Bruges, Sluys and Damme, were suffering badly from silting up. This left Venetian galleys as the only Italian vessels to maintain the link with Southampton, now their preferred port of call since Sandwich also suffered from the silting up of the harbour.38 The main Venetian interest in trade with England was the right, under licence, to export raw wool to Venice to supply the skilled artisans in the city without the tedious and expensive necessity to send everything via the Wool Staple at Calais. The issue of the necessary licences could be withheld placing a useful bargaining counter in the hands of the Crown. Edward IV had been happy to co-operate with the Venetians; Richard III was less so inclined. By the reign of Henry VII, English merchants were making a success of direct trade through Pisa in Mediterranean goods and

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luxuries from further east, something which the Crown and the powerful merchant community were anxious to encourage. In these circumstances the extra duty on sweet wine carried away from Crete in foreign bottoms was seen as aimed directly at the competition from English ships loading wine at Candia. Negotiations were opened by the king with Florence, in 1489; these resulted in an agreement that only English ships should be able to export raw wool to Pisa and that English ships would trade at no other Italian port. This effectively shut Venetians out of direct contact with the English wool market making (as they forcefully pointed out) the voyage to England of little profit from their point of view. They did manage to obtain a relaxation of the restrictions on wool exports but this did not result in any change in the wine duties at Candia and in fact the Venetian Senate stopped the export of wine to Pisa where the English might have loaded it as part of their return cargo. A vessel owned by Pietro Contarini which was already (in May 1490) on its way to Pisa, with wine loaded at Candia ,was ordered in no circumstances to continue its voyage while Pietro would be compensated by a grant of one ducat per butt for his losses on the voyage. The Signoria finally sent a special ambassador to Henry to attempt to justify the imposition of the duty at Candia in April 1491. It was, he was told to explain, a matter of ‘urgent necessity’. Pirates were in the habit ‘with false flags and papers of going to Candia for wine. On the way back they captured and plundered our ships’. Not only English ships were targeted by the duty and the English could, of course, load the wine in Venetian ships with no liability for the duty. The real problem was that ‘in the heart of our State, plots were laid against us and our citizens’. The Venetians were in fact happy to send more wine to England and fervently hoped that the king should ‘remain satisfied’ by this explanation. This was not the case; in the autumn parliament of the same year an act was passed setting down that the malmseys that from hensforth shalbe brought into this your realme of England shalbe of full gauge conteyning six score and six gallons at the lest in measure. . . . And evry merchant straunger bringing suche malmeseys into this realme shall pay to your grace the custumes of xviiis for a butte of malmsey over and above the costume afore tyme to your grace used to be paid.

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A minimum price of £4 per butt was also set down. Since 18s. was the equivalent of 4 ducats this new duty made the tit for tat explicit. This was not of course the end of the affair; both the English Crown and the Signoria wrangled over the duties for the remainder of the fifteenth century and into the reign of Henry VIII. Despite the duties and restrictions the import of sweet wines from Crete continued, in both English and Venetian ships. Competition from similar wines from southern Spain and eventually in the mid–sixteenth century from the Canary Islands and Madeira, loosened the Venetian hold on the market but the taste for a sweet highly alcoholic wine among the upper levels of society in England continued. Both Spain and Portugal had in fact exported wine to England, northern France and Flanders at least since the thirteenth century. There are some difficulties in determining the overall size of the trade. Spanish mariners from the northern ports from Vivero and Ribadeo to Deva and San Sebastian were involved in the carrying trade taking wine from Bayonne, Bordeaux and La Rochelle north. It is by no means certain that wine unloaded from a Spanish bottom in, for example, Bristol or Southampton, was Spanish wine in the sense of either having been made in Spain or being the property of a Spanish merchant. In Chaucer’s the Pardoner’s Tale, there is a well-known passage when the Pardoner advises his listeners to: Keep clear of the wine, I tell you, white or red, Especially Spanish wines which they provide And have on sale in Fish Street and Cheapside. That wine mysteriously finds its way To mix itself with others – shall we say Spontaneously? – that grow in neighbouring regions. Out of the mixture fumes arise in legions, So when a man has had a drink or two Though he may think he is at home with you In Cheapside, I assure you he’s in Spain Where it was made at Lepe I maintain Not even at Bordeaux. He’s soon elate And very near the ‘samson-samson’ state.39

Chaucer was a vintner and well aware of the tricks of the trade which undoubtedly included the mixing of wines with various noxious substances,

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particularly to produce a kind of fake Romeney wine. He is perhaps more likely to be hinting at this than at the very early production of a sherry type wine at Lepe a village near Huelva. The ‘samson-samson’ snores of the drunk convey a vivid picture but it would be wrong to conclude that all Spanish wine imported into England in the medieval period was of low quality. For at least some of the fourteenth century Spanish wine sold at the same price as Gascon, 6d. per gallon or £5 per tun while that from La Rochelle sold at 4d. per gallon. A petition presented to the king in January 1366 on behalf of some Dartmouth merchants complained that in pursuance of an order to separate all sweet wines from ‘ordinary wines’ in cellars or houses, so that the extra tax on sweet wines could not be evaded, wines they had bought in Spain, the Algarve and Osey had been arrested (seized by the crown) as sweet wines which they were not. The king accepted this but it may have been the case that Spanish and Portuguese wine was higher in alcohol than Gascon or Rochelle wine, and similar in some respects to malmsey.40 Despite the fact that strong red wines were made in Spain in this period much of that exported to England was white. This was also the case with the Spanish wines drunk in the Low Countries many of which came from the district of Vivero in Galicia. It is hard to give precise figures for the exports but the evidence suggests that a regular trade flourished in moderate quantities of wine mostly entering England via West Country ports. After the English loss of Gascony, the Spanish exporters took the opportunity to fill the gap in the market to some extent. As the production of sweet wines in Andalucía, around Jerez and Huelva increased at the end of the fifteenth century this was welcome in England and took over an increasing share of this market.41 English ships from Bristol and other West Country ports were also becoming more common on the route to southern Spain and Seville. The Gabriell of Bristol and the Michael of Bristol returned from Andalucía in early January 1504 with cargoes which consisted largely of wine along with fruit, olive oil and the red dye, orchil. The Spanish ship the Jesus of Errenteria also came in with a similar cargo at the end of the month. Robert Ayventre master of the Katren or Marie Katren of Bristol set out to Andalucía just before Christmas 1503 with a cargo of cloth. He returned to his home port at the end of May 1504 with a cargo mostly of wine but with small amounts of olive oil, wax and one barrel of comfits.42 This was the normal form of the trade;

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English and Welsh cloth was exchanged for Spanish wine and other luxuries. The total amount of wine, however, was small compared, for example, with the cargoes of the 11 wine ships from Bordeaux which docked in Bristol between October and January 1503–1504.43 Portugal was also involved in the trade in wine with northern Europe, again principally England and the Low Countries. From the last decades of the fourteenth century the English and Portuguese royal families were closely linked by marriage ties. The friendship between the two realms was expressed in the Treaty of Windsor signed in 1386. Marriage also linked the royal house of Portugal to Burgundy when Isabella, a granddaughter of John of Gaunt, married Philip of Burgundy in 1429. These links undoubtedly benefited commercial relations. The Libelle of Englysshe Polycye listed the commodities that English merchants sought in Portugal which included ‘oyle, wyne osey’ and the familiar luxuries from the south, ‘fyges, reysyns hony and cordeweyne’ (fine leather). Osey was a sweet white wine, even if not taxed as such, produced very near Lisbon increasingly popular in both England and the Low Countries in the fifteenth century. It was probably much like the modern ‘vinho licoroso’. Despite this popularity the trade as a whole was on a relatively small scale tending to fluctuate as the web of political relationships, of friendship and hostility, between England, the Low Countries and Spain, its competitor, strengthened and weakened. There was something of a surge in the last years of the fifteenth century when, in 1494–1495, no fewer than 19 Portuguese vessels brought in 120 tuns of wine to London. Osey from Portugal and sack from Andalucía were probably the most profitable elements in the wine trade between Iberia and northern Europe. By the end of the sixteenth century many of the more prosperous groups in society would have echoed Falstaff ’s words and advised their sons to ‘forswear thin potations and to addict them selves to sack’.44 The taste for sweet wines, particularly those like malmsey, could also be found further east in Europe in the late medieval period. In the markets of Cracow malmsey was ten times more expensive than ‘ordinary’ wine like Rhenish. All wine in fact, with the sole exception of some made in Hungary, had to follow a tortuous, expensive and often dangerous and difficult route to reach the market in Cracow. There is no doubt that

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despite this, wine found a ready sale in the city. For most of the period the Polish court and government and the attendant nobility were based in Cracow together with from 1364 the students of the university. All this ensured a strong demand for wine. Although small quantities had been grown in Poland in the early medieval period, its quality was low and by the fourteenth century the more palatable imported wines dominated sales. The style of wine best able to survive the long journey from the producing area to Cracow was malmsey because of its high alcohol content. Some came overland from Venice via Treviso and Vienna; another route, particularly used by Jewish merchants after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, ran from Crete to the Black Sea on to Moldavia then to Lvov or Kosice and over the Tatra mountains to Cracow. Yet a third route by which sweet wine reached Cracow, was used by merchants who had bought the wine in Bruges, taken it by sea to Danzig and then up the Vistula to Cracow. On all overland routes the carter or furman had responsibility for the wine, following directions from the consigning merchant. He might be faced with floods or frosts, the possibility of attack from robbers, injury to the horses and the sheer difficulty of getting heavily loaded wagons over roads which often consisted of no more than rough tracks through open country or forests with no attempt at a firm surface for wheeled traffic. River transport might seem to be preferable but was very slow going up stream against the current while tolls and taxes were much more easily imposed by lords and towns passed on the way and much harder to avoid. On a route which used both water and land transport the casks had to be manhandled from carts or pack animals to the boats and back again. Cranes could only be found in major ports like Bruges and Cologne. Even so, despite all these problems, not only malmsey but ordinary French wines largely from Bordeaux, and Rhenish (known as renskie or Riwuła in the Cracow records) reached the city, mostly by way of Bruges, Danzig and the Vistula. The most common wine, however, and not surprisingly the cheapest, was that which had the least distance to travel; this was wine from Hungary where the Tokaj district was particularly suited with its sandy soil and exposure to warm southern winds to viticulture. This wine was certainly bought in the late fourteenth and fif-

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teenth centuries by the court and other privileged classes who made up the wine drinkers in this region; the lower classes were content with beer or various types of largely home-made alcohol.45 There were, therefore, few if any parts of Europe where wine was unobtainable in the Middle Ages. Vines were grown and wine of a sort was made in places where the climate made this a risky and unprofitable enterprise and the result was often of poor quality. A more secure supply of reasonably drinkable wine was often provided in places like this by wine imported from more fortunate areas. To export, however, a winemaking area had, to produce a fair sized surplus over that needed for local consumption. It also needed to be accessible to proven trade routes; for the most part this meant navigable rivers ideally reaching the sea near ports with what modern traders would call good commercial infrastructure. The demand for wine was strong enough to overcome the general difficulty of long distance transport at the time. It could also cope with the dangers caused by the presence of marauders on the way to markets, whether pirates at sea or malefactors of various kinds on land. The insecurity faced by merchants was often influenced by political considerations, and the state of the relationship between states through whose territory the wine had to pass. Wine was also an easy commodity to tax or make subject to tolls along the way. None of these problems, however, succeeded in halting the trade completely although it was, of course, subject to many ups and downs sometimes caused by bad wine harvests, sometimes the result of factors over which wine merchants had little or no control. The factor, which, in the all important northern markets, caused the biggest decline in sales, though not a complete collapse in prices, was the arrival on the market of a rival alcoholic drink, good, strong beer made with hops. We have already touched on this when discussing the trade in Rhenish and will look at the whole question of the consumption of wine in the next chapter.

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6

The Enjoyment of Wine

Although the extent and evident prosperity of the wine trade in medieval Europe makes it plain that this was a product much desired by many people, it is hard to produce any reliable figures for the average level of individual consumption in any particular place at any particular time. The figures for imports or exports, recorded by taxation authorities, are often incomplete or unreliable, as we have seen, and are very difficult to relate to the even more imprecise figures for populations. Some attempts have been made to estimate the consumption per head in particular areas but are probably no more than a rough indication. Lachiver, for example, has suggested that in the second half of the fifteenth century Brittany consumed around 30,000 tuns of wine that is about 250,000 hectolitres. He estimates the population of the Duchy as about 750,000. This gives a per capita consumption of around 33 litres a year. Leaving out women and children and assuming that less was drunk inland than on the coast, he calculates about 100 litres per man per year. This is quite high but is dwarfed by some figures from Nantes at the end of the fifteenth century which put the amount of wine consumed per head in the town, counting all the inhabitants, men, women and children, at about 100 to 140 litres a year.1 Metz in the Rhineland had a tax on wine consumed rather than just traded. Between 1409 and 1790, the records of this imposition suggest that consumption varied between 50 and 150 litres per head per year. Parisian records, on the other hand, make no distinction between wine consumed in the city and that in transit to other destinations. Since the population of the city is also uncertain with estimates varying greatly, no reliance can be placed on a calculation which stated that annual wine consumption was about 100 litres per head in the period from 1350– 1450.2 In the boom years of the early fourteenth century Bordeaux exported 700,000 hectolitres of wine; this clearly could not all have been

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drunk by the English who numbered probably no more than about three and a half to four million souls in total at this time. Even assuming that the population of the British Isles as a whole was around five million and using this as the base of the calculation hardly alters the situation.3 Rather than looking at these perhaps no more than fanciful calculations, it is probably better to look more closely at the records of particular groups or individuals in medieval society and what can be said about their consumption and enjoyment of wine. There is not a great deal of information about the wine drunk by peasants or country people. In places where wine was made in large quantities, generally speaking southern Europe, wine was seen as an essential element in life. In Provence it was apparent to one observer that, at this period, nutrition was inconceivable without wine.4 In Carpentras, for example, a tax return revealed that around 45 per cent of the inhabitants made their own wine, owning vineyards in the countryside around the town; only 12 per cent had no wine at all stored on their premises, something which was taken as a sign of poverty. The total annual harvest in the opening years of the fifteenth century varied between 8,950 hectolitres and 16,000 hectolitres giving the possibility of around 210–390 litres per head per year, based on the best estimates of the town’s population. Most people drank wine from their own vines; in Carpentras usually only the poor and travellers drank in the taverns where the wine was often watered and somewhat tart. It was also the case that immediately after the new wine had been made in the autumn many people sold some of their produce by the pitcher from their homes, perhaps as much to show off the quality of their wine as to make a profit. Anyone with a large surplus of wine, including the bishop who had extensive vineyards, sold it mainly to country people from the mountainous region of the Vaucluse, who supplied Carpentras with corn, sheep and other produce in return.5 In Tuscany, as elsewhere, wine was often part of a worker’s pay. Building workers often expected wine to be provided ‘on the job’ so that they could refresh themselves yet not lose time. This was the case as well with those working in the fields who had the right to stop working if no wine was forthcoming. Giovanni Villani, writing in the first half of the fourteenth century, stated that Florentines each drank about 270 litres of wine per

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year. It must be remembered that in Italy it was socially acceptable for both women and children to drink wine, something which was not the case further north. In Siena, those liable to a tax on the sale of wine included all members of a tavern keeper’s family of more than 4 years of age, perhaps on the assumption that even young children would drink wine.6 Particularly notable is the amount of wine supplied by the Venetian State to the workers in the Arsenale, the all-important shipbuilding yard constructing the state owned galleys. They were provided with free wine every day perhaps from the time of the founding of the shipyards in 1107 and received a large amount whenever a vessel was launched. This was undiluted; that available every day was usually mixed with water in the proportion of 1:2.7 The wine more widely provided for workmen, whether in towns or the countryside was, however, often made from the very last pressing of the grapes mixed with water. This piquette, as it was called in France, was very low in alcohol (about 2–3%) but undoubtedly refreshing and less likely to be contaminated than well or river water on its own, though this was not of much concern to medieval drinkers. It was often probably bitter or vinegary to modern tastes but was still found agreeable and an expected part of everyday life. Peasants producing small quantities of wine on their own holdings probably sold most of the better produce to pay their taxes but would keep back a little to celebrate weddings and other feasts. This was particularly the case in Provence, where provisions in wills make clear that, at a funeral, family honour required that good wine should be served to those who had come to remember the dead.8 Peasants and country people living outside winemaking regions usually had few opportunities to drink wine but this was not always the case. In Hainault, the records of the toll on wine sales from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, paid in the villages of Englefontaine and Forest-enCambrai, near Quesnoy, only a relatively short journey from the vineyards of the Paris basin, reveal that in these places wine was bought and drunk by most of the local inhabitants. Both townships were small; no more than 50 and 79 hearths respectively in 1365, and 43 and 51 in 1406, but seem to have been prosperous. This was because while arable farming produced low returns, the raising of beef cattle, pigs and sheep, a speciality of this region, brought in a good income. Like all country people at this period, they faced

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the problems caused by outbreaks of warfare and marauding bands of armed men, and the vagaries of the weather, but even so, an average consumption of wine of 7–8 litres per head per year in the fourteenth century had risen to 12–13 litres per head per year in 1406. These are not high figures compared with those found in southern Europe but make it likely that even if wealthy burgesses and the nobility drank most wine, more humble people were eager to get hold of it whenever possible.9 This assumption is strengthened by the evidence regarding the provision of food and wine to building workers of all kinds, masons, carpenters, carters, plasterers and thatchers working for the Archdiocese of Rouen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the late fourteenth century, wine was still provided as part of wages. For work on the mill at Déville, workers received cheese, eggs and 30 gallons of wine as well as money as payments. During the fifteenth century the payment of wages in kind decreased rapidly. The archbishop’s workmen received wine almost as a gift; a way of celebrating a special occasion; the beginning of a large project or the completion of a particular stage in the work. This was done when the foundations were laid for the new archbishop’s palace in 1460 and when the outside staircase was successfully put in place at Estouteville. Wine was also given to the plasterers when they finished their work at the same site. The provision of wine had become a way of creating good relations between workmen and their employer and also a way of showing pleasure in work well done. Masons had long held special celebrations at Easter and Michaelmas. On these occasions too the employer was expected to donate wine. The successful completion of the negotiations for agreements to undertake work or contracts of employment in the building trade had also originally been signalled by the provision of wine; this was done in 1409 when the merchant supplying wood for the repair of gates in the walls of Rouen formally took wine at the house of Colin de Baudribosc, one of the archbishop’s councillors. By the sixteenth century, however many of these quasi ritual uses of wine had been replaced by small additional payments which might or might not have in fact been used by the recipients to enjoy themselves at a tavern.10 Another source of information regarding the use of wine in everyday life can be gained from the records of religious communities. The Rule of

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St Benedict, dating from c. 530, had accepted, perhaps a little grudgingly, that wine would be served in a community following this way of life. St Benedict had set the daily amount to be served in a monastery at one hemina (about a quarter of a litre) for each monk while noting that ‘those to whom God gives the strength to abstain should know that they will receive a special reward’. He also agreed with those who wrote that ‘wine is by no means a drink for monks’ but pointed out that ‘since the monks of our day cannot be persuaded of this let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to satiety because wine makes even the wise fall away’.11 The abbot or abbess of a community had discretion regarding the amount provided in a particular community. Throughout the medieval period, most religious orders even those considered to be reformed, derived their rule ultimately from that of St Benedict. Wine could thus be found on the tables of virtually all such communities. Gilbert Maghfeld, the London merchant whose ledger covering the 1390s has survived, found it good business to sell wine to religious houses in London and its environs, including St Giles Holborn, St Anthony’s, the Abbey of St Mary Graces and Waltham Abbey.12 As we have seen, many monasteries in both France and the Rhineland also became major producers of wine during the Middle Ages, regarding this as a commercial operation. Where monastic bursars’ accounts survive it is also possible to estimate more precisely what was drunk within a community by its members and their guests. The records of Durham Cathedral Priory have been analysed and provide a good picture of what the community drank, what was provided for visitors in the guest house and what was needed for celebrations of Mass. Most of the wine purchased was red with a small amount of white and claret (the light wine from Gascony) as well. These wines differed little in price and were usually recorded as one bulk purchase as for example in 1504–1505 when the bursar bought ‘two tuns of red, claret wine and white wine at £5 6s. 8d.’ per tun. Sweet wines including malmsey were bought in small quantities and were normally much more expensive. In the fifteenth century, the bursar bought most of his stock from Newcastle though he occasionally went south to Hull if prices seemed better there. Even when the price of wine rose, often because of periods of political tension between England and France, the quantities

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he bought stayed much the same. Disregarding wine used for religious purposes and that served to guests it has been calculated that with about 40 monks making up the priory community, each would have been supplied with just over a pint of wine a day. This is twice as much as St Benedict’s suggestion of a hemina per monk per day. It is probable however, that wine was not served in the refectory every day. In both Lent and Advent, both periods of fasting, it had no place on the table. All other Wednesdays and Fridays were also fast days; taking this into account one calculation is that wine was only served to monks on around 100 days per year. If this was the case, the Durham monks would have gone from relative abstinence to something like ‘binge drinking’ since their consumption of wine on the days it was permitted would have equalled around 4 pints per monk, about three modern bottles each.13 The records for Westminster Abbey suggest a smaller daily allowance of a about a quarter of a pint while monks at Battle Abbey in the fourteenth century might have got much more than this, nearly one and a half pints. On Quinquagesima Sunday 1535 the community at Westminster numbering about 40 monks was allowed 1 gallon of malmsey wine and three and a half gallons of Gascon wine, to be shared among them and possibly also servants; it seems likely that much the same amount would have been served in the fifteenth century.14 This would equate to a little under a pint each, only a quarter of that which may have been consumed on feast days at Durham. Since monks also drank large quantities of ale every day (perhaps as much as a gallon was the usual ration) it seems likely that wine was something of a treat, at least in northern Europe, but when it was provided monks had few inhibitions about drinking deeply if opportunity offered. This was, perhaps the view taken by some contemporary satirists. The description of an abbot from a manuscript in the Digby Collection in the Bodleian Library accords closely with the images of drunken monks found in anti-clerical writings in the early sixteenth century. This abbot apparently had two pitchers of wine set before him white on the right and red on the left. He first tasted both wines and then drank deeply ‘for the peace and stability of the Church’. He then continued to drink a series of toasts for all kinds of purposes from the benefit of priests to a wish for good weather to the safety of travellers and pilgrims. The last draught that he took, the

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fifteenth, was in the hope that dew would fall on Mount Gilboa so that vines would flourish. By the end of supper he apparently couldn’t stand, ‘he cannot rise from his seat unless he be raised by both arms like a cow stuck in a muddy slough’.15 More reliable information comes from a document from 1364–1365 which gives precise details of the food and drink provided for the pupils masters and servants at the studium papale or study centre created by Pope Urban VI at Trets some 25 miles from Aix en Provence. There were 180 boys aged from 12 to 18 at the college, but the document also gives details of those who were present at each meal so that holidays and other events can be accounted for. 210 litres of wine was provided per head for the whole year which equated to rather more than half a litre per day.16 This seems quite reasonable and contrasts well with figures which exist for the papal court itself where enormous quantities of wine were drunk at major festivities. Even in weeks without any important feasts, in the period 1320–1323, the butler, the official in charge of the provision of wine for the papal court, expected to serve from 100–105 hectolitres of wine of which 10 were for the table of the pontiff himself.17 Religious houses for women were also governed in many cases either by the Bendedictine Rule or a derivation of it and would therefore face the same basic regulations concerning the place of wine in the diet. The Rule of Caesarius of Arles dating from c. AD 512 to c. AD 534, the same period as St Benedict’s Rule also clearly assumes that wine will be drunk in a convent. The author was concerned to prevent nuns secretly buying wine, or if they received it in some other way, to ensure that it was fairly distributed. This was the task of the ‘wine-mistress’. The ‘holy abbess’ had moreover to try to provide rather better wine than that usually served to those ‘who are ill or who were raised more delicately’.18 Many houses for women, however, were poorly endowed and probably could not afford more than the wine needed for the Mass. This made something of an issue of the treatment of nobly born or royal ladies living in a convent. This is hinted at in the records of the house of nuns of the order of Fontevraud at Nuneaton; in 1331–1332. Edward I’s daughter, Mary, lived there and three gallons of wine were provided specifically for her use at Easter.19 Ale in copious quantities was the more usual drink for this

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community its clerks, servants and guests. Another source for the consumption of wine by women religious is a fragmentary account from Wilton Abbey covering some 16 weeks from June to September 1299. This was a house founded by King Alfred with a long and distinguished history often sheltering women of the highest social standing. In this period, however, wine seems to have been only available on very special occasions or when important male guests were entertained by the nuns. Thus purchases of wine are recorded when the justices of Assize were in Wilton, when the king’s escheator, or a lawyer helping the nuns with a court case visited the house and when the Bishop of Salisbury preached to the community. The biggest purchase of wine (2 tuns) was at the time of the installation of the new abbess on 13th September 1299 which was celebrated with a great feast. The nuns had to purchase 800 plates and dishes for their guests who were served swans and peacocks as well as 60 gallons of milk and 166 capons besides the wine.20 A picture of a less abstemious attitude to wine comes from the records of the visitations of convents for women conducted by Eudes, Bishop of Rouen, in the mid-thirteenth century. He found that at one house, St Armand de Rouen, some nuns received more than their fair share of wine and the suspicion was that some of this was being sold on to the detriment of the convent’s finances. Even worse things went on at the priory at Villarceaux where most of the nuns had lovers and the prioress was drunk nearly every night. In contrast, in the fourteenth century, the beguines (members of a sisterhood not bound by monastic vows) of Ghent were described in 1328 as living almost entirely on coarse bread and pottage with only cold water to drink.21 Cecily, Duchess of York, who lived a life of prayer and pious study, akin to that of a professed religious at the end of her life, still followed a routine which included the comfort of glasses of wine. She would take one before Evensong and another an hour before going to bed at 8 o’clock. All the head officers of her household were also served wine daily, although there is no indication of the precise amount.22 This organization of her household with a well-defined hierarchy of officers whose perquisites were set out in detail was, of course, the norm for those of similar rank at this period. Cecily’s piety was perhaps unusual but not the way in which her household was organized. This, of course,

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means that it is easier to find records of the amount of wine consumed in royal and noble households than any other level of society. Perhaps the most complete description of the organization of a royal household is the Black Book of the Household of Edward IV which dates from around the autumn of 1472 although it makes frequent reference to earlier material.23 There is also the Royal Household Ordinance of 1478 which provides a concise summary of its organization. Virtually all those employed about the royal court and the king’s person had the right to ‘livery’; that is allowances of food, drink and, in winter, light (candles and tapers) and fuel, and items of clothing in some cases. There were also rights to dine in the ‘hall’ with the standard of food and drink to be served to persons of a particular rank being prescribed. This varied from that served on an ‘ordinary day’ to that on a fast day or that on a special feast day. The number of people serving in the royal household was very large and there were of course many opportunities for the unscrupulous to line their own pockets by selling royal provisions or passing them on to those not really entitled to live at the king’s expense; hence the detailed regulations and attempts to limit ‘liveries’. The officers also each had an allotment of servants or assistants all of whom also had rights to food and drink. For example, in an ordinance of 1445, the four ‘chivaliers, kervers et cupberers’ each had a squire and ‘vallet’ eating in the hall and received ‘pur la nuyt’ 1 loaf, 1 pitcher of wine and 1 gallon of beer. This was the usual allowance, though at a certain level in the household only half a pitcher of wine was provided at night and at the level of messengers and valets only beer and bread, with no wine. An entry in the Black Book itself describes the king’s diet. On days when there was no ‘prees of lordes or straungers at his bourde’ two and a half pitchers of wine would be provided along with two gallons of ale. At supper the drink served would be two pitchers of wine, two gallons of ale besides the ‘frutez and wafereez’. Half a gallon of wine would also be available at the ‘bed making’. He did not, of course drink all this himself; the attendant lords would also be served. While there was no shortage of wine at court, the provision does not seem unduly lavish on ordinary days.24 The supply of wine to the royal household was in the hands of the royal butler who, as we have seen, had the right to levy wine from all ships with

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this cargo docking at English ports, and who also bought in extra supplies of wine for the king. This was not, of course, all intended for consumption at court. Some was intended for the benefit of those serving the king in the garrisons of castles and other strong points. In 1403, commissions were issued ordering the supply of wine to castles in Wales and the Marches including Newport, Brecknock, Hay and Dynas. Wine was also an expected part of the supplies for royal armies in France.25 Considerable quantities were also given away either as part of the rewards of an office, or as a present on a particular occasion something which will be looked at in more detail below. The office of the butler was in fact a large organization; the chief butler himself was paid between 20 marks and £40 per year with the usual rights to service and livery of court. Under him was an organization of under butlers, cellar clerks, attorneys, yeomen and men organizing the prise of wines in the ports. Strenuous attempts were made to devise rules that would keep track of the wines intended for the king; to ensure that old wines that were no longer drinkable were properly disposed of and every last drop was accounted for, but there is room for doubt as to their effectiveness. Wherever the king was in residence, the sergeant of the cellar was expected to be ready in the hall at 8 in the morning to receive from the kitchen details of the previous day’s consumption. He also had to have precise records of all wine available in the cellar and all the cups, ewers and other necessaries, especially those of gold or silver, for the service of wine. Either he or the ‘yeman of the king’s mouthe’ chose the wines ‘most pleasant to the kinges drinking and most holesum’. He also had to ensure that no person could meddle with the wine destined for the king himself.26 It is clear that considerable trust had to be placed in whoever held this position, since poisoning was often feared when unexpected deaths occurred. From the Black Book, however, it is not possible to get any idea of the personal preferences of the monarch. Some light may be thrown on the favourite wines of Edward IV’s sister, Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII, by the fact that in the autumn of 1502, her household bought Rhenish wine from her privy purse, probably at her particular request, rather than the much more usual red Gascon wine.27 In the first half of the fifteenth century, the court of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and his Duchess Isabella of Portugal, showed

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the same liking for Rhine wines. The duke’s servants were prepared to buy Rhenish no matter how much it cost. The court also, not surprisingly also had a marked preference for Beaune wines, some of the best of which came from the duke’s own estates. The great advantage of Beaune was that it kept much better than some of the ‘french’ or Bordeaux wines. ‘Old’ Beaune (that is from the previous year’s harvest) was even offered to the dauphin, Louis in 1456 at Nivelles, some thing which would have been inconceivable with more run of the mill red or white wines. Unlike the king of England, the rulers of Burgundy had no general right to a prise of wines. The court obtained much by way of gifts; these were by custom offered to the duke and the duchess whenever they stopped in a town, no matter whether it was for a lengthy visit, or for a matter of hours to refresh themselves on a journey. The court also bought wines on the open market, had a limited right of prise in a few towns and most notably relied on the production of the ducal estates in Burgundy. The estimation of individual consumption is no easier than in England. The apparent onset of frugality in ducal Burgundy after 1445, when the amount of wine acquired for the household fell markedly, was caused not by abstemiousness but by the ending of the custom of providing food and drink for courtiers, their servants and hangers on. Before this date it has been estimated that about 2 l. per person per day was provided in the household of Duchess Isabel while her husband’s courtiers drank rather more. Certainly the most magnificent court in Europe was well aware of the need to provide wine in abundance.28 There are also detailed figures available for the consummation of wine by the Duke and Duchess of Bar when they were in residence at Pont-á-Mousson, together with their household between 1378–1385. These provide the total amount of wine consumed in muids and sétiers, the length of the stay at this location and the number of people involved. Calculations of the daily total for each individual, however, produce wildly varying amounts. The smallest daily intake of wine was about a third of a litre; the largest, the scarcely believable 35 litres. The average seems to be about 2 litres; much higher than most estimates of daily consumption.29 The household accounts of noble families also allow us to get some idea of what wines were bought and in what quantities by great lords, some of whom were almost as wealthy as monarchs and certainly aspired to live in

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much the same style. It has been suggested that the ‘daily consumption of wine was a mark of the highest aristocracy’ in England, a great contrast, of course, with consumption patterns in southern Europe.30 Noble houses usually bought wine in bulk that is by the tun or pipe at the ports. In this way they could probably get the best quality and the most choice though, of course, the wine then had to be transported often for some distance to a particular residence. This could be by boat or cart or pack horse. The accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Lady of Clare, for October to June 1350–1351 show that her clerk of the wardrobe bought 2 pipes of Rhenish and 154 gallons of red wine to be mixed with vinegar in October, 2 tuns of red wine in February, 4 tuns red and 1 pipe Rhenish in May and 6 Pipes of red in June. All this wine was brought by both boat and overland in carts from Ipswich and Harwich to Clare. Including carriage and the expenses of her servants who supervised the purchase and the transport of the wines the total spent was £133. 5s. 1½ d. This can be compared with the £7. 14s. 0½d. spent on ‘confections’ made of almond paste and sugar. The Rhenish was probably for her own table with the red wine for the household at large. The mention of mixing this with vinegar may have produced a drink rather like piquette.31 The steward of the Talbot household at Blakemere in North Staffordshire bought wine in February, March, May, June and July 1394; the amount is hard to determine since he uses the vague term ‘cask’ at times rather than the more precise ‘tun ‘ or ‘pipe’. The wine cost about £23 in all and was more or less equally divided between red and white. One indication of how much was served to individuals reveals that a cask of wine costing £8 was enough for 692 meals, (that is individual servings). This equates to a cost of about 2.8d. per serving. Since wine at this period cost from 6d. to 8d. per gallon this would give just under half to one-third of a gallon for each person served.32 The accounts for 1402 show wine being purchased , mostly in Shrewsbury or Chester, in April May, June, October and November with a large purchase of 7 tuns in December being particularly described as being ‘against Christmas’.33 The only more precise indication of the type of wine bought comes from the accounts for 1411–1412 of the steward of Ankaretta, Lady Talbot when a total of 144 gallons of sweet wines, Romeney, malmsey, Osey and Tyre was bought probably for the delectation of Lady Talbot

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herself and her immediate family. This was a large and well supplied household. The steward also bought 4768 gallons of red wine some of which was used in cooking. To put this consumption of wine in context, however, the steward also bought over 18,000 gallons of ale of which only 370 gallons remained at the end of the accounting period.34 Most of this wine would have been served either at lunch (prandium) which in great houses took place between 9 and 11 o’clock. This was the first meal of the day for most people since until the end of the fifteenth century it was unusual to take breakfast. By 1510, however, at Lent the Earl of Northumberland expected for breakfast bread, beer, wine, salt fish, smoked herrings and salt herrings. When not fasting he would have had mutton or beef instead of fish. The second meal, supper or cena was usually served around 4 in winter and 5 in summer. It might not be served at all in pious households on ecclesiastical fasting days. The format of the accounts kept by the steward of Alice de Bryene for the year 1412–1413 makes clear that wine was served every day at this level of society. Each entry records the number at breakfast, dinner or lunch and supper. Normally about 40 meals all told were served with the majority taking lunch. The accounts give precise numbers for the loaves used and the meat or fish but wine is only noted as ‘from stock’ or ‘from what remained’. Even at a New Year’s banquet when about 100 people were entertained, the wine is described like this while the food included pigs, swans, geese, mutton, capons and other meats.35 In general, a country person of at least gentry status like Chaucer’s Franklin aspired to keep open house with a good stock of both ale, wine and good food so that ‘it positively snowed with meat and drink / and all the dainties a man could think’.36 Feasts in royal households to celebrate major religious festivals or to mark some important occasion, a birth, a marriage or the visit of some person of standing are well documented. When display and ceremonial played an important part in both political and social life, it is not surprising that such elaborate events became almost a kind of theatre with dishes of great cost and complexity playing notable roles. Such feasts could last for several days which is one reason for the lists of supplies needed for such occasions seeming grotesquely long to modern eyes. They were also organized in a strictly hierarchical manner; the most elaborate dishes were served

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only to the guests of highest social standing. They might be served three courses each consisting of many dishes while the lowliest persons in the most humble circumstances might have only one course of much rougher food. It was also necessary at such displays of conspicuous consumption to have copious amounts of ‘leftovers’ which could be collected from the tables of the great as alms for the poor clustered at the gate. A wealthy and powerful prince had to demonstrate in the most concrete way possible his wealth, his generosity to his guests and courtiers and his compassion for the hungry outside his hall. In England wine was served to the elite but not necessarily to all the diners who would also have had access to large quantities of ale. The wine that was served was passed over without much in the way of detail although the food was often precisely described. Not only are the quantities of the various meats, game birds, and fish both from the sea and from fresh water given, but dishes are also described.37 Contemporary cookery books give directions for preparing dishes for feasts, like a peacock presented as if the bird was still alive with its tail fully erect or meat balls coloured and shaped to look like apples, or a roast boar’s head elaborately coloured and gilded with a blend of egg yolk and flour with saffron to add extra colour. There seems to have been a particular fashion for golden yellow foods in the late fourteenth century which may account for the popularity of wines of the same hue. Accounts of feasts in French sources, however, tend to be more specific about the wines being served. Very probably this is because while it was impossible to store most wine for any length of time in this period, thus making all the modern preoccupation with good and bad years or vintages impossible, there was a degree of appreciation in France that some wines were more palatable than others. The English normally talked only of red, white, and claret, never naming individual vineyards. Rhenish was distinguished from French wines but there was little other distinction between wines from different areas on grounds of taste. Henri d’Andeli, on the other hand, made much of such differences in his Bataille des Vins as did other authors. In a poem of the early fourteenth century describing a wedding feast, Le Roman de Fauvel, wines from no fewer than 16 different regions were offered to the guests. Gascony, Beaune, Montpellier, La Rochelle, Spain, Anjou, Orleans and Navarre are all mentioned along with some

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much smaller places like Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, now in the department of the Allier. All were said to be precious and delicious to drink; and available in large quantities.38 Clearly the ostentatious display of power and wealth was often the major purpose of royal and noble feasts. The expense and elaboration of both dishes intended to be eaten and those made as decoration sometimes reached heights which now seem almost incredible. At a feast given in honour of the Duke of Bourbon in 1434, Philip the Good of Burgundy ordered hawthorn trees with flowers of gold and silver with banners of the royal arms of France and all the guests, to be placed on the principal tables. The Feast of the Pheasant held at Lille in February 1454 was even more bizarre and extravagant. It had a particular purpose; to encourage the guests to go on Crusade. According to one observer the decorations and events included were extraordinary. They included ‘the figure of a girl, quite naked, stood against a pillar. Hippocras sprayed from her right breast and she was guarded by a live lion’. There was also ‘a white stag ridden by a young boy who sang marvellously, while the stag accompanied him with the tenor part’. The observer was so overcome by these and other ‘subtleties’ and the magnificent jewels worn by the duke that he said little about the wine served but it would have undoubtedly been provided in lavish quantities.39 Wine was not placed on the tables at these feasts. It was served from side tables laden with gold and silver vessels. Up to the end of the fourteenth century guests would normally share hanaps, large elaborately decorated cups of precious metals which, after being filled by a servant, would be passed from hand to hand according to the rules of court etiquette. Each guest took it from his neighbour with two hands, drank a moderate amount and then passed it on with one hand taking care not to put his thumb in the wine. He then swallowed it and wiped his mouth No one would talk to one who was drinking. When individual glasses became common, the cup-bearer rinsed the goblet which was then filled by the cellarer who had previously tasted both the water and the wine. The cupbearer then covered the goblet and brought it to the drinker, holding the cover under the goblet while the wine was drunk. During the meal drinking wine was almost ceremonial, largely confined to toasts or the act of ‘taking wine’ with a neighbour at table. When the formal meal was over

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and the host and his guests had retired to eat sweetmeats and pastries and drink the heavy sweet wines from Crete and elsewhere or spiced wines like hippocras, the atmosphere perhaps was more relaxed. The overt political purpose of many feasts like this can also be seen in the banquets offered by French towns to the king or the highest nobility and clergy. These banquets were seen as a form of investment in the hope of obtaining a favour or the grant of an important right or privilege. They were also, of course, an opportunity to make personal contact with not only the ‘great man’ himself but the members of his household and his suite. Preparation for these events could last for several weeks if enough notice had been given of the advent of the notable guest. It took 5 weeks in 1461 to prepare the feast for the arrival of Louis XI at Orléans. Not only did expensive wines and exotic ingredients have to be procured but also tables, benches, glasses and other utensils had to be borrowed, bought or hired. The expense could be enormous; Lyon spent 95 per cent of the annual revenue of the town on a reception in 1476. As we have already seen the food provided was on a lavish scale with all kinds of meats and fish in abundance often cooked with the most expensive spices. Wine was always provided in equally generous amounts. Wines from Burgundy, Orléans, Sancerre and Bordeaux could always be expected alone with less common local wines like those from Tain-l’-Hermitage or the Grésellé from Saumur. Towards the end of the festivities sweet wines, malmsey and muscatel, would be served along with spiced wines like hippocras often with wafers and fruit. It is hard to know if these demonstrations of the pride and vanity of the burgesses had the desired effect on the guests.40 The townspeople at large were expected to enjoy the spectacle and perhaps eventually some of the ‘leftovers’. They might get more direct benefit from another manifestation of municipal munificence, the provision of free wine to the citizens to mark a notable event. This certainly happened in 1312 when Queen Isabel of England was safely delivered of the future Edward III on 13th November at Windsor. In the City of London, on the Monday after receiving the news, the Mayor and Aldermen and the liverymen of the drapers, mercers and vintners companies rode to Westminster to give an offering and returned to the Guildhall where they dined. They then joined in the rejoicing in the streets which were

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probably particularly joyous since the Conduit in Chepe ‘ran with nothing but wine’ and outside the Church of St Michael in West Chepe a tun of wine was set up for all to help themselves.41 This munificence was easily overtaken by that of the Papacy when based at Avignon. In 1342 at the coronation of Pope Clement VI the fountains in the street of the city ran with wine for 4 weeks.42 The giving of gifts was, of course, an essential part of medieval social life intended to show or obtain respect, loyalty or submission whether from an inferior to a superior or vice versa. English kings frequently gave relatively small amounts of wine to chosen servants. Chaucer was favoured in this way by both Richard II and Henry IV. The citizens of Cirencester were granted two casks of wine for their service to the Crown in capturing the earls of Kent and Salisbury in July 1400. Edward IV directed that one tun of ‘ordinary wine and one tune of sweet wine’ should go to the convent of Henton in Somerset so that prayers could be said for himself, his family, and their souls after his death.43 At a less exalted level of society a case before the Mayor of London in 1355 shows how gifts of wine could be used as a way out of trouble. One Roger Torold, a vintner, perhaps when he was in his cups (all this happened on Twelfth Night), ‘shamefully reviled’ the Mayor , Thomas Leggy. He finished his tirade by saying that ‘if he could only catch the said mayor outside of the city’ he would make sure he never got back to London alive. Torold was arrested the next day and taken to court where others present gave witness that he had indeed made these threats. After being in jail for a week he was brought back before the Mayor and an ‘immense multitude of Commonalty’. Torold then offered 100 tuns of wine to the Mayor to purge his contempt (apologise for his outburst in a concrete way). This was a very large amount about 25,200 gallons or 90,000 litres worth about £600–700 depending on its quality and condition. Not surprisingly the mayor accepted this gift though Torold also had to enter into a surety of £40 for good behaviour.44 We would like to know what lay behind Torold’s outburst against Leggy but the gift at least ensured his freedom. There is also the possibility that the clerk making the entry in the London Letter Book made a mistake with the figures but even if that is so, it is still clear that a timely gift of wine could bring satisfactory results.

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Gifts of wine to ensure friendship or obtain an advantage were used in a much more structured way in the Low Countries in the counties of Artois, Brabant and Flanders. They have been characterized as ‘a lubricant for human relations’.45 The way this system operated in Louvain from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries has been analysed in some detail. The wine was presented in metal jugs or pitchers decorated with the arms of the city. Each jug contained just less than 5 litres of wine. It was the custom that the wine was immediately consumed by the honoured recipient and his retinue. The jugs were then handed back to be used for the next visiting notable. The wine was usually good quality white Rhenish wine, although occasionally less expensive red wine was used. Only guests of the highest standing, the Count himself or the papal legate were offered sweet malmsey or Romeney wines. The amount of wine offered does not seem excessive; the most usual gift was 2 jugsful, about 10 litres, the largest 8 jugsful (c. 40 litres). Over a year the total amount given away could become quite large, however, especially when the wine used at ceremonial banquets was also included. In 1434 the welcome gifts came to 41 jugs and that given away otherwise totalled 110 jugs, approximately 755 litres in all. The burgesses of Louvain also provided wine on a generous scale to a wide range of people whom they wished to honour; this included all the political elite, all those holding public office including schoolmasters and doctors and all those who were members of the bands of crossbowmen and archers, who carried some political weight in the city. Around a litre of wine was given to all these citizens on St Martin’s Eve when the new burgomaster was elected and on Corpus Christi. In 1473 this wine totalled 690 litres. Clearly in the view of the city authorities, these gifts were essential for the honour of the city. It helped them maintain good relations not only with their own Count but also other leading families of the district including the viscount of Leiden and deputations from neighbouring cities.46 Wine, therefore, was an unremarkable but essential part of daily life in southern Europe. In the north its regular consumption was confined more closely to the upper levels of society. Wherever possible it was a welcome feature of any celebration or ceremony which was intended to increase the

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honour of both hosts and guests. Its pleasures were often described in songs and verses. The thirteenth-century manuscript from the abbey of Benedictbeurn in Upper Bavaria, the source of the well-known Carmina Burana, contains much praise of wine, including the lines: Si quis latititat hic forte Qui non curat vinum forte, Ostendantur illi porte Exeat abhac cohorte.

Or as Helen Waddell translated the lines: If such by chance are lurking Let them be shown the door He who good wine is shirking Is one of us no more.47

In Paris an anonymous student wrote at much the same time a parody of a hymn to the Virgin, ‘Verbum bonum et suave’ in praise of wine. It includes the lines: Hail to the creator of the world’s happiness Hail to your attractive colour Hail to your sweet scent Hail to your delicious savour Lingering sweetly on the tongue

In a final crescendo of praise the poet claimed wine rejoiced the stomach which received it and the tongue, lips and mouth bathed by it. English poets of the Middle Ages perhaps tended to sing in praise of ale more often than of wine but even so there are examples which make explicit the pleasures of drinking wine. In one version of the Boar’s Head Carol the ladies are urged to enjoy a soup made of almonds, Romeney and wine. While all the company enjoy: Gud bred,ale and wine, dare I well say, The Bores hede with mustard armed so gay.

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Another poem makes plain the penalties of over-indulgence: Dronken, drunken, idronken ..dronken is Tabart atte wine

With the result that; Stondet alle stille Stille as any ston Trippe a lutel with they feet And let thy body go.48

Despite the effects of drinking too deeply, however, it was widely held in this period that wine was beneficial to mankind. Whether it refreshed a worker in southern Europe, graced the table of a ruler, or added some relief to the rigours of monastic life its use was seldom if ever condemned and the pleasures it gave were actively sought out.

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7

Food, Drink and Medicine

Deeply engrained in the medieval mind was the belief that wine was good for you. Only gross over-indulgence might have deleterious effects. This was an attitude which had its origins in the classical world, and was heavily influenced of the Greek theory of humours as the basic building blocks of both mental and physical health in human beings and of the nature of other living things. Hippocrates had put forward this theory c. 400 BC in his On the Nature of Man. It was later endorsed by Galen in the second century AD. Galen was widely regarded in the medieval period as the outstanding authority on medical matters. He had accepted the explanation of human physiology and psychology and biology based on humours whole-heartedly. According to this view, there were four humours which influenced the constitutions of all human beings. They were closely linked to the four elements which made up the world, air, fire, earth and water. Blood the first humour was linked to air and could be characterized as warm and moist; the next, yellow bile or choler, was linked to fire and was warm and dry; then came black bile associated with earth, which was cold and dry and finally phlegm, linked with water, was cold and moist. A human would be healthy both in mind and body when these four elements were in balance; most illnesses arose from a disturbance in this balance when one or other of the humours was present in excessive quantities. It was also the case that humans tended to be ‘warm’ (in the way this word was used of humours) in their youth becoming colder and also dryer as old age crept up on an individual. Wine was in essence both ‘warm’ and ‘moist’ according to this theory and its usefulness, both in the diet of healthy people and in medicine, followed from this characterization. It was believed by many writers on diet and medical matters that white wine (which was ‘colder’) was more suitable for young people and women than red wine which was too ‘hot’ for

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their constitutions. On the other hand, red wine was ideal for the old, warming their blood and restoring potency if taken in moderation. The idea that wine was too ‘warming’ for the young was expressed forcefully by Plato in his Laws; it was like ‘pouring fire upon fire either in body or in soul’. No person under 18 years of age should drink wine at all. Those from 18 to 30 must never get drunk but ‘when a man has reached the age of forty he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysius above all other gods’. Plato saw wine as ‘bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age’, allowing men to renew their youth . . . through forgetfulness of care.1 Writing in the early thirteenth century in his De proprietatibus rerum, a very popular medieval compendium of knowledge, Bartholomew Anglicanus expanded on Plato’s views. Wine, he said, strengthens the natural heat in all parts of the body. It brings joy and boldness. He went on to explain how wine helped the digestion, getting rid of flatulence and generally aided the elimination of urine. It could also be helpful to those suffering from the stone and could promote the healing of wounds. The only problem was if it was taken to excess, when it could bring death to any who indulged themselves in this manner. Andrew Boorde, a doctor of physic who had studied at the best medical schools in France including that at Montpellier, wrote a Dietary for his patron, the Duke of Norfolk, around 1547, which was later printed in many editions. His advice on wine reflects the continuing influence of Galen and the theory of humours. His advice on choosing wine was that it should be clear, preferably white, with a good aroma and with a slight sparkle as it was poured from a pot or drawn from a cask. If drunk in moderation it ‘doth quicken a mans wittes, it doth comfort the hert, it doth scowre the lyver’. Moreover, ‘it dothe ingendre good bloude, it doth comforte and doth nourysshe the brayne and it resolveth fleume. It ingendreth heate’. Sweet wines or ‘hyghe wynes’ like malmsey were more problematic; ‘wynes highe and hote of operacyon doth comfort olde men and women’ but should on no account be drunk by children or young women. It was better to drink ordinary wine with a meal and ‘hot’ wines should be drunk at the end of a meal ‘with oysters, with saledes, with fruyt’. It should also not be forgotten that ‘al swete and grose wynes doth make a man fatte’.2

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It is very likely that while he was at Montpellier Boorde became familiar with the Treatise of Arnold de Nova Villa written in the early thirteenth century probably for Robert of Anjou. Villanova, as he is usually known, was a prominent physician, trained at Montpellier who acted as personal doctor to both Peter III and James II of Aragon. His text reached a wider public when it was translated into German and printed in Nuremberg in 1478, whence it has been called the earliest printed book on wine. The printing of this book was part of a wave of popularity for books containing medical advice and advice on how to stay healthy which was very evident as the new technology of printing greatly increased the accessibility of such texts. The printed version contains material on the cultivation of vines and the making of wine by another author but the general advice on health and the recipes for medicines are those of Villanova and were probably an important factor in the book’s success. He lauded wine because it not only strengthens the natural heat but also clarifies turbid blood and opens the passages of the whole body. It strengthens also the members. And its goodness is not only revealed in the body but also the soul, for it makes the soul merry and lets it forget sadness.

He agrees that ‘it is becoming to the old because it opposes their dryness’. He, however, also recommends it for children because ‘it is also a food’ increasing their natural heat and drying out the moisture ‘they have drawn from their mother’s body’.3 Villanova recommended that ‘to strengthen the body or the natural complexion’ spiced wine should be prepared and kept ready to hand in a well-closed clean cask. He didn’t specify what spices to use but said the same amount of galingale as all the other spices together should be used, with twice as much sugar. The mixed spices and sugar should be put in a linen bag through which the wine should be poured three or four times. The result was probably not very different from the hippocras for which a recipe was given in Le Mesnagier de Paris, (also known as The Goodman of Paris). This was a book written c. 1393, ostensibly by a husband for his young wife, on the behaviour expected of her and the way in which she should keep house. It illustrates well the way in which dietary advice and medical advice shaded into each other in the Middle Ages, perhaps

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because of the pervasive influence of the theory of humours. According to the Goodman, Hippocras should be served with fruits, sweetmeats and wafers at the end of a dinner as Boorde later recommended for ‘high’ wines. It was made by making a powder of spices, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, mace, galingale, and nutmeg, mixing this with sugar and adding it to wine. The wine, spice and sugar mixture should then be heated on the fire. When thoroughly hot the mixture should be strained until ‘it runs a clear red’. The aim was that the flavours of sugar and cinnamon should predominate.4 Clarry, not to be confused with claret, the light red wine from the Bordelais, was also a spiced wine made in much the same way as hippocras but sweetened with honey and spiced principally with ginger, saffron and pepper.5 Although the recipe for hippocras was provided in the book, few other details are provided regarding how wine should be served and which kinds should be preferred; detailed menus were included for all sorts of meals but the presence of wine is more or less taken for granted. An account of an elaborate dinner prepared for leading Parisian lawyers probably in 1379, mentioned that two quarts of Grenache (a sweet wine) should be provided allowing ‘two persons to the half pint’. Two quarts of hippocras were also served along with 200 wafers. The way the dinner was organized is not entirely clear but on this occasion wine and spices were served at the end in a separate room, (a custom called the sally-forth) in much the same way as still happens for dessert in some Oxbridge colleges.6 For a wedding feast served to 40 guests, the amounts of food recommended by the Goodman seem enormous. They included, for example, ‘ten dozen flat white loaves’. Three ‘cauldrons of wine’ are mentioned along with three quarts of hippocras which was bought from the spicer, not made at home. To serve the wine during the meal (which could last for some hours) two esquires were needed together with a man to draw the wine from the casks.7 The Goodman’s book also included a selection of recipes for various dishes and these raise some problems about the precise differences between the wine, vinegar and verjuice used in the medieval kitchen, particularly in southern Europe. The definition of wine is not really an issue. Vinegar, however, can be problematic. Was this in fact just old wine which had become undrinkable? Or a deliberately produced by product

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of winemaking? Villanova makes the point that there are many ways of producing vinegar going from putting a jar half full of old wine in the sun when it will become vinegar to using ‘sour rye yeast about the size of an egg or a fist’ binding it in a linen cloth and then adding it to a clean jar of wine which is gently warmed.8 Similarly, was verjuice unfermented grape juice made from unripe grapes or a more general term for sauces including this ingredient? The Goodman’s book contains a recipe for something called verjuice of sorrel which was made by pounding sorrel and parsley in white verjuice. An analysis of the recipes in Italian medieval cook books produced, of course, for a society where there was no shortage of grape-based products, has found wine, vinegar or other similar products being used in about 30–40 per cent of recipes. Sometimes must, partially fermented new wine, was boiled down to make a substance called sapa. Sometimes the same term was used for wine itself reduced in the same way. The end result was not however very different; a sweet thickish liquid which could be used to flavour dishes made with fruit and nuts.9 Verjuice could apparently at times be quite as bitter as vinegar and was used in the same way to flavour meat or fish dishes. It is frequently found in the Goodman’s book as an ingredient in dishes made with freshwater fish; For example, one in which an eel already stewed in red wine, was finished in a sauce of spiced verjuice, wine and vinegar. In the same book an elaborate dish made with a freshly killed hare was also ‘sharpened with vinegar’ while a dish made up of chicken livers and gizzards was likewise ‘sharpened with verjuice’.10 The Forme of Cury, the cook book probably used by the cooks at the court of Richard II, includes much greater use of broth or milk as cooking liquids than the books originating from further south but when wine was available, it was used in much the same way. One dish called Egurdouce, or sweet and sour, consisted of rabbit or kid meat cut up and fried with currants and onions and then served with a sauce of red wine, sugar, pepper, ginger and cinnamon. In the same way ‘smale fylettes of pork’ were roasted and served in ‘wyne an vynegur and Oynouns’. Samuel Pegge, who edited a printed copy of the Form of Cury in the sixteenth century stated in his preface that cooking or cury ‘was ever reckoned a branch of the Art medical’, thus endorsing a very common medieval view. He also particularly

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mentions the ‘Scola Salernitana’, the medical school at Salerno and its manual for healthy living. Known as the Regimen Sanitatis, it was well known to Pegge’s contemporaries, as it had been in earlier periods, and contained ‘much relative to eatables’.11 The way in which dietary advice shaded gradually into medical advice is particularly noticeable when medieval writers put forward their views on the feeding of infants and the question of whether it was at all a good idea to allow very young children to drink wine. It may seem odd that there was any room for disagreement on this point after the classical authorities had so roundly condemned it as we have seen. There were, however, quite a number of writers on dietary matters who were prepared to take a different stance. It is also the case that their works often seem to presuppose that wine was used commonly as baby food at this period. A German doctor in 1493 advised that when the time comes that the child is half a year or a year old . . . the wet nurse should wean him off wine as much as possible. She should give him water or honey water to drink and if she cannot get the child off wine she should give him wine that is white, light and well-diluted.

Another German writer of the same period advised giving babies wine along with breast milk; both may have been following an earlier Italian manual which gave the same advice. The Countess of Provence was likewise advised by her Italian doctor that a nurse should feed a 2-year-old child on a soft pap of bread, honey, milk and wine.12 Writers like the well-known Egidius Romanus whose De Regimine Principum or Mirror for Princes included instructions on how to raise up the young, as well as how a ruler should behave, emphasized that boys under 7 years of age should not be given wine. In his view it made them sick and even prone to develop leprosy. Despite these views, however, wine was clearly a part of children’s diets in southern Europe, both among the poor who diluted it with water, and among the rich who made matters worse in the eyes of commentators by offering it to their children undiluted. Common practice had more influence on what children were given to eat and drink than the writings of learned men. Plato’s warning that the practice was ‘like giving fire to fire in weak wood’ was clearly widely ignored.

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The way to maintain good health was also set out in a poem by Eustache Deschamps, the French court poet of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It was quite simple in his view; you should drink light, clear red wine well diluted with water from a spring, or a swiftly flowing river that was not marshy but pure and healthy. You should drink carefully and never to excess. You should be particularly careful about drinking sweet or spiced wines like hippocras, clarry or Grenache or strong dark red wines which caused headaches and were too heating. They may in fact even make you ill especially causing the stone. All this sounds quite reasonable as does much of the advice in the same poem about diet in general, advising moderation in all things.13 However, this good advice begins to ring rather hollow when Eustache’s own life is considered. He was regularly present at the court of Charles VI which became a byword for over-indulgence in both food and wine in the late 1380s. Moralists raged at the lifestyle of the courtiers accusing them of the sin of gula or gluttony. Deschamps in many other poems lauds wine and insists on the absolute necessity for it to be served freely to all at court. He addresses Bacchus as a divine poet and wants all to swear loyalty to wine. He demands that wine must be on the table before the beginning of the meal and it must then be served without stopping. On one particular occasion he listed all the special wines which were like medicine for his body; they came from Beaune, Poitou, the Rhine, Tournai, Irancy, and Aussonne but had, in the year he wrote, all been spoilt by frost at just the wrong time in the spring, much to his displeasure.14 These attitudes are probably a truer reflection of his views than the promotion of moderation and watered wine. The way wine was served at the French court at this time was clearly conducive to excess. Even on days when no elite guests were being entertained meals for the king and his courtiers could last for several hours. They were also served much later than was the norm in contemporary society as a whole. Dinner might be delayed until the afternoon since the young king did not rise until midday. Supper might start at midnight and last into the early hours. The ladies as well as the gentlemen had often drunk a considerable quantity by the time the meal was drawing to a close with the last wine served often being heavy sweet or spiced wine, high in alcohol. The habit of exchanging pledges in wine between companions at

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the table increased the overall consumption and led easily (in the eyes of critics) to other excesses. Nevertheless, despite the debaucheries claimed to be a feature of court life by moralists at the time, to those who practised medicine, the benefits of wine far outweighed the problems caused by overindulgence.15 These views were held by most medical men for the next 200 years and were widely disseminated in popular writings. Sir John Herington put the advice of the Salerno School into English verse in a book published in several editions in the early seventeenth century called The Englishman’s Docter or the Schoole of Salerne or Physicall Observations for the perfect preserving of the body of Man in continuall health. His advice echoes that of Deschamps in many respects: Chuse wine you meane shal serve you all the year. Well-savour’d, tasting well and color’d cleere Five qualities there are, wines advancing, Strong, beautyfull and fragrant and dauncing. White Muskadell and Candy Wine and Greeke, Do make mens wits and bodies grosse and fat: Red wine doth make the voice oft time to seek. And hath a binding quality to that, Canary and Madiera, both are like To make one leane indeed, (but wot you what,) Who say they make one leane wold make one laffe They meane they make one leane upon a staffe. Wine women baths by art or nature warme, Us’d or abus’d do men much good or harme.16

Canary or Madeira wine were of course, very similar to the malmsey or Romeney of the fifteenth century causing much the same effects to those who over-indulged themselves. Harington also praises the use of wine in sauces along with herbs. New wine, on the other hand, (that is with the fermentation incomplete) he sees as likely to cause either dysentery or kidney stones. He recommends Rhenish wine as it ‘stirs urine, doeth not binde / but rather loose the belly, breeding wind’, a characteristic which Harington greatly favours. All in all, in Harington’s view ‘good dyet is a perfect way of

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curing / and worthy much regard and health assuring’. A good diet included wine, the virtues of which are mentioned more often than those of beer or ale. He finally summed up its advantages by declaring: Four special vertues hath a sop in wine It maketh the teeth white, it cleans the eyne, It adds unto an emptie stomach fullness, And from a stomach fill’d it takes the dulnesse.

Physicians also made much use of wine in their treatment of their patients, particularly, in the preparation of medicines or draughts which were an essential aspect of medical practice at the time. The printed text of Villanova’s book contains directions on how to prepare wine-based preparations to deal with very nearly all the ills that can afflict the human body. The methods he suggested usually involved the boiling of wine with some extra ingredient most often a herb or other plant. For example, to cure ‘cardiac illness, mania, melancholy and tremor of the heart’ and to purify blood and remove ‘evil thoughts’ and ‘useful in all forms of corruption of scabies and leprosy’ the remedy was to boil three pounds of borage in either 7 or 14 pounds of must. The resulting liquid once strained would also bring ‘joy and ease the bowels’. The kind of ‘cure-all’ approach that Villanove showed here is typical of his prescriptions. A Raisin wine made with raisins and cinnamon boiled in must and then put in a cask until it clarified, was ‘proper for sick old people. Also for melancholics and phlegmatics’. It would ease the chest, strengthen the stomach, and add substance to the liver. Furthermore it could ease coughing and asthma, and both act as a laxative and relieve dysentery. Its most powerful feature for Villanova was that it consumed superfluous humours and vagrant moisture or aquosity. Given his views on human physiology, his final comment is praise indeed; ‘whoever uses it steadily will never have any disease from evil humours’.17 Looking more widely at the way wine was used by doctors in the Middle Ages, it is clear that wine on its own, not mixed with any other substances, was relatively seldom suggested as a medicine. Its most notable use was as a specific against intestinal worms, which probably were relatively widespread in the population. In the Antidotairium Nicolai, a treatise which was in effect a French pharmacopeia of the later Middle Ages, nearly half the

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remedies contained wine while many others were recommended to be taken at night with hot wine. Other liquids which could be used in medicines instead of wine, milk, water, urine, are mentioned much less frequently. Very often wine was boiled down to make a thick liquid to include in an ointment or a plaster to be used externally. When the medicine was to be drunk wine may have had as its primary purpose making it easier to swallow what often sounds like a somewhat horrific mixture. Would anyone otherwise have been able to take a remedy for angina consisting of powdered white dog excrement if it had not been well boiled in white wine and served hot?18 Although some of the suggested mixtures seem outlandish, a careful analysis of those in fourteenth and fifteenth century collections of medical recipes has shown that they were not concocted at random but according to the principles of the four humours and their governing characteristics and the way in which their relevance to an individual changed with age. By far the most common use of wine in medicine was to ‘warm’ the body and all its parts. To a medieval doctor this meant that it should be used to deal with chest problems, seen as being caused by an excess of phlegm, the cold, moist humour. A dry cough could be dealt with by boiling zedoary in white wine. This would also have been a pleasingly exotic and expensive remedy since this spice, which tastes a little like ginger, came from the East. The warming quality of wine was also useful in hair restorers. Since cold causes leaves to fall in the autumn warming the scalp with an ointment including wine and bear fat should prove effective in stopping hair loss. The way in which wine heated the human body could also restore sexual vigour in those in whom it was failing and also promote fertility. An ointment made of the meat of both male and female pigeons flavoured with pepper and ginger soaked in strong red wine was particularly efficacious when a woman had difficulty in conceiving. All of these ingredients were ‘hot’ and would combat the ‘coldness’ of the woman.19 Another very useful aspect of wine for medieval doctors was that it helped the body eliminate unwanted substances like catarrh, pus or venom if bitten by a snake. It could also relieve the discomfort of those swollen by dropsy or hasten the successful conclusion of a long labour. When drunk with a meal wine also helped the digestion soothing stomach aches. What

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Villanova called Anise wine was particularly useful in this respect. It could protect a patient from colic and flatulence and stop ‘humid belching’. At the same time it was good for nursing mothers correcting ‘watery milk’. Perhaps somewhat more ambiguous in its action was another ‘wine’ recommended by Villanova; this was fennel wine which was useful in case of dropsy and leprosy, stimulated the sexual urge but was also said to release ‘women’s ailment’. This may be a covert reference to its use as an abortifacient.20 Surgeons particularly those who dealt with war wounds also used wine extensively. This, like most medieval medical practices built on methods used by Greek doctors often transmitted via contact with, or the written works of physicians and surgeons based in the Islamic world. Byzantium was one channel for the transmission of this approach at the time of the Crusades while the kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century also promoted the same practices in an environment, of course, where war wounds were an all too frequent occurrence.21 A father and son both medical men, originating from Lucca, were responsible for strongly advocating the treatment of wounds by the application of wine. Ugo or Hugh Borgognoni and his son Teodorico who died in 1298 developed the system whereby wounds were first washed in warm wine, closed with silk sutures and then bandaged with lint also soaked in wine. This seems a rational procedure to most modern persons and might well have been very beneficial since wine is to some extent antiseptic and could promote healing. It would certainly have advantages over washing any wound in the polluted water likely to be found on the battlefield or in most towns of the period. Teodorico, who was closely connected with the papal court and eventually the non-resident Bishop of Cervia wrote a short treatise on the treatment of wounds around 1243 which was later expanded into the Cyrurgia seu Filia principis in the 1260s. This text was extensively copied and revised particularly in Spain where versions in Catalan and Castilian were produced. His method of treating wounds was based on the experience of himself and his father as surgeons but also included much of the work of Bruno Longobuoco who produced his Chirurgia Magna in the 1250s.22 There were, however, theoretical objections to the ‘dry dressing’ method of treating wounds. These were strongly expressed in the fourteenth century by the French surgeon and physician Guy de Chauliac in his book, also called Chirurgia Magna

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produced in Avignon in 1363. De Chauliac took Teodorico to task for not following the wisdom of Galen and the approach favoured by the very influential Salerno School. The theory of humours, which they supported, laid emphasis on the expulsion from the body of any liquid present in such quantities as to unbalance the humours present in any individual. This was the reasoning behind the use of bleeding to restore health. In the case of wounds, in which pus was only too likely to form, the standard view was that this should be encouraged and must be allowed to leave the body; it was to use the common phrase ‘laudable pus’ (pus bonum et laudabile) and a sign of healing. Medieval doctors did recognize that the foul smelling liquids which heralded the onset of gangrene did not come into this category but even so there was some considerable opposition to closing wounds in the way the Borgognonis recommended.23 This was described in detail by Henri de Mandeville, who attempted to use Borgognoni’s methods while acting with Jean Picart, the surgeon to Philip IV of France. In the preface to his Chirurgia he claims that he and Picart were the first to bring Teodorico’s methods to France where he employed them in Paris and on military campaigns. He was met with scorn and contempt by both laymen and physicians and even threats and menaces from surgeons who should have been his colleagues. He was in fact on the verge of giving up when he received support from Charles of Valois the brother of Philip IV who had seen for himself how the treatments Mandeville advocated, worked.24 Mandeville directly attacked the idea that promoting suppuration in a wound was beneficial and explained how his use of fomentations of hot wine and the application of wine to the wound itself helped expel unwanted humours from the wound without creating pus. Moreover the moderate use of wine both externally and as a drink for the patient helped to overcome the weakness likely to be caused by the wound. All this was, in his view supported by the works of Galen and Avicenna despite what his critics claimed. It is hard to say whether the divergent views of the followers of Borgognoni and those of de Chauliac had much importance outside of academic disputes among medical men in the end. De Chauliac’s book was very widely translated and printed with editions appearing well into the sixteenth century. An English edition printed in 1542 called The

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questyonary of cyrurgyens included a method of treating wounds which while it said little on the topic of pus did suggest that for ‘woundes symple’ lint or a similar substance should be moistened with ‘good red wyne’ and laid on the wound and that wine will help form a scar. De Chauliac also recommended ‘wasshynge with wyne and honny’ wounds ‘composed with corrupte sores’. It is clear that despite their disagreements the most learned medical men of our period, steeped in all the accumulated experience of both Galen and his followers and notable Islamic doctors like Avicenna, Haly Abbas and Al-Razi, all used wine not only as an indispensable ingredient in medicines of all kinds but as an important part of best practice in surgery especially in the treatment of wounds. If the advantages of wine were so often vaunted by writers on health, surgeons and doctors, did the possible disadvantages attract any attention? We have already seen how drinkers were advised to avoid overindulgence but was there much discussion of drunkenness from the point of view of the effect on an individual’s health or on society at large? Was this problem seen more often from a religious or moral standpoint and therefore perhaps more at home in our next chapter? Certainly the topic was not one much discussed at the period. Not because drunkenness was unknown but perhaps because few had the opportunity to over-indulge themselves every day and it was therefore associated with festivals and feasts rather than being a common occurrence. In the south wine was easily available to all; in the more northerly parts of Europe beer or rather ale made without hops was the usual drink. Much of it was low in alcohol and home brewed so that opportunities for drinking in company were limited. Armies were often provided with wine as part of their supplies but most accounts of the depredations caused by drunken soldiery relate to the looting of cellars and wine stores after a town or castle had fallen to their attackers. Attacks on those drunk with wine by moralists tended to link this form of overindulgence with the gross sin of gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. This condemned any excessive intake of food or drink or indeed the over-indulgence in any form of pleasure. We have already mentioned the condemnation of the way the court of Charles VI of France behaved with its frequent lengthy banquets and copious serving of the strongest sweet wines. A similar line of argument was pursued by the

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Catalan moralist Francesco Eximenis. His volume on the sin of gluttony included a graphic list of the unpleasant consequences of drinking too much.25 Rather similar attacks on what was called luxuria perhaps best defined as voluptuous bodily pleasure, which certainly included wine drinking, were made in relation to court life as a whole by poets in both England and France. The English writer of a poem now known as On the Times probably written at the end of the fourteenth century, after complaining vociferously about the general decay of the kingdom and the excesses of courtiers especially the ridiculous fashions they adopted said this about the drinking of wine: “Wyv sa belle” thei cry Fragantia vina bibentes Thei drynke tyl they be dry Lingua sensuque carentes Thei cry, “Fyl the bowles Bonus est liquor, hic maneamus Fo alle crystone sowllys Dum Durant vasa, bibamus.”26

The belief that drinking too much led directly to lust surfaced in many literary works as well, very often without this being seen as more than what might be expected of the general run of humanity. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer often refers to this belief with wine being specifically mentioned as the cause of all the trouble. The Somnour’s propensity to jabber Latin tags when drunk on strong red wine and his willingness to produce a dispensation from most immoral misdemeanours for the gift of some wine were held up to ridicule. The Pardoner’s Tale opens with a spirited exposition on the dreadful results of drunkenness which might rival that of Exemenis if it was meant to be taken seriously. Seneca’s view that a drunkard was like a madman is brought in evidence along with various biblical stories, and finally, the picture of the drunk with his foul breath and stertorous snoring. The moral at the end of the tale when the three young robbers drink the poison meant for their victim to celebrate his apparently successful murder and instantly succumb themselves is presented as no more than their just deserts for excess drinking.27

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The gradual spread of interest in Greek and Latin literature and myths during the Renaissance perhaps helped create a relaxed attitude to wine. Bacchus was widely celebrated in verse as the patron deity of wine which was seen by many as not only a great boon for men but an inescapable part of any life with room for pleasure and relaxation. Perhaps the best expression of this attitude is in the works of Rabelais from the early sixteenth century. On one of Pantagruel’s fantastical voyages his mission was to seek out the Oracle of the Holy Bottle. He and his companions voyaged in galleys which bore at the bows figureheads related to the pleasures of wine, a jar, a tankard, a monkish drinking cup, an ivy goblet or a funnel, for example. When, on another of his adventures, he encountered a whale (a Physeter) he exclaimed: ‘Ah! If he only spouted wine, good, white, red, dainty, delicious wine instead of this bitter stinking salt Water!’ At the many feasts he and his companions attended wine flowed without restriction. When they finally arrived at Papimani (a part of the book in which satirical attacks on the clergy and the Papacy are particularly biting) wine was served by seductive ‘she-butlers’ who brought the diners ‘a tall-boy brimful of extravagant wine’ on request. The presence of this good wine was then attributed to the so-called decretals which governed ‘religious’ life in this country.28 It, therefore, seems that an impressive array of authorities reaching from the most eminent doctors of the Classical world to the Islamic writers who followed their lead in the tenth and eleventh centuries to the medical experts of the later Middle Ages all agreed that a judicious intake of wine could only be of benefit to humanity. Young persons and women had perhaps to take more care over what they drank; the strong sweet wines from the eastern Mediterranean had to be treated with particular respect. In general, however, wine added to the enjoyment of life and indeed in words which were often quoted at the time ‘made glad the heart of man’. It should form part of a diet designed to maintain health while it was an essential ingredient in a very wide range of medicines designed to deal with almost every ill which could afflict the human body. Despite this glowing endorsement from more or less every writer on health or medicine the fact that drunkenness could cause many problems and even death was not ignored. The need for temperance and restraint in imbibing

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wine was clearly stated. What is less clear is the notice which was taken of these warnings by people at large. The emphasis often found on the particular dangers of sweet wines and heavy red wines leads to the suspicion that much of the light red or white wine which was most commonly available in much of Western Europe was low in alcohol and thus less conducive to drunkenness. It is also the case that in areas where little wine was made, the drink was relatively expensive and usually confined to the upper levels of society. In these areas ale or beer was drunk by most of the population. It is also not clear what would constitute excessive drinking at the period. Avicenna, whose opinions were highly regarded put it like this; ‘Don’t get drunk continually; but if it does happen, let it be only once a month’.29 There were, perhaps quite a number of people at this period who would have enjoyed the point of view put forward in a book published in 1743. This was called Ebrietatis Encomium or the Praise of Drunkennes wherin is authentically and most evidently proved the necessity of getting Drunk; and that the practice of getting drunk is most ancient, primitive and catholic., confirmed by the example of Heathens, Turks, Infidels, Primitive Christians, Saints, Popes Bishops Doctors Philosophers Free Masons Gormogons and other tope-ing societies and Men of Learning in all Ages.30

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8

Ritual and Religion

The connection between wine and religious rituals has a long history The Greeks rejoiced in the rites associated with Dionysius whose cult was later Romanized and absorbed into that of Bacchus. Judaism, the ancestor of both Christianity and Islam developed in a region of the world where wine had been made from the earliest times. The Old Testament is full of images, stories and practices which involve wine and in fact depict it as something as necessary to human life as bread. One of Noah’s first acts after the Flood had receded and work to repair the devastated world could begin was to plant a vineyard. He was also of course apparently one of the first to suffer the indignities of getting drunk but this did not lead to hostile feelings about wine among those who first put together the stories in Genesis or among the rabbis of Talmudic times.1 The ecstatic evocations of nature in the poetry of the Song of Songs frequently refer to the budding vine and the pleasures of wine; love is ‘more fragrant than wine’; in the spring ‘let us get up early to the vineyards / let us see whether the vine has budded, / whether the vine-blossom is opened’.2 For the prophet Joel the redemptive power of God is clear since He said to his people, ‘Behold I will send you corn wine and oil / And ye shall be satisfied therewith’.3 Even the somewhat sourer note struck by the author of Proverbs who concentrated rather more on the effects of over-indulgence, pointing out ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is riotous / And whosoever reeleth thereby is not wise’4, does not alter the impression that the home of the early Jewish people was a place where wine was abundant and a welcome part of everyday life. For medieval Jews, living by the customs and laws developed since their exile from the Holy Land first by the rabbis whose teaching was preserved in the Talmud produced around 500 AD, and then by a series of later commentators, wine had a secure place in religious rituals. The Kiddush or prayer of sanctification which, every week, signalled the commencement

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of the celebratory meals of the Shabbat included a special blessing over a cup of wine which would be tasted by all present. Similar, if more, elaborate prayers were used on the festivals. The marriage ceremony included blessings over wine as did the ceremony of the circumcision of all male infants. At the Passover seder, the recounting of the story of the Exodus which included a formal ritual meal, it was considered mandatory that all those participating should partake of four cups of wine. It was even held by some that, at Purim, when the story of the saving of the Jewish community in Persia by the bravery of Queen Esther was recounted, it was almost a religious duty for men to become so drunk that they could not tell the difference between Mordechai, the hero of the story and Haman, the villain.5 The necessity, therefore, for Jews to have access to a supply of wine is obvious and might not seem to present difficulties since wine was so widely traded in this period. By the Middle Ages, however, a complex series of regulations had been built up around the supply of wine to ensure that any that was to be used by Jews fulfilled certain criteria. The original problem was that the rabbis feared that wine made by non-Jews might have been intended for use in idolatrous religious ceremonies. This fear was extended, since it was of course difficult to be sure of the original intention of a winemaker if, for example, the wine was bought in a market from a non-Jewish trader, to all wine made or supplied by non-Jews. This, it was held, should not be used by Jews; only wine made by Jews was permissible. The prohibition was not confined to wine used in religious ceremonies; no wine should be drunk by Jews in any circumstances which could not be vouched for as coming from a permissible source. Other ideas gradually became mixed up with the original one about idolatrous worship; just as moralists from all religious backgrounds made a connection between drinking wine and sexual immorality so the belief grew that if Jews and Gentiles met over a glass of wine, the eventual result could be intermarriage. Like many all-embracing prohibitions there were exceptions to this ruling. Herbed wines, including the many medicines made in this way, and spiced wines like clarry and hippocras could be made with wine from any source. The rabbis also held that so-called ‘boiled’ wine was not permissible for use in idolatrous ceremonies and therefore would always be considered permissible for Jews. It

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is not, however, clear exactly how this exemption was applied in the period of this study and what ‘boiled’ meant in this context.6 One result of these prohibitions was that, wherever it was possible, Jews could be found tending vines and making wine which found a ready sale to their co-religionists. The letters and other business documents found in the Cairo Genizah7 reveal how successful this business could be, even in a Muslim country like Egypt in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Egyptian Jewish families enjoyed wine on Sabbaths and festivals and at ceremonial occasions and also after a treatment like being bled. In one letter from the Genizah the writer states ‘today after bloodletting the doctor prescribed wine for me to drink. So please let me have the most excellent sort to be had’8. There were also parties held in the gardens of Cairo where drinking songs entertained the company and families came together. A letter written in the spring of 1217 recorded the thanks of a young man whose quarrel with his uncle has been sorted out at such a party and fragments of the songs have also survived.9 Among the Jewish community in Egypt could be found traders for whom wine was just one among the commodities which they bought and sold, others who had close connections with the religious authorities and whose wine was therefore particularly sought out by the scrupulous and doctors who needed it to treat their patients. A remnant of an account in the Geniza collection includes an amount spent on wine for ritual purposes. Another names donors who have provided wine for the poor for the Passover Seder.10 It is also notable that many people made their own wine. They either leased a vineyard or bought grapes in large quantities to press at home. One of the merchants who made trading in wine his main business left an estate consisting of 1937 jars of wine, 48 pieces of gold and a slave girl.11 Wine trading could be a profitable business while the relatively tolerant Fatimid regime was in power in Egypt. The leading scholar and rabbi of the eleventh century Jewish community in the Rhineland was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, usually known as Rashi. A well-known legend holds that both he and his father were vintners. Since Rashi studied in Mainz and was rabbi of a synagogue in Worms in the heart of one of the best wine-producing areas along the Rhine this seems not unlikely. Certainly any contemporary Jewish community would have been proud to acquire wine that had his seal of approval. Similarly in

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southern France there is clear evidence of Jewish communities trading in wine. At Carpentras, in the lists drawn up for taxation purposes, wine produced by the Jewish community was treated separately from that made by everyone else. This was largely because all of it was bought by Jewish families. In 1414, of 15 Jewish families in the town, 10 owned vines and made wine. In Arles, 10 years later, the tax authorities recorded that around half of the Jewish families in the town owned vineyards. Other families bought grapes from their Christian neighbours and in these cases made sure that non-Jews working in the vineyards did not work on the Jewish High Holy days which often occur at the time of the grape harvest in late September or early October. Kalomynos ben Kalomynos, a prominent Jewish scholar and writer who came from Arles and flourished in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, also described the harvesting of grapes by the local community in his home town. ‘Everyone goes to the vines and the grapes are transported by boat or by pack horse. The weather is very hot. There are many mosquitoes; they fall in the wine which is nevertheless drunk’.12 Evidence from Zaragoza paints a rather similar picture. Jewish families often rented vineyards near the town from Christian families or bought grapes in large quantities to press and make wine in their own homes. A list of individual Jewish proprietors of vineyards contains 29 names, while around 96 made bargains to buy grapes, including, in 1362, one Rabbi Salomon Jaba. The notaries’ records from the town contain many agreements like that between Ramon d’Aziron from Caragoça and ‘Jehuda Çehas, judio’ to share equally the profits or losses in making and selling wine using grapes from two properties belonging to Ramon.13 Jews living in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries usually concluded agreements formalized in charters with the authorities in the towns in which they wished to establish communities. These charters in Umbria included clauses allowing the Jewish community to slaughter animals for meat in the manner laid down in Jewish law and others relating to winemaking for the community. There is, however some evidence that the communities in Italy saw this as much less of a problem than the absolute need for the health of the Jewish people to ensure that a supply of kosher meat was available. Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen based in Padua at the end of

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the fifteenth century, protested vigorously on behalf of German Jewish immigrants that Jews in Modena were routinely drinking wine bought in the market. About 100 years later the Venetian rabbi Leon de Modena confirmed this view of his home town by remarking suavely: ‘Ever since I have been able to distinguish between my left hand and my right hand I have known that from time immemorial our forefathers in Italy habitually drank ordinary wine.’14 Despite this opinion kosher wine was made in at least some towns in quite large quantities with the permission of the authorities. The efforts of largely Dominican friars, hostile to the Jewish community to prevent this were often ineffective. Decrees against the practice would be passed, which then rapidly lapsed or were never in fact enforced. This was the case in 1438 in Todi, Perugia in 1439, 1442 in Norcia and some years later also in Terni and Amelia. The abbot of the monastery of San Salvatore in Monte Acuto and his monks were happy to drink with Aleuccio di Salomone from Pian della Metula in the hills of Romiggio because of the excellence of the wine he made and was prepared to sell to the monastery.15 As in Spain many Jewish families bought grapes from peasant producers to make wine themselves. A calculation of the amount of wine that could be made from the quantity of grapes purchased results in a consumption of about 1.5 to 3 litres per family per day. There is no indication of the size of the household that constituted each family but this does make clear that wine was as much part of Jewish family life, at least in Umbria, as it was for others living in the region.16 Obtaining suitable wine was more difficult for Jewish communities living further away from winemaking areas. One expedient which may have been used was to make wine of a sort from raisins. Recipes for this were included in Jewish cook books as late as the twentieth century; the process involved chopping raisins into a jar, adding boiling water and sugar, and then leaving the result for about a week before straining and bottling. The Jewish community in England may have resorted to this expedient but since the community in London was founded by families who had emigrated from Rouen, they would probably have had personal contacts in the major wine-exporting port of the twelfth century. Similarly the communities in East Anglia and eastern England, including Norwich and Lincoln, were well placed to import suitable Rhenish wine.17

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Christianity inherited all the stories and references to wine from the Old Testament. It also grew and flourished and first came to dominate European society in regions were wine was plentiful and an inescapable part of everyday life. It became, however, of enormous ritual significance because of its links to crucial events in the life and teaching of Christ. Much has been made of the story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. At this feast the supply of wine was not enough to satisfy the guests who included Jesus and five disciples. Jesus then miraculously turned jars of water into good wine.18 Although there are many theological interpretations of the story, in the Middle Ages it was undoubtedly taken literally by most people and was a favourite subject for artists especially in the early Renaissance. It seemed to show Jesus as endorsing the place of wine in any celebration and many of the norms of everyday life as a whole. The accounts in three of the gospels of the events in Jerusalem immediately prior to the arrest of Jesus by the Roman authorities, particularly those of the last meal taken together by Him and his companions placed wine at the centre of Christian ritual and worship in a way which made it of enormous significance to believers. The words spoken by Jesus as he offered wine and bread to his followers, – this is my blood, this is my body19 – were the basis for the ritual of the Mass, the central element of Christian worship throughout the Middle Ages. The miraculous transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, brought about by the priest uttering the words of consecration during the Mass, was the core belief of medieval Christianity. This, together with the penitential system which grew up around the Mass so that those attending could receive the Eucharist in a state of grace, was the way to salvation for sinful humanity. This intimate connection between the central tenets and rituals of Christianity and wine has led many commentators to suggest that the need to ensure that there was an adequate supply of wine for Mass was a key factor in the spread of vine growing and winemaking from the shores of the Mediterranean to more northerly regions and during our period into areas where the making of wine was a very marginal activity.20 The fact that many early monasteries cultivated vineyards and that many churches were also well endowed with them too has also been linked with this need. This

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explanation tends to ignore the fact that wine was a highly desirable commodity in itself and deeply embedded in social life particularly that of the higher echelons of society before Christianity had become dominant. The fact that it was an essential part of religious life in medieval Europe was a powerful additional factor in favour of the production and trading of wine but not perhaps the primary motivation. There were in fact a number of queries and problems to be considered relating to the use of wine in a Mass. Should the wine be mixed with water? (This was after all the most common way of taking wine in the first centuries AD.) By the time of Thomas Aquinas the mixing of water with wine for Mass was the norm but the amount of water must not be so much as to make it appear as if the chalice contained nothing but water. This led to further debate among theologians; when the wine was consecrated did the water also undergo a change of its substance to the Blood of Christ? Opinions differed on this. Canon law eventually laid down the proportions in which wine and water should be mixed and also favoured red wine for use in the chalice. This, of course, more closely resembled blood and was less likely to be confused with water. Others in the Church were worried by the possible staining of cloths used in the ceremony by red wine and thus continued to prefer the use of white wine.21 By the thirteenth century the offering of both bread and wine to all those present at a Mass who wished to partake of both elements had becomes very uncommon in the Western Church. The reasons for this are not entirely clear but may have been related to the fear of spilling consecrated wine or the difficulties of administering wine to a large congregation; the expedient known as intinctio, dipping a Host in the wine before offering it to a worshipper had been forbidden by Pope Pascal II in the early twelfth century. The practice of communion in both kinds was definitely declared heretical at the Council of Constance in 1415, a time when this had become a feature of the ritual of the Hussite Church of Bohemia also declared to be heretical at the same general council.22 For most of our period therefore, wine was essential for a Mass but would be consumed only by the priests present. This perhaps prevented the growth of a cult around consecrated wine in any way similar to that which grew up around the Host (the consecrated bread of the Mass). This gave rise to the

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popularity of the Corpus Christi festival, which usually featured a procession centred on the Host, and to the spread of numerous miracle stories. A reserved Host was displayed on the altar in many churches in a precious container or monstrance, something which was not done with consecrated wine. There was also a degree of ambiguity over the presence of wine in the most sacred ritual of the Christian church which did not affect that of bread. This was clearly essential to life. Wine could be a way to salvation but, on the other hand, over-indulgence in wine led to drunkenness and thus could be a prelude and a route to sin. One of the most potent ways in which bible stories were made known in medieval times was by pictures, whether in stained glass windows, mural paintings, the illuminations in manuscript prayer books and the like and paintings on canvas or wooden panels. From the Old Testament, the stories which seem to have fasci-

Figure 8.1 The Drunkenness of Noah. From a MS made in 1462 for Philip the Good of Burgundy. The grapes are growing up stakes to the left in the manner usual in Burgundy while the Ark perches uneasily on a hill top in the background.

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nated contemporary artists which involved wine were those of Noah and Lot, both of whom suffered from their drunkenness. Medieval artists painted the drunkenness of Noah and his shame far more often then they painted animals entering the ark. Another incident from the stories of the patriarchs which attracted the attention of medieval artists was the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek. In the words of the Authorized Version, the latter ‘brought forth bread and wine’ before blessing Abraham.23 This was interpreted as some kind of anticipation of the last supper and the institution of the Eucharist. The Last Supper, of course, also appealed to many of the most famous artists of the period including, most notably, Leonardo da Vinci. While the drama of the representations was often focused on the figure of Judas and his coming betrayal of Christ the meal itself was also portrayed. Wine was shown in some as being drunk in the usual way by the disciples; in others the emphasis was on a large wine cup, shaped like a chalice, set before the figure of Christ. The scene would have been familiar to many from all ranks of society judging by its frequent use in wall paintings in churches, for example, a group of parishes in eastern England where barely discernible remnants of such pictures can be found.24 Other references in the New Testament relating to the making of wine and the growing of vines ensured that images connected with these activities increased the hold that the whole topic had on the medieval imagination. The passages in the Gospel of St John which show familiarity with the tending of vines would have had real meaning for many. Christ called himself the vine and his Father the husbandman and went on ‘every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bear more fruit’.25 A link for those learned in the Scriptures would exist between these verses and the many representations of the work of those tending vines found in the carvings of the labours of the month adorning many churches and cathedrals. Similarly in the terrifying visions of the Apocalypse the image of ‘the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God’ would have related to a well-known and mighty instrument, familiar to most in winemaking lands.26 That the wrath of God was aroused by the great whore of Babylon would only be what was expected by most Christian moralists. Even so the image of the winepress in relation to the wine of the Eucharist

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Figure 8.2 A reproduction of a drawing called the ‘Mystic Winepress’ drawn by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen. It represents the mystic linking of the Crucifixion with the Eucharist in the Mass by means of wine. The wine press itself is shown in the middle ground.

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with Christ being pressed along with the grapes can be found in medieval religious art. Christian moralists had always made a close connection between drunkenness, usually linked to wine rather than any other alcoholic drinks, and the sins of fornication and adultery. Drunkenness was the road to hell and the lowest of vices. It was called the daughter of idolatry for those for whom the stomach was their God. Its link to sexual sins was almost inevitable since it was thought to increase sensuality and desire. This torrent of denunciation from writers and preachers like St Benedict, St Bernard and Pope Innocent III perhaps had less effect that the rather lighter touch employed by the writers of fabliaux and the author , probably a Cistercian of the first part of the very popular work known as the Vie des Pères, which was written between 1225–1230. In the fabliau, le Dict des trois dames de Paris, written c.1320 by Watriquet de Couvin, the three ladies after drinking too much sweet wine are picked up for dead and thrown naked into the common grave at the graveyard of the Holy Innocents.27 The Vie des Pères has an even more moral tale to tell. A worthy hermit was tested by the devil who told him that if he committed one of the sins of drunkenness, fornication or murder he would be forever free of his (the devil’s) torments. The hermit was at the end of his tether so decided to get drunk as the least heinous of the sins. The hermit visited his neighbour, a miller, for a meal. Despite it being a Friday rich dishes were served along with strong new wine which ‘heats the brain’. The hermit indeed got drunk and had difficulty leaving the table. The miller’s wife, who was equally drunk helped him to get home. At his cell the woman fell asleep and the drunken hermit then fornicated with her. The miller saw what had happened seized an axe and went to wreak revenge on the hermit. The hermit got hold of the axe himself and killed the miller. He then fell asleep. On waking in the morning he realized that he had been tricked by the devil and had in fact committed all three sins. In the story as related in the Vie des Pères the hermit in the end was forgiven after lengthy penance but the consequences of drunkenness were only too clear.28 It led the unwary deeper and deeper into a life of sin. The story was written shortly after the fourth Lateran Council which had laid great emphasis on the practice of confession before attending Mass and was perhaps intended to encourage this. Against this background the deep division between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ aspects of wine for medieval Christians

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were emphasized. Wine was essential for the core ritual of the Church but it could also be a first step on the road to hell. A similar ambivalence in attitudes to alcohol, which in this period largely meant wine, and an abhorrence of drunkenness can be found in Islamic thought. The part of Arabia where the life of the Prophet was passed in the main did not produce wine but Yemen was a vine-growing region and the medieval Arabic geographer and traveller Al-Idrisi mentions the presence of vines in other suitable places.29 As the Islamic world expanded after the death of the Prophet, it also came into contact with regions where vine growing and wine drinking were an established part of the way of life.30 This was the case all around the shores of the Mediterranean, in Persia and, of course, in Iberia where the making of wine in large quantities stretched back to Roman times. In all these areas there were also sizeable Jewish and Christian communities for whom wine, as we have seen, was an essential feature of religious life as well as a welcome and enjoyed part of everyday life. In the Koran itself, the attitude to wine, according to some commentators, seems to evolve moving from dislike of the practice to absolute prohibition.31 One Sura, 16.67, gives the impression that date wine is permissible. Wine, however, is associated with playing games of chance a prohibited activity while believers are sternly warned against praying while drunk; ‘Do not draw near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know what you are saying’. The absolute prohibition on drinking wine is found in Sura 5:90–1. Oh you who believe, Wine, gambling Idol worshipping and divination arrows Are an abomination from among the acts of Satan. Keep way from them, so that you may prosper Satan only wants to create enmity and hatred among you With wine and gambling. And to divert you from the remembrance of God and from prayer Will you not abstain?32

This seems clear enough but no penalty was prescribed in the Koran itself for breaches of this prohibition which caused problems when attempts were made to enforce it in the period immediately after the Prophet’s

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death. Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s father-in-law, companion and successor was credited with saying that ‘whoever drinks becomes drunk, whoever becomes drunk talks senseless jabber and whoever does that tells lies and for that the person ought to be punished. I think the offender should be given eighty (strokes)’.33 There were, however, other views on wine expressed in the Koran itself which perhaps at times confused believers or at least allowed for some leniency in enforcing an absolute ban on the consumption of wine or other alcohol. First of all while drunkenness in this world was reprehensible and to be abominated, in Paradise, wine was one of the delights available to the blessed. In these circumstances wine was the gift of God. There was also some discussion of what in fact constituted wine; fruit juice, including grape juice or must that had not fermented, was clearly allowed. A semi-liquid called tila was also not covered by the prohibition; this was a reduction of wine by about two-thirds of its volume made by boiling wine, something which recalls the rather similar Jewish attitude to ‘boiled wine’. Vinegar was also not prohibited; pragmatically the likelihood of drinking or consuming enough of this to become drunk was remote.34 There was also the fact that particularly in Persia and among the adherents of Sufism, there was a tradition of articulating the spiritual ecstasies of the mystic through metaphors that drew on images of wine drinking and its pleasures. It has been contended that works like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam should be interpreted as deeply religious and mystical poems and not in any way the expression of a kind of gentle hedonism. The wellknown verse of the translation of the Rubaiyat by Edward Fitzgerald: A book of verse beneath the bough A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou Beside me singing in the wilderness, Oh wilderness were Paradise enow.

related to attempts to reach a higher spiritual plane and not to material pleasures.35 The Rubaiyat was written in the early twelfth century when mysticism had a strong grip on many followers of Islam in Persia. Earlier in the tenth

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century, distinguished writers on medical matters from the same part of the world unreservedly praised the good effects of drinking wine. It has been suggested that at this time and the early eleventh century there was little public pressure to obey the prohibition on wine drinking among the urban upper classes. The scholar Abu Zayd Al-Balkhī enlarged on the benefits of drinking wine in his treatise The Sustenance of Body and Soul. In his view, it was, ‘noblest in essence, finest in composition and most beneficial’, but only if consumed in moderation. He particularly extolled the benefits of drinking wine in company when it stimulated good conversation. Otherwise he had found that guests tended to leave as soon as dinner had been served. He also looked back to the Greek theory of humours making the points that wine increased the warmth of the body and was recommended for the elderly for whom water unmixed with wine was too cold and moist. Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, whose writing was very influential in medieval Western medicine, endorsed the value of wine in clinical practice. It helped the digestion and the elimination of yellow bile. In his view wine should be drunk after food mixed with water; only enough should be taken to enliven the soul. For both writers excessive consumption had bad effects ranging from the idiocies of drunkenness, to the discomfort of a hangover to longterm effects of increasing medical seriousness. These views chimed with those of Najib al-Din al Samarqandī from the early thirteenth century. He pointed out how difficult it was for even the most strong-minded person to control the amount of wine he drank. He ‘becomes absorbed in it. He is no longer able to control himself . . . even a little wine leads to greater consumption’.36 From the Islamic point of view, one of the most intractable problems relating to the presence of wine in a Muslim society was the existence in that same society of communities for whom the consumption of wine was not prohibited but in fact encouraged in certain circumstances. This was the case in Muslim Spain, where particularly in Al Andaluz in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there were large Christian and Jewish communities and a long and successful tradition of winemaking. From round the fourteenth century there was a similar situation in lands conquered from the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks. Islam had never attempted to

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prohibit the consumption of wine by either Jews or Christians so that a particularly powerful temptation to drink wine existed in both areas. The way of life that developed in southern Spain, particularly in the longest surviving Muslim kingdom of Granada, accepted at least in part the role that wine drinking could play in social life. Restrictions formulated by the schools of Islamic law existed. It was accepted that following a ruling in the Hadith it was forbidden for Muslims to engage in business either directly or indirectly relating to wine. A jurist c. 1340 laid down that a Muslim could not sell wine to another Muslim or to an unbeliever, nor should he sell grapes to anyone who will then use them to make wine. On the other hand, if a Muslim was denounced to the courts for having wine in his house the action which followed depended on the reputation of the accuser; was he himself known to drink to excess? Two witnesses were also needed to bring a successful case against a drinker.37 There were clearly many opportunities in the seductive relaxed environment of Al-Andaluz for all ranks of society to enjoy the pleasures of wine drinking. Taverns were not prohibited provided that they were kept by non-Muslims and could easily be found in Cordoba and other major cities. Their clientele, however, came from all sections of the community. It seems to have been a particular feature of tavern life in the benign climate of the south that drinking began as dusk fell and then might continue all night. One thirteenth century poet from Alicante remarked: ‘In how many taverns have I woken up as dawn was breaking and the dew falling’. Other poets wrote of the pleasures of drinking at nightfall with doves cooing in the trees and the sun setting. It was apparently one of the sights of Seville to visit the river bank where people enjoyed themselves listening to music and drinking wine with no one becoming drunk or quarrelsome. Between around the tenth and thirteenth centuries there was a whole school of Andalusian poets from all traditions who celebrated the way of life in the South of which wine drinking was an inescapable part.38 This also influenced other aspects of culture. There is, for example, a textile wall-hanging from an Islamic origin in the Smithsonian Institute in New York which shows ‘Drinking ladies’ women happily sharing glasses of wine.39 Many words in Spanish relating to wine are Arabic in origin including ‘alcohol’ itself and also aloque (rosé wine or mixed red and white wine),

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and words relating to liquid measures like arroba and azumbre. There was also a whole system of etiquette surrounding the serving of wine at the feasts or entertainments of the elite classes. Cups of fine workmanship in glass or precious metals were used. One guest, often the son of the house was charged with the duty of filling the cups of the other guests from a larger vessel. This was a more onerous task than might be imagined when the drinking lasted all night. On other occasions the larger vessel was passed from hand to hand. Sweets, pastries and fresh and dried fruits were served with the wine while music was also played as an almost essential part of the evening.40 Despite all the seductive descriptions in poetry, however, and the expressed desire of at least one poet to be buried in a vineyard41 there was a widespread understanding of the dangers as well as the pleasures inherent in drinking wine. As one writer from the eleventh century put it; wine ‘gladdened the spirit, sent cares away, and strengthened the desire to do good’. However, ‘taking it in excess caused as great damage as drinking a little produced good results’.42 It is clear from looking at the attitudes to wine found in the three religions practiced in medieval Europe all were well aware of the problems caused by drunkenness and did not hesitate to make these plain. The apparent link between sexual laxity and excessive drinking was emphasized by many moralists. On the other hand, only Islam tried to ban the taking of alcohol completely. Wine drinking, the principal target of the abolitionists, was too deeply embedded in society particularly in southern Europe for bans to be implemented successfully. In the north, where hopped beer became, by the end of the period of this study, a rival for wine in many places, the message preached from pulpits remained largely the same. The drinking of wine was both a blessing to man and a potential route to the pains of Hell.

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Conclusion

In Greek and Roman times it can be argued that all high-volume trades were concerned solely with basic commodities, the very necessities of life; grain, olive oil, and in Mediterranean society, wine can plausibly be placed in that category. In the period we are studying, AD 1000 to 1500 , viticulture had spread successfully all round the Mediterranean basin. This meant in effect that there was little apparent need to transport everyday wine from, for example Spain to Italy. If this was done it might be to relieve a temporary shortage or because an individual trader had a taste for a particular wine. With regard to the sweet wines originally coming from Greece and the islands of the Levant, the steady demand for this product is testimony enough for the favour it found not only in the south but more or less throughout Western Europe. Sweet wine might be costly, but it could not be readily replaced as the fitting end for any feast or celebratory meal. The wine trade between major producing areas and consumers further north is perhaps rather different. Wine was not an essential part of life whether in large or small quantities. The relatively small amounts needed for ritual purposes by either Christians or Jews were at best a marginal influence on the trade as a whole. We have seen that thousands of litres of wine were transported from the Bordelais all over northern Europe. The amount of money, time and effort invested in this trade was enormous. No other commodity was as ubiquitous in long-distance commerce. Clearly the trade peaked in the early fourteenth century before the devastation of prolonged warfare and the demographic collapse caused by epidemic diseases went some way to undermine European society. Even so, in the fifteenth century the trade continued to be notably prosperous if on a reduced scale. By the seventeenth century, however, this particular commercial activity no longer ranked so highly among merchants and rulers. This was despite the fact that in some ways viticulture and winemaking were becoming

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increasingly sophisticated with the advent of the use of the glass bottle, stoppered with a cork, making possible the development of the techniques of storing and aging wine. This re-use in a slightly different form of a technique well known to winemakers in classical times lies behind the huge modern interest in wines of outstanding vintages coming from the most fashionable wine making estates. The wine buff of recent times with his list of vintage years and his vocabulary specially developed to describe the taste of each particular wine was unknown before the magic words ‘mis en bouteille’ at the winemakers estate appeared on wine labels There were other changes too in the course of time; new types of wine including, of course, both champagne and port and eventually new wine-producing areas to tempt the palates of consumers. There is probably no one answer to the problem of this gradual fading of the dominance of the wine trade in the early modern period. Clearly there was much more competition on the market place. The ale of the Middle Ages was, it seems very likely, unpalatable compared with wine, even the somewhat sharp and thin white wine which made up much of what was on sale in this period. Good hopped beer was a different matter. This could satisfy thirst and provide the relaxation so clearly associated with wine drinking in many songs and poems of the early medieval period. Wine was comparatively more expensive by the end of the period we are studying and, in the more northern states of Europe, increasingly seen as a drink only for the upper ranks of society. The diet of the population perhaps improved with a wider range of foodstuffs available with new flavours. Also drinks like tea and coffee, which were not intoxicating but were still comforting, spread gradually through society. In 1500, however, many of these developments lay in the future. At this date, it could be argued that the wine trade was a success story of the period. Despite the complicated journey which brought a tun of good Bordeaux wine to, for example, the north of England or a butt of sweet malmsey to the court of the king of Poland at Cracow, this was a commodity the supply of which was usually secure. The trade had acted as a nursery for English seamen; it had spread the business practices of the Italians throughout Europe and enriched both government and individuals. Contemporaries were well aware of the problem that over

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indulgence could cause but in general would have agreed with Keats and the words with which we began this study: ‘oh for a beaker full of the warm south . . . with beaded bubbles winking at the brim and purplestain’d mouth’.1

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Notes

Notes to Chapter 1: Roman Beginnings 1. J. Keats, (1956) ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, verse 2, H. W. Garland ed. Keats Poetical Works. London: Oxford University Press, 207. 2. An English translation of the complete text of De Agri Cultura has been published online at http://penelope.uchigao.edu//Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/ De_Agricultura/A*.html (consulted 30/03/11). The translation is that of W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash (1934)De Agri Cultura, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Directions for making a winepress and setting up a press room are found in chapters 18 and 19. 3. Further chapters referred to from Cato are 1, 12–13, 17–19, 23, 32–3, 41. 4. Virgil, (2002) Georgics , Book II ll. 385–6 in the translation of A. S. Kline published online at http://tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/Latin/VirgilGeorgicsII.htm (consulted on 30/03/11). The Section dealing with ‘Planting a Vineyard’ is ll.259–353, and ‘Care of a Vineyard’, ll.354–420. 5. The translation of Books 1–4 of Columella’s (1941) De Re Rustica by H. B. Ash was published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. It was consulted online at http://penelope.uchicago. edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texta/Columella/de_Re_Rustica/3*.htm (consulted on 30/03/11). The relevant sections are Books III and IV. 6. Lachiver, (1988) Vins, Vignes et Vignerons: Histoire du Vignoble français Paris: Fayard, 36–7. 7. The translation of Pliny’s Natural History is that by John Bostock and H. T.Riley (1855–1857) Bohm’s Classical Library: London, available on line at http://pld. perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plin.+Nat+toc (consulted on 30/03/11). Book XIV concerns vines. Opimian is discussed in chapter VI. 8. Pliny, Natural History, chapter 7. 9. Pliny, Natural History, chapter 12. 10. H. Johnson, ( 2004) The Story of Wine. London: Mitchell Beazley, 36. 11. The translation is from Michael Heseltine ed. (1913) Satryricon Fragments and Poems, Loeb Classical Library. London: Heineman consulted at www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.00227%3, section 34 (consulted on 30/03/11).

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notes to pages 5–12

12. Pliny Natural History, chapter 28. 13. Diodurus Siculus wrote a Universal History c. 56 BC. The section on the Gauls can be found at www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/hermann.moisel/SEL3042/diodorus.htm (consulted on 30/03/11), under the heading Celtic Ethnography. The extract is taken from C. H. Oldfather ed. (1935) Didorus Siculus, Library of History , Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 14. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 27. 15. M-E. Bellet, (2007) Ensérune a village in Pre-Roman Gaul , Paris: Editions du Patrimonie, 35. 16. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 25. 17. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 29. 18. Decimus Magnus Ausonius, (1919) vol. I, ed. H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classical Library. London: Heineman, p. 226 and 236. Available at www.archive.org/ stream/deciausonius01ausonoft#page/n5/mode/2up (consulted on 30/03/11). 19. H. Barty-King, (1977) A Tradition of English Wine. Headington: Oxford Illustrated Press, 10. 20. Gilbert Garrier, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturelle du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 24. 21. Poem 27, (2001–2007) translated by A. S. Kline consulted on www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.htm (consulted 30/03/11). 22. Horace Odes Book I, XVIII, (2003) translated by A. S. Kline, consulted on http://tkline.pgcc.net/Latin/HoraceOdesBk1.htm#TOC39402024 (consulted on 30/03/11).

Notes to Chapter 2: Vines and Vineyards 1. Hugh Barty-King, (1977) A Tradition of English Wine:The Story of Two Thousand Years of English Wine Made from English Grapes. Oxford: Oxford Illustrated Press. 6. The dating of these staves is not clearly established. 2. Gilbert Garrier, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturale du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 42. 3. Garrier, Histoire, 43. 4. Garrier, Histoire, 45. 5. Marcel Lachiver, (1988) Vins Vignes et Vignerons: Histoire du Vignoble Francais. Paris: Fayard, 46. 6. There is a problem with medieval measures of area and capacity in this period. There was no one definition which applied uniformly at all times and in all places where such terms were used. Some were later defined in the sixteenth century when the same words remained in use but there is no certainty that these later definitions applied centuries earlier. The modern equivalent of medieval terms is thus always somewhat speculative; an arpent was probably round about 1 acre. As far as the capacity of vessels containing wine is concerned this is discussed in the ‘Introduction’.

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7. Consulted online at www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptiques/coudray/latin2english.html (consulted on 30/03/11). 8. Jean Durliath, (1968) ‘La vigne et le vin dans la région parisienne au début du ix siècle d’après le polyptiques d’ Irminon’, Le Moyen Age, 74, 391–5. 9. www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptiques/capitulare/latin2english.html (consulted online 30/03/11). 10. www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptiques//latin2english.html (consulted online 30/03/11). 11. The text of the poem in medieval French can be found in H. d’Andeli, (1995) Oeuvres, ed. A. Héron. Facsimile of the edition Rouen 1881. The text is also available on line at http://remade.org/bloodwolf/francais/henridandeli/vin. htm (consulted on 30/03/11). 12. Michel Zink, (1989) ‘Autour de la Bataille des Vins de Henri d’Andeli: le blanc du prince, du pauvre et du poète’, L’Imagimaire du Vin, eds Max Milner and Martine Chatelain-Courtois, Marseille: Jeanne Lafitte, 111–21. 13. M. Zink, ‘Autour de la Bataille des Vins de Henri d’Andeli’, 111. 14. Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke, (1997) Englands Weinwirtschaft in Antike und Millelalter, Band 9 in Weinwirstschaft in Mittelalter. Sonderdruck: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn. Map, 308. 15. Samuel Pegg, (1770) ‘Of the Introduction, Progress State and Condition of the Vine in Britain’, Archaeologia, I, 331. 16. Plan of Canterbury cathedral lands 1150 in Barty-King, 32–3. 17. All these accounts are published in Jäsche, 379–88. A discussion of the vineyards at Teynham and Northfleet can also be found in Dorothy Sutcliffe, (1934) ‘The Vineyards of Northfleet and Teynham in the Thirteenth Century’, Archaeologia Cantia, XLVI, 140–9. 18. Franz Irsigler, (1991) ‘Viticulture, vinification et commerce du vin en Allemagne Occidentale des origins au XVI siécle’, in Le Vigneron, la Viticulture et la Vinification en Europe occidentale au Moyen Age et à l’epoque moderne. Auch: Flaran II, 49–65. 19. www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptiques/coudray/latin2english.html (consulted online 30/03/11). The capacity of situli is unknown but,if related to situla, a Latin term for ‘bucket’, was probably around 1 gallon. 20. Alexander Neckam, (1863) De Natura Rerum, ed. J. Wright. Book 2. London: Rolls Series, chapter CLXVII, 276. 21. Pierre de Crescens is the French version of his name often also used in English. He is also known in Italy (his birthplace) as Pietro de’ Crescenzi. 22. Jean-Louis Gaulin, (1991) ‘Viticulture et Vinification dans l’Agronomie Italienne (xii–xv siécles)’, in La Vigneron, la Viticulture et la Vinification.93–6. 23. Garrier, Histoire, 91. The presentation copy is illuminated with several illustrations. The later printed copies have woodcuts; that on p. 30 of Book IV (which is devoted to wine production) includes illustrations of pruning and digging round the vines. 24. De Crescens, Book IV, chapter IV. (consulted online 30/03/11).

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172 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

notes to pages 21–33

De Crescens Book IV, chapter XXIII. (consulted online 30/03/11). De Crescens Book IV, chapter XXVII. (consulted online 30/03/11). De Crescens Book IV, chapter XLVI. (consulted online 30/03/11). There is a modern French edition of de Crescens’ work. Maurice Genevoix, ed. (1965) Les profits champêtres of Pietro de Crescenzi. Paris: P. A. Chavane. Henry E. Sigrist, ed. (1943) The Earliest Printed Book on Wine: Arnald of Villanova (1234–1311). New York: Schuman’s. Sigrist, Earliest Printed Book, 28–31. Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, (1969) Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. London: Thames and Hudson. Items 4 and 11 in the Calendar. Karl-Ulrich Jäschke, Englands Weinwirtschaft, 381. Franz Irsigler, ‘Viticulture, vinification et commerce’, 56. Roger Dion, (1977) Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France des origins au xix siècle. Paris: Flammarion, 461–5. Michel Le Mené, (1991) ‘Le Vignoble Francais à la fin du moyen âge,’ in Le vin au moyen âge: production et producteurs. Grenoble :Presses universtaires de Grenoble, Michel Le Mené, (1978) ‘Le Vignoble Angevin à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Le vin au moyen âge: production et producteurs. Grenoble :Presses universtaires de Grenoble, 85–90. Michel le Mené, (1978) ‘Le Vignoble Angevin’, 87. Marie-Therèse Lorcin, (1978) ‘Le vignoble et les vignerons du Lyonnais aux xiv et xv siécles’, in Le Vin au moyen âge: production et producteurs. Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 20–3. Françoise Michaud-Frejaville, (1991) ‘Apprentis et ouvriers vignerons: les contrats à Orléans au xv siècle,’ in Le Vigneron la Viticulture et la Vinification, 273–85. Franz Irsigler, (1991) ‘Viticulture, Vinification et Commerce du vin’, 59. Franz Irsigler, (1991) ‘Viticulture, Vinification et Commerce du vin’, 61. Antonio Ivan Pini, (1991) ‘Le Viticulture italienne au moyen âge’, in Le Vigneron la Viticulture et la Vinification, 80. Antonio Ivan Pini, (19890 Vite e Vino nel medioevo. Bologna: Bologna University Press, 63–85. Federigo Melis, (1984) I vini Italiane nel medioevo, Prato: le Monnier, 17. The importance of the work of Crescens and a group of other writers from much the same period is discussed in detail in Jean-Louis Gaulin, (1991) in ‘Viticulture et Vinification dans l’agronomie Italienne (xii–xv siécles)’, in Le Vigneron la Viticulture et la Vinification, 96–102. The discussion of coltura promiscua by Crescens is analysed in Gaulin, (1991) ‘Viticulture et Vinifiction’, 107–9. It is also described in Pini, ‘La Viticulture Italienne’. 80. Marcel Lachiver, (1988), Vins, vignes et vignerons Paris : Fayard, 211. Garrier, Histoire, 124. Marcel Lachiver, (1988), 214–16

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173

50. Michel Matheus, (1991) ‘Gefeuerter wein, un procedé de vinification très particulier au moyen âge’, in Le Vigneron, la Viticulture et la Vinification en Europe occidentale au Moyen Age et à l’epoque moderne. Auch: Flaran II, 259–66. 51. Marcel Lachiver, (1988) 217–18. 52. Marcel Lachiver, (1988) 218–20. 53. Georges Martin, (1910) ‘Etudes historiques sur la vinification’, Revue Historique de Bordeaux et du Departement de la Gironde, III, 90. 54. Marcel Lachiver, (1988) 222–3. 55. Franz Irsigler, ‘Viticulture, vinification et commerce’, 63. 56. David and Barbara Martin, (2004) New Winchelsea Sussex: A Medieval Port Town. London: English Heritage, 122–5.

Notes to Chapter 3: Regulating the Wine Trade 1. R. Dion, (1954) ‘Viticulture ecclésiastique et viticulture princière au moyen âge’, Revue Historique, 212–13. 2. R. Dion, ‘Viticulture ecclésiastique et viticulture’, 8–9. 3. R. Dion, ‘Viticulture ecclésiastique et viticulture’,15–16. 4. Gilbert Garrier, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturale du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 56–7. 5. Louis Duval-Arnould, (1968) ‘Le Vignoble de l’Abbaye Cistercienne de Longport’, Le Moyen Age, 74, 207–36. 6. Marcel Lachiver, (1988) 62, Vins, vignes et vignerons, Paris: Fayard, quoting the Chronica fratris Salimbene de Adam, ordinis minorum. 7. Marcel Lachiver, (1988), 229–31. 8. Gilbert Guerrier, (2008), 541–2. 9. Jacques Beauroy, (1976) Vin et Societé à Bergerac du Moyen Age aux Temps Modernes. Saratoga, CA: Anna Libri. 10. Jacques Beauroy, (1976) Vin et Société, 118. 11. Jacques Beauroy, (1976) Vin et Société, 185–97. 12. Jacques Beauroy, (1976) Vin et Société, 123. 13. Marie-Claire Chaineux, (1981) Culture de la Vigne et Commerce du Vin dans la region de Liège au Moyen Age, Liège-Louvain: Centre Belge d’Histoire Sociale, 27–47, 92–120. 14. Rosalind Kent Berlow, (1982) ‘The Disloyal Grape: the Agrarian Crisis of late Fourteenth Century Burgundy’, Agricultural History, 56, 426–38. 15. M. W. Labarge, (1980) Gascony, England’s First Colony 1204–1453. London: Hamish Hamilton, 100. 16. Jacques Chastenet, (1980) L’Epopée des Vins de Bordeaux. Paris: Librarie Academique Persen, 53–6. 17. Jean-Paul Trabut-Cussac, (1950) ‘Les coutumes ou droits de douane perçus à Bordeaux sur les vins et les marchandises par l’administration Anglaise de 1252 à 1307’, Annales du Midi, 62, 136–8.

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174 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

notes to pages 47–55

R. Dion, ‘Viticulture ecclésiastique et viticulture’, 387. Jean-Paul Trabut-Cussac, ‘Les coutumes’, 139. Jean-Paul Trabut-Cussac, ‘Les coutumes’, 139–41. Jean-Paul Trabut-Cussac, ‘Les coutumes’, 137–8. Marcel Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 96, 113, 114. Wines from the haut pays entered Bordeaux in October in 1306–1308. Jean-Paul Trabut-Cussac, (1963), ‘Quelques données sur le commerce du vin à Libourne autour de 1300’, Annales du Midi, 75, 7–15. Gilbert Guerrier, Histoire, 600. Wikipedia: article on Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune. Margery Kirkbride James, (1971) Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2–5. M. K. James, Medieval Wine Trade, 4. TNA. E101/79/17 Butlerage particulars for 20–21 Edward III. The entries relating to Lynn have been printed in Dorothy M. Owens, (1984) The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey. London: The British Academy, 449–53. T. H. Lloyd, Entry for John Wesenham in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004–2010). (consulted online 30/03/11). Chris Given-Wilson, ed. (2005) The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, Parliament 1348 of Edward III, 1348, item 11; ii, 166, (consulted on CD-ROM). Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, (2005) iii, 454, col. a. Henry IV 1401. M. K. James, Medieval Wine Trade, 6–7. Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1348 item 61. Maryanne Kowaleski, (1993) Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter 1266–1321. Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 11. Henry S. Cobb, (1961) The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–40. Southampton: Southampton University Press, xiv–xv, and xxxv–xli. Edwin S. Hunt and James M. Murray, (1999) A History of Business in Medieval Europe 1200–1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 70. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London. Roll A7 memb. 8b 25th July 1355, (consulted online). Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, Roll A5 memb. 19 4th March 1342. Anne Crawford, (1977) A History of the Vintners’ Company. London: Constable. 23–5. Anne Crawford, History of the Vintners’ Company, 27–9. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, vol. 2, 1364–1381. 9th January 1375. Anne Crawford, History of the Vintners’ Company, 30. Anne Crawford, History of the Vintners’ Company, 31. T. H. Lloyd, (1982) Alien Merchants in England in the High Middle Ages. London: Harvester Press, 25–7.

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44. Caroline M. Barron, (2004), London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 84–6. 45. Most of the places of origin of these wines have been identified; Vernage and Mountrosse came from Vernacchia and Monterosso, small towns in the Cinque Terre on the east coast of Italy, south of Genoa. Romeneye and Mawvesie, more usually called malmsey, came originally from the mainland of Greece generally known as Romania at the time. Both were also made in Crete by the fifteenth century. Candye also came from Crete, exported through the port of Candia. Greek was the name given to wines made in the Greek style in Southern Italy. Clarre or clarry was a mixed wine made by the addition of spices and honey to the wine much like hippocras. 46. Anne Crawford, History of the Vintners’ Company, 49–50. Also Roger L. Axworthy, ‘Lyons, Ricard (d. 1381) merchant and financier’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (consulted online 30/03/11). 47. Robert L. Axworthy, ‘Pecche, John, (d.1380) merchant and mayor of London’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (consulted online 30/03/11). His impeachment is recorded in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ii, 328 item 33.

Notes to Chapter 4: The Anglo-French Wine Trade 1. N. S. B. Gras, (1918) The Early English Customs System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The Customs accounts were enrolled on the Pipe Rolls till 1323 when a special series of Enrolled Customs Accounts was started. Details of the ships entering particular ports and of their cargoes can be found in the Particulars of the Customs from 1272 to c. 1535. After this date these details were recorded in the port books. No port has a complete series of Particulars. 2. Margery Kirkbride James, (1971) Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2–5. 3. M. K. James, Wine Trade, 5. 4. M. K. James, Wine Trade, 38. 5. M. K. James, Wine Trade, 1–3. 6. The National Archives, Exchequer Accounts Various, E101/78/38. 7. M. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, Paris: Fayard, 62–5. 8. André L. Simon, (1964) The History of the Wine Trade in England, vol. I. London: Holland Press, 62. 9. M. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 89–91. 10. M. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 91. 11. Jean-Christophe Cassard, (1983) ‘Les Flottes du vin de Bordeaux au début du xiv siècle’, Annales du Midi, 95, 120–3. 12. M. Lachiver, Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, 95–6. 13. André L. Simon, The History of the Wine Trade, I, 75, 91–2.

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notes to pages 64–75

14. G. Garrier, (2008) Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin. Paris: Larousse, 126–7, 546. 15. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 1, 33; M. Lachiver, Vins Vignes Vignerons, 113–14. 16. Peter Spufford, (2002) Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe. London: Thames and Hudson, 294. 17. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 3, 35. 18. Jonathan Sumption, (1999) The Hundred Years War I: Trial by Battle. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 91–7. 19. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 13. 20. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 14. 21. Quoted in J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War I, 97, from A. Coville, (1949) ‘Poèmes Historiques de l’avènement de Philippe de Valois au Traité de Calais (1328–1361)’, Histoire Littéraire de la France, 38, 259–333. The verses translate as: ‘the sea should be the boundary between England and France’. 22. J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War I, 420–9. 23. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 2, 34. 24. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 1, 32–3. 25. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 27. Appendix 4, 37. 26. Jonathan Sumption, (1999) Trial by Fire The Hundred Years War II, London: Faber and Faber, 354–7. 27. Jonathan Sumption, Trial by Fire , 268. The military campaigns of the Black Prince in Languedoc can be found ibid., 174–87, 190–4. 28. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 5, 55–6. 29. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 39–40. 30. R. A. Griffiths, (1998) The Reign of King Henry VI. Sutton: Stroud, 461–6. 31. R. A. Griffiths, Henry VI, 464. 32. R. A. Griffiths, Henry VI, 529–33. 33. Yves Renouard, (1948–1949) ‘Les Conséquences de la Conquête de la Guienne pour le commerce des vins de Gascogne’, Annales du Midi, 61, 19–21. 34. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, Appendix 5, 56. 35. Yves Renouard denies that there was ever a total prohibiton. ‘Les Conséquences de la Conquête de Guienne’, 22. 36. British Library Additional MSS 11716; printed in G. Schanz, (1881) Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters, II, 526–8. 37. Yves Renouard, ‘Les Conséquences de la Conquête de Guienne’, 24–7. 38. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 49. 39. Jean-Christophe Cassard, (1983) ‘Les Flottes de Vin de Bordeaux au Début du xiv˚ siècle’, Annales du Midi, 95, 119–33. 40. Maryanne Kowaleski, (1993) Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter 1266–1321. Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 80–94. 41. J. Bernard, (1968 ) Navires et Gens de Mer à Bordeaux, Paris: ecole pratique des hautes etudes, 3, 24–7, 58–63.

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notes to pages 76–85

177

42. A full discussion of medieval navigation will be found in E. G. R. Taylor, (1956) The Haven-Finding Art. London: Hollis and Carter. 43. Michael R. Mallett, (1967) The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 200. 44. Robin Ward, (2004) ‘The Earliest Known Sailing Directions in English: Transcription and Analysis’, Deutches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 27, 49–92. 45. Robin Ward, ‘Sailing Directions’, 72. 46. Robin Ward, ‘Sailing Directions’, 83. 47. Robin Ward, ‘Sailing Directions’, 63. 48. Robin Ward, (2009) The World of the Medieval Shipmaster: Law, Business and the Sea c.1350–1450. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, has a full discussion of the laws of Oléron which are transcribed and translated 183–205. 49. Dorothy M. Gardiner, (1976) A Calendar of Early Chancery Proceedings Relating to West Country Shipping, 1388–1493. Torquay: Devon and Cornwall, Record Society, 52–4. 50. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous VIII, 1422–1485, 160–1. 51. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscelleaneous, VIII, 1422–1485, item 181, 106–7. Francis Davey, (2005) ‘Who Bought the Pirates’ Wine?’ Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, 39, part 8, 242–50. 52. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: John Hawley. 53. M. K. James. The Wine Trade, 129–31. 54. J. Darsel, (1957) ‘La Protection des Flottes du Vin au Moyen Age dans la Manche et dans l’Atlantique’, Comitié des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques: Bulletin Philologique et Historique, 185–95. 55. Anne Crawford, A History of the Vintners Company, 27. 56. Henry S. Cobb, (1961) The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–40. Southampton: Southampton University Press, 34. 57. Henry S. Cobb, The Local Port Book of Southampton, 45. 58. Olive Coleman, (1961) The Brokage Book of Southampton 1443–4. Southampton: Southampton University Press, 50. 59. Olive Coleman, Brokage Book, xxiii–xxix. 60. Olive Coleman, Brokage Book, 66–7. 61. Barbara Ross, ed. (2003) Accounts of the Stewards of the Talbot Household at Blakemere, 1392–1425, Shropshire Record Series 7, Christmas 43, Tyre, 151, 159. 62. Jennifer Ward, ed. (1995) Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066– 1500. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 170. 63. Anne Crawford, A History of the Vintners Company, 39–40. 64. Anne Crawford, A History of the Vintners Company, 49–52. 65. Anne Crawford, A History of the Vintners Company, 46–7. 66. Jean-Christophe Cassard, (1978) ‘Vins et Marchands de Vins Gascons au Début du XIV˚ siècle’, Annales du Midi, 90, 121–40. 67. M. K. James, The Wine Trade, 85–8.

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notes to pages 85–94

68. This date is that given by Alison Hanham, (1985) The Celys and Their World: An English Merchant Family in the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 361 et seq. The printed accounts in H. E. Malden, ed. (1900) The Cely Papers: Selections from the Correspondence and Memoranda of the Cely Family, Merchants of the Staple, 1475–88. London: Royal Historical Society, Camden third Series I, give m iiii (c) iiii (xx) v that is 1485. 69. A section of the book called ‘The Rekenyng of the Margett Cely’ has been printed in H. E. Malden, ed. (1900) The Cely Papers: Selections from the Correspondence and Memoranda of the Cely Family, Merchants of the Staple, 1475–88. London: Royal Historical Society, Camden third Series I, 174–88. The operation of the ship including the voyages to Bordeaux is discussed in detail in Alison Hanham, (1985) The Celys and Their World: An English Merchants Family of the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 361–97. 70. Alison Hanham, (1975) The Cely letters 1472–88, letter 226, 226.

Notes to Chapter 5: Other Routes and Other Wines 1. Lachiver, (1988), Vins, Vignes et Vignerons. Paris: Fayard. Map, 308. 2. Political developments in the Low Countries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are described in a series of biographies of the dukes by Richard Vaughan. Philip the Bold (1962), John the Fearless (1966), Philip the Good (1970) and Charles the Bold (1973) London: Longmans. There is also Wim Blockmand and Walter Prevenier, (1999) The Promised Lands: The Low Countires under Burgundian Rule, 1369–1530. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 3. These cases can be found in the Calendars of Patent Rolls and the Calendars of Inquisitions Miscellaneous. For a typical case see Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1422–85, item 65. 4. Gilbert Garrier, Histoire Sociale et Culturelle du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 62. 5. John F. Benton, (1962) ‘Nicholas de Clairvaux à la recherché du vin d’ Auxerre d’après une letter inédite du xii siècle’, Annales de Bourgogne, 34, 252–5. 6. Marcel Delaforce, (1941) ‘Le Commerce du vin d’ Auxerre, (xiv–xvi siècles)’, Annales de Bourgogne, 13, 203–30. 7. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 63 8. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 68–74. 9. Jan Craeybeckx, (1958) Un Grand Commerce d’Importation: les vins de France aux anciens Pays Bas. Paris:S.E.V.P.E.N, 59–60. 10. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 60. 11. Jean-Jacques Hoebaux, (1991) ‘Routes du Vin: quelques itinéraire suivi par des vins domaniaux entre le Rhin et le Brabant Wallon au xv siècle’, in Jean-Marie

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notes to pages 94–102

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Duvesquel and Alain Dierkes, eds, Villes et Campagnes au Moyen Age. Liège: editions du Perron, 12. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 103–11. 13. Jean-Christophe Cassard, (1983) ‘Les Flottes du vin de Bordeaux au début du xiv siècle’, Annales du Midi, 95, 127–8. 14. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 17–21. 15. Marcel Delaforce, ‘Le Commerce du Vin d’ Auxerre’, 115–16. 16. Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed. (1871) Oeuvres de Froissart, vol. 12, 1386–1389, Brussels: Academie Royale des sciences des letters et des beaux-arts de Belgique, 67–77. There was also a corresponding shortage of good wine in Flanders, Brabant and Hainault. 17. J. Bernard, (1968) Navires et Gens de Mer à Bordeaux, vers 1400–vers 1550, Paris: Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, 58. 18. Louis Delavaud, (1929) ‘Le Commerce des vins et du sel en Norvège au moyen âge’, Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie, Institute Solvay, 9, 61–113. 19. Philippe Dollinger, (1964) La Hanse (xii–xvii siècles). Paris: Aubier, 296–7. 20. Wendy R. Childs, (1995) ‘The George of Beverley and Olav Olavesson: Trading Conditions in the North Sea in 1464’, Northern History, 31, 108–9. 21. Philippe Dollinger, (1964) La Hanse, 275–6, 522, 524. 22. Klaus Militzer, ‘Handel und Vertrieb rheinischer und elsässischer Weine über Köln im Spätmittelalter’, consulted online via regionalgeschichte.net (consulted on 30/03/11). This article gives a clear overall picture of the origins and operation of the wine staple at Cologne to which I am much indebted. 23. Klaus Militzer, ‘Handel und Vertrieb rheinischer und elsässischer Weine über Köln im Spätmittelalter’ The quotation from the Annals of Cologne can be translated as, ‘Tanners and cobblers went into the market and everyone made a profit’. 24. Klaus Militzer, ‘Handel und Vertrieb rheinischer und elsässischer Weine über Köln im Spätmittelalter’. 25. Klaus Militzer, ‘Handel und Vertrieb rheinischer und elsässischer Weine über Köln im Spätmittelalter’. 26. Martha C. Howell, (1986) Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cologne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 150–1. 27. Job Westsrate, (2006) ‘Shifting Markets and Institutional Change: Wine Trade on the River Rhine c. 1380–1560’. Consulted online; paper presented at the International Economic History Congress in Helsinki, August 2006. 28. Quoted in Jonathan Harris, (2007) ‘More malmsey your Grace?’ in Leslie Brubaker and Kalliroe Linardou, eds, Eat Drink and Be Merry: Food and Drink in Byzantium. Aldershot: Ashgate, 254. 29. Frances Davey, ed. (2010) The Itineraries of William Wey. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 126. 30. William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2, Act IV scene iii, l.53–9.

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notes to pages 103–115

31. Ugo Tucci, (1994) ‘Le Commerce Venitien du vin de Créte’, Maritime Food Transport: Quellen und Darstellungen, Friedland, 199–211. 32. Gio Battista Ramussio, (1583) Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, Venice, 199–211. 33. Diaries of Sanuto, vol. v, part 1, 477, 488, (consulted online 30/03/11); also decree of the Senato Mar for 21 May 1498. 34. Freddy Thiriet, (1957) ‘Les letters commerciales de Bembo et le commerce venitien dans l’empire ottoman à la fin du xv siècle’, in Studi in Onore di Armando Sapori. Milan : Cisalpino, 911–33. 35. Ugo Tucci, (1994) ‘Le Commerce Venitien du vin de Créte’, 204–5. 36. This was the voyage of Robert Sturdy. See Stuart Jenks, ed. (2006) Robert Sturdy’s Commercial Expedition to the Mediterranean 1457–1458. Bristol: Bristol Record Society. 37. Ugo Tucci, (1994) ‘Le Commerce Venitien du vin de Créte’, 204. 38. Alwyn A. Ruddock, (1951) Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270–1600. Southampton: Southampton University Press, 101, 206–32. 39. Geoffrey Chaucer, (1974) The Canterbury Tales, translated by Neville Coghill, London: The Folio Society, 295. 40. Calendar of Close Rolls, 1364–1368, 158. 41. Wendy Childs, (1978) Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 126–36. 42. Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones, (2009) Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent 1503–1601. Dublin: Four Courts Press for the Bristol Record Society, 24–5, 28, 13 and 71. 43. Susan Flavin and Evan T. Jones, (2009) Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent 1503–1601, 13,21, 22–3, 26–7, 29–30. 44. Wendy Childs, (1992) ‘Anglo-Portuguese Trade in the Fifteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series 2, 195–219. The quotation from Henry IV Part 2 is from Act IV sc. iii as before. 45. F. W. Carter, (1987) ‘Cracow’s Wine Trade (Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 65, 537–78.

Notes to Chapter 6: The Enjoyment of Wine 1. 2. 3. 4.

Lachiver, (1988) Vins, Vignes, Vignerons, Paris: Fayard, 140. Garrier, (2008) Histoire sociale et Culturelle du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 78 Lachiver, (1988) Vins, Vignes, Vignerons, 118. Louis Stouff, (1970) Ravitaillement et Alimentation en Provence au xiv et xv siècles. Paris and La Haye: Moulon, 84. 5. Louis Stouff, Ravitaillemen et Alimentation, 84–94. 6. Duccio Balestracci, (1996) ‘La produzione e la vendita del vino nella Toscana medievale’, in Fermin Miranda Garcia, ed. Vin y vinedo en la Europa medieval Pamplona: Asociacion Cultural Alfonso Lopez de Corella, 39–54.

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notes to pages 115–123

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7. Robert C. Davis, (1997) ‘Venetian Shipbuilders and the Fountain of Wine’, Past and Present, 156, 59. 8. Garrier, (2008) Histoire sociale et Culturelle du Vin, 77. 9. Gérard Sivéry, (1997) ‘Le vin: commerce et consummation paysanne dans le sud du Hainaut du moyen âge’, Revue du Nord, 49, 281–91. 10. Philippe Lardin, (1992) ‘Le role du vin et de la nourriture dans le rémuneration des ouvriers du bâtiment à la fin du moyen âge’, in Martin Aurell, Olivier Dunonlin and Francoise Thelamo, eds, La Sociabilité à table, Rouen: University of Rouen, 209–13. 11. The Rule of St Benedict, (consulted online on 30/03/11). 12. M. K. James, (1971) Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 202. 13. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, (2001) ‘Durham Cathedral priory’s Consumption of Imported Goods: wine and spices, 1464–1520’, in Michael Hicks ed. Revolution and Consumption in late Medieval England, The Fifteenth century 2. Woodbridge: Boydell, 141–58. 14. Barbara Harvey, (1993) Living and Dying in England, 1000–1540: the monastic experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 37, 58. 15. Printed in T. Wright, (1841) The Poems of Walter Mapes from Bodleian Library MS Digby 53. The original is anonymous. 16. Louis Stouff, Ravitaillement et Alimentation, 238–40. 17. Garrier, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturelle du Vin, 71–73. 18. Emilie Amt, (1993) Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Source Book. London: Routledge, 226–27. 19. Berenice M. Kerr, (1999) Religious Life for Women c. 1000–c. 1340: Fontevraud in England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 166. 20. Elizabeth Critall, (1956) ‘Fragment of an Account of the Cellaress of Wilton Abbey, 1299’, in N. J. Williams ed. Collectanea, vol. 12. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Records Branch. 21. Emilie Amt, (1993) Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, 247–49, 263. 22. Jennifer Ward, ed. and trans. (1995) Women of the English Nobility and Gentry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 217–19. 23. A. R. Myers, ed. (1959) The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 24. A. R. Myers, (1959) The Household of Edward IV, 69–73, 90. 25. André L. Simon, (1907) The History of the Wine Trade in England, vol. 2. 133–35. 26. A. R. Myers, (1959) The Household of Edward IV, 174–81. 27. Nicholas Harris Nicolas, (1830, reprint 1972) Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York. London: Frederick Muller, 52. 28. Monique Sommé, (1997) ‘Les approvisionements en vin de la cour de Bougogne au xv siècle sous Philippe le Bon’, Revue du Nord, 949–65. 29. Martine Maguin, (1982) La Vigne et le vin en Lorraine xviv et xv siècles, Nancy: Presse Universitaires de Nancy, 209.

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notes to pages 124–130

30. C. M. Woolgar, (1999) The Great Household in Later Medieval England. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 126. 31. Jennifer Ward, ed. and trans. (1995) Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 170. 32. Barbara Ross, ed. (2003) Accounts of the Stewards of the Talbot Household at Blakemere 1392–1425. Keele: Shropshire Record Series, 22–3. 33. Barbara Ross, (2003) Accounts of the Stewards, 49–51. 34. Barbara Ross, (2003) Accounts of the Stewards, 84–5. 35. Ffiona Swabey, (1999) Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages. Stroud: Alan Sutton, 87–8. 36. Geoffrey Chaucer, (1974) trans. Neville Coghill, The Canterbury Tales. London: Folio Society, 26–7. 37. Christopher Woolgar, (2001) ‘Fast and Feast: Conspicuous Consumption and the Diet of the Nobility in the Fifteenth Century’, in Michael Hicks ed. Revolution and Consumption in late medieval England. The Fifteenth Century 2, Woodbridge: Boydell, 7–25, 2; Bridget Henisch, (2009) The Medieval Cook. Woodbridge: Boydell, 134–63. 38. Gervais du Bus, (1914–1919) ed. Arthur Langfors, Le Roman de Fauvel. Paris: Societé des Anciens Textes Français, 428. 39. Richard Vaughan, (1970, new edition 2002) Philip the Good. Woodbridge: Boydell, 142–5. 40. Jean-Pierre Leguay, (1992) ‘Une manifestation de Sociabilité Urbaine: les banquets municipaux en France au xiv et xv siècles’, in Martin Aurell, Olivier Dunonlin and Francoise Thelamo, eds, La Sociabilité à table, , Rouen: University of Rouen 187–92. 41. City of London. Letter Book D for 1312, folio clxviii, (consulted online on 30/03/11). 42. Garrier, (2008) Histoire, 72. 43. André L. Simon, (1907) History of the Wine Trade, vol. 2, 136–7. 44. Calendar of London Letter Books G 1352–1374, folio xliiib, consulted via British History online. 45. The term ‘pot du vin’ has the undertones of a bribe in modern French. At this period the system of offering and receiving gifts was an informal but yet powerful way of building alliances or reacting to demands from an overlord. The system was thoroughly embedded in public life particularly in the wealthy and influential towns of the Low Countries. Further discussion of this topic can be found in Alain Derville, (19760 ‘Pots du Vincadeaux, racket, patronage: essai sue les mécanismes de décision dans l’état bouguignon’, Revue du Nord, 56, 341–64, and Marc Boone, (1988) ‘Dons et Pots-de-vinaspects de la sociabilité urbaine au bas Moyen Age’, Revue du Nord, 70, 471–87. 46. Mario Damer, (2006) ‘Giving by Pouring: the function of gifts of wine in the City of Louvain from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries’, in Jacob van Lieuwen, ed. Symbolic Communication in Late Medieval Towns, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 83–100.

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183

47. Helen Waddell, (1975) Medieval Latin Lyrics. London: Constable, 184–5. 48. Maxwell S. Luria and Richard l. Hoffman, (1974) Middle English Lyrics. London and New York: Norton, items 154 and 163.

Notes to Chapter 7: Food, Drink and Medicine 1. Plato, The Laws, Book 2. The issue comes up as part of a discussion of the place of music in civic life. 2. Andrew Boorde, (1549) Dyetary. Consulted on EEBO online http://eebo.chadwyk.com. Entry: of Wyne, (consulted on 31/03/11). 3. Henry E. Sigrist, ed. (1943) The Earliest Printed Book on Wine by Arnald of Villanova 1235–1311. New York: Schirmer’s, 24–5, 31. 4. Eileen Power, ed. and trans. (1928) The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris). London: Routledge, recipe for hippocras 299–300. 5. Eileen Power, The Goodman of Paris, 327. 6. Eileen Power, The Goodman of Paris, 236–8. 7. Eileen Power, The Goodman of Paris, 238–44. 8. Henry E. Sigrist, The Earliest Printed Book on Wine, 43. 9. Jacqueline Brunet and Odile Redon, (1990) ‘ Vins, Jus et verjus: du bon usage culinaire des jus de raisins en Italie à la fin du Moyen Age,’ in Le Vin des Historiens, Suze-la-Rousse: Université de Vin, 109–117. 10. Eileen Power, The Goodman of Paris, 271, 265–6, 275–6. A way of producing fresh verjuice at Christmas from a vine arbour is also included, 300. 11. The Forme of Cury was consulted in its printed version edited by Pegge in 1780 on line at Eighteenth Century Collection on line. It was published by J. Nichols for the Society of Antiquaries. 12. Melitta Weiss Adamson, (2004) ‘Infants and Wine: Medieval Medical views on the Controversial Issue of Wine as Baby-food’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 50, 13–21. 13. Eustache Deschamps, (1893) ‘D’un notable enseignement pour continuer santé en corps d’homme’, Oeuvres Complètes d’Eustache Deschamps, vol. 8. Paris: Societé des Anciens Textes Français, 339. 14. Eustache Deschamps, (1893) Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 7, 236–7, 218–20. 15. Over-indulgence at the court of Charles VI is discussed in Mireille Vincent-Cassy, (1992) ‘La Gula curiale ou les debordements des banquets au debut du regne de Charles VI’, La Sociabilité à table, Rouen : University of Rouen, 91–102. 16. The Englishman’s Docter, (1607) translated into verse from the work of Joannes de Mediolano. (consulted online at EEBO, 31/03/11). 17. Henry E. Sigrist, The Earliest Printed Book on Wine, 34–5. 18. Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, (1990) ‘Les usages du Vin à la fin du moyen age (xiii–xv siècles),’ Vin de Historiens, Suze-la-Rousse: Université de Vin, 99–107, 101. 19. Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, (1990) ‘Les usages du Vin à la fin du moyen age (xiii–xv siècles),’ in Vin de Historiens, 99–107.

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notes to pages 143–151

20. Henry E. Sigerist, The Earliest Printed Book on Wine, 39–40. 21. Piers D. Mitchell, (2004) Medicine in the Crusades: War Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon. Cambridge :Cambridge University Press. 22. See the entry Borgognoni, Teodorico. Consulted online at www.scientia.cat/ biblioteca/documents/Cifuentes_Borgognoni.pdf (consulted on 22/04/11). 23. Guy de Chauliac’s book was published in English in 1542 under the title The Questionyary of cyrurgyens with the formularly of lytell Guydo in cyrrurgie etc. (consulted online via EEBO 31/03/11). 24. Edward Grant, (1974) A Source Book in Medieval Science. Harvard: Harvard University Press, item 115, 804. 25. Francesc Eiximenis, ed. Jorge Gracia, (1977) Com usar bé de beure e meniar selections from Terc del Crestia. Barcelona: Curial. 26. T. Wright, (1859) Political Poems and Songs Illustrative of English History, vol. I, 276–7. Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, 14, London: Longman Green. 27. G. Chaucer, ed. Neville Coghill, The Canterbury Tales. London: Folio Society, 293–308. 28. W.F. Smith, (1893) Rabelais Five Books and Minor Writings together with Letters and Documents Illustrative of His Life: A New Translation. London: A. P. Watt. Book II, 155, Book IV, 42. 29. Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, (1990) ‘Les usages du Vin à la fin du moyen age (xiii–xv) siècles’, 104. 30. Ebrietatis Encomium; second edition 1743, (consulted online via EEBO 31/03/11).

Notes to Chapter 8: Ritual and Religion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

Genesis, 9, 20–4. The Song of Songs, 1:4 and 7:13. Joel, 2:19. Proverbs, 20:1. Encyclopedia Judaica, (1971) Vol. 16 Ur–Z, entry Wine, 538–42. Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol.16, 540, ‘wine of Gentiles’. This was a repository in a Cairo synagogue for documents of all kinds which were no longer required; the original purpose was to treat religious documents in a respectful way but it came to contain all manner of written material. It was re-discovered and the contents removed for study in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. S. D. Goitein, (1999) A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Berkeley, LA and London: The University of California Press, 4 vols. vol. iv, Daily life, 253–9. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. v, 39. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. ii, 461,500. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. i, 264.

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notes to pages 152–161

185

12. Louis Stouff, (1970) Ravitaillement et Alimentation en Provence, Paris: ecole pratique des hautes etudes 96–7. 13. Asunción Blasco Martinez, (1989) ‘La Próducción y Comercialización del vino entre los judios de Zaragoza (siglo XIV)’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 19, 405–49. 14. Ariel Toaff, (1996) Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 75. 15. Ariel Toaff, Love, Work and Death, 77–9. 16. Ariel Toaff, Love, Work and Death, 82. 17. Joe Hillaby, (2003) ‘Jewish Colonisation in the Twelfth Century’, in Pauline Skinner ed., The Jews in Medieval Britain: Historical, Literary and Archaeological Perspectives, Woodbridge: Boydell, 15–40. 18. St John, 2, 1–11. 19. St Luke22, 17–21. St Matthew 26, 26–28. 20. Examples of this approach can be found in Garrier, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturelle du Vin. Paris: Larousse, 42; and Hugh Johnson, (2002) The Story of Wine. London: Mitchell Beazley, 63. 21. Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, (1990) ‘Les usages du Vin à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Le Vin des Historiens. Suze-la-Rousse: Université de Vin, 99–100. 22. Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, (1899–1950) vol. 3. Paris, np (in BL catalogue) 564–6. 23. Genesis 14, 18. 24. The web site, www.textweek.com/art/last_supper.htm, (consulted on 31/03/11), has a list of images of the Last Supper including those (mostly very damaged) in churches at Ickleton, Cambs, Wissington, Suffolk, Fairstead, Essex, and Little Tey, Essex. 25. St John’s Gospel, 15:1–2. 26. Revelations, 14: 17–20. 27. The story comes from Le Dict des Trois Dames de Paris by Watriquet de Couvin. Garrier, 93–4. 28. Adrian P. Tudor, (1997) ‘Hangovers from Hell: The Demon Drink in the Vie des Pères’, Romance Studies:A Journal of the University of Wales, 29, 47–63. 29. Pauline Lopez Pita, ‘El Vino en el Islam’, 306. 30. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004) ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, serie III, 305–23, 306. 31. Medieval Islamic Civilisation, (2006) London: Routledge, vol.1, entry on alcohol. 32. Quotations from the Koran are taken from those appearing in Katherine Kueny, (2001) The Rhetoric of Sobreity: Wine in Early Islam. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 6, 9. 33. David Waines, (2002) ‘Abu Zayd Al Balkhī on the Nature of Forbidden Drink: A Medival Islamic Controversy’, in David Waines ed., Patterns of Everyday Life. The Foundations of the Classical Islamic World, vol. 10. Aldershot: Ashgate, 329–44, 337. 34. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004) ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, 310.

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186

notes to pages 161–167

35. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004), ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, 308. 36. David Waines, (2002) ‘Abu Zayd Al Balkhī on the Nature of Forbidden Drink’, 305–23. 37. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004), ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, 313–15. 38. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004), ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, 317–19. 39. Convivencia: Jews, Muslims and Christians in Medieval Spain (1992) The Jewish Museum New York, facing page 11. 40. Pauline Lopez Pita, (2004) ‘El Vino en el Islam: rechazo y alabanza’, 320–1. 41. Pauline Lopez Pita. ‘El Vino en el Islam’, 322. 42. Pauline Lopez Pita, ‘El Vino en el Islam’, 323.

Notes to Conclusion 1. John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, verse 2. H. W. Garland ed. Keats Poetical Works. London: Oxford University Press, 207.

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Further Reading

This is not a complete bibliography of all the works consulted in the writing of this book but a list of those sources, books and articles which will help a reader pursue further the subjects discussed and the issues raised. I have included all those studies which I have found most useful myself.

MSS SOURCES THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, KEW Exchequer, Accounts Various, E 101, Bordeaux, Butlerage Exchequer, E 122, Particulars of the Customs Accounts Exchequer, Enrolled Customs Accounts, E 356 Special Class, S. C.6, local customs accounts

SOUTHAMPTON CITY ARCHIVES Local Port Books and Brokage books

PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES Amt, Emilie, (1993) Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe, London and New York: Routledge. Arnoul de Villeneuve, (1480) Le regime tresutile et tres prouffitable pour conserver et garder la santé du corps humain, edited by Patricia Willett Cummins, (1976) Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina. Calendar of Close Rolls. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous. Calendar of Patent Rolls. Chaucer, Geoffrey, (1974) The Canterbury Tales, trans. and ed. Neville Coghill, London: The Folio Society. Childs, Wendy M. (1986) The Customs Accounts of Hull 1453–1490, Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society.

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188

further reading

Cobb, H. S. (1961) The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–1440, Southampton: Southampton University Press. Coleman, Olive, (1960) The Brokage Book of Southampton 1443–1444, Southampton: Southampton University Press. Crescenzi, Pietro, Les Profits Champêtres, eds Jean Roubinet and Maurice Genevoix, (1965) Paris: P. A. Chavane. Critall, Elizabeth, ed. (1956) ‘Fragments of an Account of the Cellaress of Wilton Abbey 1299’, in ed. N. J. Williams, Collectanea, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society .Records Branch, 12, , Devizes. D’Andeli, Henri, La bataille des vins, ed. Friedrich Augustin, (1886) Sprachliche Untersuchung uber des Werke Henri d’Andeli, Marburg: N. G. Elwert Deschamps, Eustache, (1887) Oeuvres Complétes, Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris: Firmin Didot et cie. Eixemenis, Francesc, Terc del Crestia. Selections edited by Jorge Gracia, (1977) Com usar bé de beure e meniar, Barcelona: Curial. Flavin, Susan and Evan T. Jones, (2009) Bristol’s Trade with Ireland and the Continent 1503–1601, Dublin: Four Courts Press for the Bristol Record Society. Gardiner, Dorothy, M. (1976) A Calendar of Early Chancery Proceedings Relating to West Country Shipping 1388–1493, Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society. Jenks, Stuart, (2006) Robert Strumy’s Commercial Expedition to the Mediterranean 1457–1458), Bristol: Bristol Record Society. Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed. (1870) Oeuvres de Froissart, Brussels: Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Kowaleski, Maryanne, (1993) Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter 1266– 1321, Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society. Luria, Maxwell S. and Richard Hoffman, (1974) Middle English Lyrics, London and New York: Norton. Mallett, Michael M. (1967) The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Myers, A. R. (1959) The Household of Edward IV , Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nicolas, Nicholas Harris, (1830) Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, London: William Pickering. Oinophilus, Boniface (pseudonym) Ebiretatis Encomium, London 1723. Owen, Dorothy M. (1984) The Making of King’s Lynn, London: British Academy. Power, Eileen, (1928) The Goodman of Paris, (le Ménagier de Paris), London: George Routledge. Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, (1583) Delle navigationi et viaggi: Venice: np Roman de Fauvelle by Gervais du Bus, ed. Arthur Langfort (1919) Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Francais. Ross, Barbara, (2003) Accounts of the Stewards of the Talbot Household at Blakemere 1392–1425, Keele: Shropshire Record Society.

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further reading

189

Sigerist, Henry E. (1943) The Earliest Printed Book on Wine, New York: Schuman’s Waddell, Helen, (1975) Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, London: Constable. Ward, Jennifer, (1999) Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066–1500, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ward, Robin, (2004) ‘The Earliest Known Sailing Directions in English’, Deutches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 27, 49–92. Wey, William, (2010) edited by Francis Davey, The Itineraries of William Wey, Oxford: Bodleian Library.

PRIMARY SOURCES CONSULTED ONLINE Pliny, Natural History, Book 14 Virgil, Georgics, Book II. Plato, Laws Shakespeare, William, Henry IV Part 2. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum libri III. Cato the Elder, De Agri Cultura Columella, De Re Rustica Horace , Odes, Book II. Catullus, Complete Poems Rule of St Benedict. Also titles consulted by way of EEBO (Early English Books on Line) Guy de Chauillac, The Questyonary of cyrurgyerie Andrew Boorde, Dyetary. John Harrington, The Englishman’s Docter.

SECONDARY SOURCES Adamson, Matilda Weiss, (2004) ‘Infants and Wine: Medieval Medical Views on the Controversial Issue of Wine as Baby-food’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 50, 13–21. Aurell, Martin and Francoise Thelamon, (1992) La Sociabilité á Table, Rouen: University of Rouen. Barty-King, Hugh, (1977) A Tradition of English Wine, Oxford: Oxford Illustrated Press. Beauroy, Jacques, (1976) Vin et Société á Bergerac au Moyen Age aux temps modernes, Saratoga: Anma Libri. Beck, Patrice, (2001) ‘Les clos du prince: récherches sur les établissements vinvinicole ducaux’, Annales de Bourgogne, 73, 103–16.

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190

further reading

Blasco Martinez, Asuncion, (1989) ‘La produccion y comercializacion del vino entre los judios de Zaragoza (siglo xiv)’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 19, 405–49. Carré, Adrien, (1987) ‘Wine and Maritime History’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 73, 21–31. Carus-Wilson, Eleanor M. (1967) Medieval Merchant Venturers, London: Methuen. Carus-Wilson, Eleanor M. ( 1948 for 1947) ‘The Effects of the Acquisition and of the Loss of Gascony on the English Wine Trade’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 21, 145–54. Cassard, J-C. (1983) ‘Les flottes de vin de Bordeaux au debut du xiv siècle’, Annales du Midi, 95, 119–33. Chaineux, Marie-Claire, (1981) Culture de la vigne et commerce du vin dans la region de Liège au Moyen Age, Liège: Centre d’histoire rurale. Childs, Wendy R. (1978) Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Childs, Wendy R. (1992) ‘Anglo-Portuguese Trade in the Fifteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 6. vol. 2, 195–219. Craeybeckx, Jan, (1958) Un grand commerce d’ importation: les vins de France aux anciens Pays-Bas (xiii–xvi siècles), Paris: SEVPEN. Crawford, Anne, (1977), A History of the Vintners’ Company, London: Constable. Damen, Mario, (2006) ‘Giving by Pouring: The Function of Gifts of Wine in the City of Leiden (14–16 centuries)’, in Jacobs Van Leewen ed. Symbolic Communication in Late Medieval Towns, Leuven: Leuven University Press. Darsel, M. J. (1958 for 1957) ‘La protection des flottes du vin au moyen âge dans la Manche et dans l’Atlantique’, in Bulletin philologique et historique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 185–95. Davey, Francis, (2005) ‘Who Bought the Pirates’ Wine?’ Devon and Cornwall, Notes and Queries, 39, 242–50. Dion, Roger, (1977) Histoire de la Vigne et du Vin en France des origins au 19 siècle, Paris: Flammarion. Favreau, Robert, (1987) ‘Les debuts de la ville de La Rochelle’, Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale, x–xii siècles, 30, 3–32. Garrier, Gilbert, (1990) Le Vin des Historiens, Suze-la-Rousse: Université du Vin. Garrier, Gilbert, (2008) Histoire Sociale et Culturelle du Vin, Paris: Larousse. Harris, Jonathan, (2007) ‘ “More Malmsey Your Grace?” The Export of Greek Wine to England in the Later Middle Ages’, in Leslie Brubaker and Kallirroe Linardou, eds. Eat Drink and be Merry: Food and Wine in Byzantium, Aldershot: Ashgate, 249–54. Harvey, Barbara, (1993) Living and Dying in England, 1100–1540, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hoebanx, Jean-Jacques, (1991) ‘Routes du Vin. Quelques itineraries suivis par les vins dominiaux entre le Rhin et le Brabant wallon au xv siècle’, in Jean-Marie

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further reading

191

Duvosquel and Alain Dierkens, eds.Villes et Campagnes au Moyen Age, Liége: Editions du Perron, 383–404. Hurley, John, (2005) A Matter of Taste : The History of Wine Drinking in Britain, Stroud: Tempus. Hyams, Edward, 1965) Dionysius, a Social History of the Wine Trade, London: Thames and Hudson. James, Margery Kirkbride, (1971) Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jaschke, Kurt-Ulrich, (1997) Englands Weinwirtschaft in Antike und Mittelalter, Heilbron: Stadtarchiv. Johnson, Hugh, (1989) The Story of Wine, London: Mitchell Beazley. Labarge, Margaret Wade, (1980) Gascony, England’s First Colony, 1204–1453, London: Hamish Hamilton. Lachiver, Marcel, (1988) Vins, Vignes et Vignerons, Paris: Fayard. Lagrande, Aline, (2001) ‘Les vignerons de Cîteaux dans la Côte de Beaune au Moyen Age’, Annales de Bourgogne, 73, 95–101. Le Vin au Moyen Age: production et producteurs, (1978) Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Le Vigneron, la Viticulture et la Vinification en Europe occidentale au Moyen Age et á la époque moderne, Flaran II. (1991) Auch: Comité departmentale du tourisme de Gers. Lopez Pita, Paulina, (2004) ‘El Vino en el Islam rechazo y alabanza’, in Espacio Tiempo y Forma, ser. 3, vol. 17, 305–323. Maguin, Martin, (1982) La Vigne et le vin en Lorraine, Nancy: Presses Universitaire de Nancy. Melis, Federigo, (1984) I Vini Italiani nel medioevo, Firenze: le Monniert. Militzer, Klaus, (1993) ‘Handel und vertrieb rheinischer und elsassicher Weine uber Köln in Spatmittel alter’, in Alois Gerlich, ed., Weinbau, Weinhandel und Weinkultur, Stuttgart: Steiner. 165–85. Miranda Garcia, Fermin, (1996) Vino y Viñedo en la Europa Medieval, Pamplona: Alfonso Lopez de Corella Pini, Antonio Ivan, (1989) Vite e Vino nel medioevo, Bologna: CLUEB Power, Eileen and M. M. Postan, (1933) Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, London: George Routledge. Renouard, Yves, (1948) ‘Les consequences de la conquéte de la Guienne par le roi de France pour le commerce des vins de Gascogne’, in Annales du Midi, 61, 15–31. Renouard, Yves, (1968) ‘Le grand commerce des vins de Gascogne au Moyen Age’, in Etudes d’ Histoire mediévales, Paris: SEVPEN. Simon, André L. (1964) The History of the Wine Trade in England, 2 vols, London: The Holland Press. Sivery, Gerard, (1967) ‘Le vin: commerce et consummation paysanne dans le sud du Hainaut á la fin du Moyen Age’, Revue du Nord, 49, 281–91. Skinner, Patricia, ed. (2003) The Jews in Medieval Britain, Woodbridge: Boydell.

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further reading

Somme, Monique, (1998 for 1997) ‘Les approvisionements en vin de la cour de Bourgogne au xv siècle sous Philippe le Bon’, Revue du Nord, 79, 949–68. Stouff, Louis, (1970) Ravitaillement et Alimenation en Provence, Paris and La Haye: Moulon. Sumption, Jonathan, (1990, 2000, 2009) The Hundred Years War, 3 vols. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Swabey, ffiona, (1999) Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages, Stroud: Alan Sutton. Threlfall-Holmes, Miranda, (2003) ‘The Import Merchants of Newcastle on Tyne 1464–1520: Some Evidence from Durham Cathedral Priory’, Northern History, 40, 71–87. Toaff, Ariel, (1996) Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, London: The Littman Library. Trabut-Cassac, Jean-Paul, (1963) ‘Quelques données sur le commerce du vin á Libourne autour de 1300’, Annales du Midi, 75, 7–30. Trabut-Cussac, J. P. (1950) ‘Les coutumes ou droits de douane perçus á Bordeaux sur les vins et les marchandises par l’administration anglaise de 1252 á 1307’, Annales du Midi, 62, 135–50. Tucci, Ugo, (1994) ‘Le commerce venitien du vin de Crete’, in Klaus Friedland, ed., Maritime Food Transport, Köln: Bohlau, 199–211. Tudor, Adrian P. (1997) ‘Hangovers from Hell: The Demon Drink in the Vie des pères’, Romance Studies, a Journal of the University of Wales, 29, 47–63. Unwin, George, (1962) Finance and Trade under Edward III, London: Frank Cass. Unwin, P. T. H. (1996) Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade, London and New York: Routledge. Waines, David (2002) ‘Abu Zayd al Balkhi on the Nature of Forbidden Drink: A Medieval Islamic Controversy’, in David Waines ed. Patterns of Everyday Life, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, Aldershot: Ashgate, 329–44. Ward, Robin, (2009) The World of the Medieval Shipowner, Woodbridge: Boydell.

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Index

Abraham 157 Abu Bakr 161 Abu Bakr al-Rāzī 162 Abu Zayd al-Balkhī 162 Al Andaluz 162–3 Alicante 162 Al-Idrisi 160 Amphorae 6, 11 Apocalypse 157 Aquinas, Thomas 155 Aquitaine, Duke of 46 Arles 152 Arnold of Villanova 22–3, 135 Assize of wine 53 Attacks on wine fleets 94–5 Ausonius 7–8 Auxerre 15, 91 Avicenna 147 Bartholomew Anglicanus 134 Bath Abbey 118 Bayonne 67, 71 Beauvais 92 Beer 30, 101, 166 Bembo, Marco 104–5 Bergen 104 Bergerac 61 regulation of the wine trade at 42–3 wines of 49 Béziers 14 Black Death 66 Blaye 67, 72, 86 Boorde, Andrew 134 Bordeaux 52, 63–8, 110 Archbishop of 45–6 Constable of 60 English merchants in 72 exiles from 85

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Flemish merchants at 95 under French rule 71 merchants of 71 regulation of trade at 45–50 Bordelais 14 Borgognoni, Ugo 143 botte 103 Bristol 69, 77, 82, 108 Brittany 113 Bruges 65, 90, 94, 96, 100 Bryene Alice de 125 Butler, office of 122 Butlerage 60 Cairo Genizah 151 Cana, wedding feast at 154 Candia 101, 103, 105, 107 Carpentras 114, 152 Castillon 66, 72 battle of 64 Cato the Elder 1, 9 Cecily Duchess of York 120 Cely, George 85–7 Chaucer, Geoffrey 108, 146 Cinque Ports 51 Cistercian Order 40–1 Clairet 35 Clare Lady Elizabeth de Burgh of 83, 124 Clarry 137 Closier 26 Cologne 93 wine staple at 97–100 Coltura promiscua 31–2 Columella 3, 20 Communion in both kinds 155 Complant 26 Constance Council of 155

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194 Consumption of wine figures for 113 in Italy 114–15 in noble families 83, 123–5 by peasants and workers 114–16 in religious houses 116–20 in the Royal Household of Edward IV of England 121–2 by women religious 119–20 Convoys 80–1 Cordoba 163 Court etiquette in France 139–40 Courtenay Sir Hugh 79 Cracow 110 Crete 102, 107, 111 Danzig 111 De Chauliac Guy 143 De Mandeville, Henri 144–5 decline in wine trade 166 Deschamps Eustache 139 Diodorus Siculus 5 Domitian 8 Dordrecht 96, 97 drunkeness 5, 143–7 Christian attitude to 159 Islamic attitude to 164 Duke of Brittany 81 Durham Cathedral Priory 117–18 Edward I King of England 46–9 Edward II of England 67 Edward III of England 81 Edward IV of England 106, 129 Egidius Romanus 138 Enrolled Customs Acounts 60 Ensérune 6 Exeter 75 Eximenis Francesco 146 Fabliau 159 Falernian wine 4 Falmouth 79, 80, 86

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index Feast of the Pheasant 127 feasts and ceremonial banquets 125–9 fermentation 34–5 The Forme of Cury 137–8 Fowey 80, 86 Galen 133 Gamay grape 44 Gascon merchants 69 as exiles in England 71 in London 55–6 Gefeuerter wein 34 Genoese ships and merchants 105 Gesotten wein 34 Ghent 97 Gifts 129–30 in Low Countries 130 Grande Coutume des Vins 46, 60 Greek wine 101, 102 Gregory of Tours 12 Hainault 115 Hanseatic League 95, 96–7 privileges of 52 Haut pays 46, 60, 65, 67, 84–5 Hawley John (father and son) 80 Henri d’Andeli 14, 101,126 Henry II King of England 46, 62 Henry VI of England 70–1 Henry VII of England 106 Herington Sir John 158 Hippocras 136 Hippocrates 133 Hull 69 Humours, theory of 133–4 Hundred Years War, effects of 66–72 Hungary 111 Ile de France 90 Imagery Christian 156–9 in Islam 161 Infants diet of 138

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index Intinctio 155 Islam 160 Isle of Wight 79, 81 issac 46, 60 Jean Duc de Berry 25 John II of France 69 John King of England 46–7, 64 Judaism 149–53 Just price 53 Kalomynos ben Kalomynos 152 Kampen 95, 96, 97 Keats John 1 Koran 160–1 Kosice 111 La Bataille des Vins 46–7, 53–4, 56, 101, 126 La Rochelle 14, 46, 62–3, 67, 79, 81, 95 La Sauve Majeure 45 Last Supper 154, 157 laudable pus 144 Le Mesnagier de Paris 135–7 Libelle of Englyshe Polycye 10 Libourne 49, 60, 67 Liège 43–4 local customs dues 53 Louis the Pious 13 London 51, 69, 83, 86, 110, 128 Mayor of 129 Longobuoco Bruno 143 lora 4 Louis XI of France 64, 72 Louis XVI 49 Lvov 111 Lyons Richard 56–7, 83 Malmsey 101, 103–4, 107, 110, 140 Malvoisie 101 Mass 154–6 meal times 125

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195

medicines, preparation of 141–3 Métayage 26, 30 Metz 113 Middelburg 96 Modena 153 Morelli Paolo 106 Moselle R. 17, 30, 93 wine 8, 14 Muscadel 101 Nantes 113 Naqib al-Din al Samarquandi 162 navigation 75–8 New Customs 51, 60 Nicholas of Clairvaux 91 Nijmegen 100 Nivelles 93 Noah 149, 157 Northfleet 16–17, 25 Norway 104 trade with 95–6 Oberlaender schiffen 98, 100 Old Testament 149 Opimian wine 4 Orléans 28–9 Osey 109, 110 Paris 91–2, 113 patis 43, 68 Pecche John 57 Perugia 153 Philip IV Augustus of France 14, 61 Philip the Bold Duke of Burgundy 44 Philip the Good Duke of Burgundy 122–3 Picquigny Treaty of 73 Pietro de’ Crescenzi ( Pierre de Crescens) 19–22, 31–2 piquette 35, 115 piracy and robbery at sea 78 Pisa 106 107 Plato 134

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196 pleasures of wine 130–2 Pliny the Elder 3 Plymouth 86 Poland, trade with 110 Pole Star 76 Polyptique 12, 17 Portugal, trade with 110 Prise of wines 51, 60 Proverbs 149 Rabbi Shlomo Yizhaki (Rashi) 151 Rabelais 147 raisin wine 153 Rhenish 83, 110, 122, 123, 124, 40, 153 trade in 96 Richard I of England 61 Richard II of England 81 Roman de Fauvel 126 Romeney 55, 101, 140 Rouen 61–2, 71, 90–1, 116 Rule of St Benedict 117–18 rutters or sailing directions 76–8 Sack 102 safe-conducts 81 sailing directions see rutters Saint-Emilion 14, 49, 67 Saint-Jean-d’Angely 62, 94 Saint-Macaire 47–8, 67 Saint-Sardos war of 66 Salembene d’Adam 41, 91 Salisbury 82, 106 Sandwich 51–2, 76, 86 seigneurs 41–2 powers of 32–3 and wine presses 42 Seville 163 Ships carracks 105 English regulation of 74 Gabriell of Bristol 109 George of Beverley 96

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index Jesus of Erreteria 109 Katren of Bristol 109 lading of round ships 103 Lion 81 Magdalene of Penmarch 95 Margaret Cely of London 85–7 Marie of Dordrecht 79 Michael of Bristol 109 Nicholas of Royan 95 Pinasse of St Malo 81 Querina voyage of 104 on the Rhine 98, 100 ship types 74–5 St Christopher of St Servan 79 St Yves of Concarneau 80 Ships masters 78 Silchester 11 Song of Songs 149 Southampton 69, 82, 105–6, 108 Spain, trade in wine 108–10 St Martin of Tours 12 St Mathieu 80 Sulphur in wine 36 Sweet wine 15, 82–3, 124, 125 London trade in 56–7 trade in 101–8 Venetian trade in 102–8 Talbot family 124–5 Talbot, John Earl of Shrewsbury 71 Tavistock, Abbot of 80 Taxes on trade: Custom duties 59–61 in England 50–3 tunnage and poundage 52 Venetian duties on sweet wines 105–7 see Grande Coutume des vins and issac Teynham 16–17, 25 tila 161 Trade in classical times 5–7

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index between France and the Low Countries 89–95 sea-borne 74 voyages of the Cely brothers 85–7 see Poland, Portugal and Spain Trets stadium papale 119 Tyre 101, 102 Umbria 152 Varro 3 verjuice 137 Vernage 101, 102 vinegar 137, 161 Vie des Pères 159 Viking raids 12 vineyards of Carolingians 13 costs of 27–9 of St Germain des Prés 12 Vintners Company or mistery 53–4, 82–3 control over retail trade in wine in London 54 Virgil 3 Vistula R. 111 Viticulture 18–22 in ancient times 1–3 and the feudal system 24–7 images of 24–5

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Wages in kind 116 War damage to vines 43 Wars of the Roses 72 Wesenham John de 51 Westminster Abbey 118 Wilton Abbey 120 Winchester 82, 106 Wine adulteration of 54–5 as alms 52 and the Church 39 and health 4, 22 and hospitality 39–40 measures ofxvii, 13, 17–18 miraculous finds of 40 most popular 14 price of in England 53, 68 storage of 35–6 taste of 15 transport of 13–14 overland 92–4 Wine-making 33–5 in England 16–17 in Italy 30–2 Wounds treatment of 143 Yonne R. 91 Zaragoza 152

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