History of Wine in France – From Antiquity to the Revolution

Where and when did the very first drops of wine pass down a thirsty throat? What could the taste of the "nectar of the gods" in Antiquity possibly have been?

Some 2,600 years ago, our ancestors living on the land of present-day Marseille discovered wine with delight. Shortly afterwards, the Gaulish elites began importing it in considerable quantities. But their habit of drinking wine undiluted made them appear as "barbarians" in the eyes of the Romans!

One had to wait for the arrival of Caesar's legions in the 1st century BC for vines to begin covering the territory. It was the monks who, after the fall of the Roman Empire, saved and then developed the French vineyard, particularly in Burgundy.

But why is Mass wine, that "blood of Christ", white? How did Bordeaux wine, thanks to Eleanor of Aquitaine and then Arnaud de Pontac, manage to seduce the elites across the Channel and become a luxury product? And as for champagne, was it not more an invention of those same English than a discovery of the monk Dom Pérignon?

In this work, rich in anecdotes and illustrations, Eric BIRLOUEZ does not merely retrace the history of the vine and wine, from Antiquity to the French Revolution, passing through the long Middle Ages. He also explores the cultural, religious, symbolic, social and even medical dimensions of the "blood of the earth".