The emergence of noble classes and wealthy merchants in Europe generated a greater concern for wine quality, with those in Burgundy leading the way. There, in the fourteenth century, the combination of the tastes of the dukes and the wine-growing skills of the Cistercians resulted in a purposeful attempt to reduce the quantity of wine produced in order to raise its quality. The monks had determined that the best vineyard sites lay along a faulted escarpment that has since gained the name Cote d’Or, and a Duke, Philippe the Bold, declared the high-yielding Gamay grape banned in favor of the lower-yielding but more aromatic and complexly flavored Pinot Noir (then known as the noirien).At about the same time, quality considerations were singling out the Riesling grape in the Rhineland and the Mosel Valley. Both cases illustrate an important trend in the making - the development of a hierarchy of quality wine regions based in large measure on grape varieties.
Two advances of the seventeenth century were crucial in the quest for wine quality. The first was the discovery of how to make stronger glass bottles, thus providing an inert container in which wine could be stored instead of in wooden barrels, jugs, or, in some instances, leather bags. The bottle then needed a stopper to protect the wine from the deleterious effects of too much oxygen contact. Wood plugs and cloth were tried with limited success, but the solution to the problem proved to be cork. It deterred the passage of air, and cork’s pliability meant that it could be made to fill the space between the walls of the bottle’s neck. It was now possible to keep new wines fresh longer, and a medium was available to allow wines to age.
One region that profited almost immediately from the use of improved bottles and corks was Champagne. By the fourteenth century, its wines had gained the reputation of being good values. Champagne was close to the Paris market, and reds and whites were made in styles similar to those in Burgundy. Matters began to change, however, in the seventeenth century under the leadership of the Benedictine abbey at Hautvilliers and, most particularly, when the legendary Dom Perignon assumed the position of cellarmaster. He set meticulous cultivation and vinification standards designed to elevate Champagne’s wines to the very top of the quality ranking. Consistency seems to have been what he was seeking most, and to this end he perfected the art of wine blending, something that has been a hallmark of champagne ever since.
One of the problems Dom Perignon had to deal with was a fizziness that frequently appeared in the wine during the spring following vinification. The cold weather of the late fall sometimes shut down fermentation before it was completed, and it would start up again when the warmer weather of spring arrived. Yet the fizziness produced by the carbon dioxide in the wine was precisely what consumers began to find attractive. It became fashionable to serve this kind of champagne at the court of Louis XIV during festive occasions, and the habit soon spread to other European royal families, setting off a demand that could not be met by relying on an accident of nature. Thus, by the early part of the eighteenth century, secondary fermentation was being purposefully created through the addition of a dose of yeast and sugar to already bottled still wine. Because the carbon dioxide created enormous pressure, strong bottles and a tight seal were both required. During the remainder of the eighteenth century and on through the nineteenth, numerous technological changes continued to improve champagne’s quality and thereby its image. It was a different wine than that which Dom Perignon envisioned, but it achieved the ranking he sought.
No region is more closely associated with the image of wine quality than Bordeaux. As noted, the politics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant that the supply of claret for the English market was highly unreliable, and often it fell far short of demand. Consequently, claret became a prestigious commodity with attendant high prices. This situation initiated a twofold response from Bordeaux. One was an effort by some producers to make better wines and then to let consumers know with a label which properties or estates had produced them. The wine was thus not just a claret but a claret from this or that estate. The other was to expand markedly the amount of vineyard land. Most of the plantings initially were near the city of Bordeaux, in an area known as the Graves because of its gravelly soils. Because of drainage work carried out by Dutch engineers earlier in the seventeenth century, a considerable amount of land was available in the Medoc promontory to the north of the city, and by the end of the century, most of the best sites, also on gravel, had been planted. Expansion continued during the next century and soon enough wine was being produced in Bordeaux so that supplies were no longer needed from the hauts pays. Indeed, these wines were restricted from entering in order to protect local prices.
Wine and wealth in Bordeaux had come to feed on one another. The port was significant in its own right, connecting the southwest of France not only to England but also to the markets of Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and the northern German states. As profits grew, more and more was invested in wine, both by merchants and the landed aristocracy. The latter began to build country estates marked by grand chateaux, which helped to further the elite image of the Bordeaux wines. In terms of prices paid and profits earned, Bordeaux had risen to the top of the wine world.
World History
