As to the Gauls, it is certain that, six centuries before Christianity was introduced, they knew the use of wine; for, when the Phocæans came to found Marseilles, Petta, the daughter of a king of the country, presented, according to Athenæus, to Euxenes their chief, a cup filled with wine and water. But who first planted the vine in Gaul, and who first cultivated it there? It would be difficult to answer these questions. According to Justin and Strabo, it appears that the Phocæans were not only the first to introduce the vine among the Gauls, but the first to learn them to cut and cultivate it. Pliny, on the other hand, says it was a person named Elicoa, who, having made some money at Rome, and wishing to return to his country, carrying with him wine and dried fruits, sold them to the inhabitants, exhorting them to the conquest of the flowing, fruitful land that produced such liquor. Cicero tells us, that one of the most lucrative of commercial transactions among the Gauls was the exportation of their wine to Italy. Columella counts these wines among the number rendered necessary for consumption in Rome,—“Nobis e transmarinis provinciis advehitur frumentum, ne fame laboremus; et vindemias condimus ex insulus Cycladibus, ac regionibus Beticis Gallicisque.” Diodorus Siculus, however, maintains that it was the Italian wines that were consumed in Gaul, and states the Ultramontane dealers who carried them gained immense sums in this commerce. Possidonius, an author contemporary with Diodorus and Cicero, and who had travelled in Gaul, is cited by Athenæus to prove that it was only the richest of the nation that drank wine, which they imported from Italy or the territory of Marseilles.
There is some reason to believe that the vineyards of Burgundy are as old as the Antonines. In the beginning of the fourth century, the orator Eumenius speaks of the vines in the territory of Autun, which were decayed through age, and the first plantation of which was totally unknown. The Pagus Arebrignus is supposed by M. d’Anville to be the district of Beaune, celebrated now for a fine growth of Burgundy.
When the Romans had submitted that portion of Gaul to their arms which is called Provence, the Roman colonists in Dauphiné, Provence, and a part of Languedoc, extended vine-plantations. Soon they spread far and wide, and, in the time of Cæsar, many provinces were in possession of vines, as Strabo, Varro, and Cæsar himself, testify.
Among the excellent grapes peculiar to Gaul, Columella numbers those of the Bituriges; but, as this name was common both to the people of Berry and of the Bordelais, it is difficult to divine to which of the provinces the praise of the Latin author properly applies. The probability, however, is, that it refers to the Bordelais; for Ausonius, who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era, loudly boasts of the wine of Bordeaux.
The mode of training the vine in Gaul consisted in intertwining the branches amongst each other, which differed essentially from the Roman system. The ancient Gaulish practice subsists to this day in Provence, in Languedoc, in Bearn, and in the eastern portion of Dauphiné. The Gauls, who manured their fields with marl, used ashes as a compost for the roots of their vines.
Marseilles, says Pliny, produces a rich, thick wine, which has two flavours, and serves to mix with other wines. It is difficult, he continues, to pronounce on the merits of the wines of Narbonne, because the wine-makers, with a view to change their taste and colour, adulterate them, mix them with herbs and noxious drugs, even with aloes. These tricks were in Italy reduced to a trade, and the wine-doctors were called Conditura vinorum. But notwithstanding these faults, writes Athenæus, the wine of Marseilles was good, and possessed, above all, the quality of ripening other wines when mixed with them.
The Narbonnese were not the only adulterators. The Allobroges, a people of Dauphiné, had a particular pitch which they mixed with their wine. If we are to believe Dioscorides, the infusion of pitch was a necessary ingredient in the Gaulish wines; otherwise, says he, they would have soured, the climate not being warm enough to ripen the grape. The reason assigned by Dioscorides would prove either that the climate of Gaul was then really colder than it is now, or that the art of making wine was still in its infancy. Excellent wine is now made in provinces more northward than Dauphiné, and still better in the north of France, and the countries bathed by the waters of the Moselle and the Rhine. No doubt, innocent means may be employed in cold years, without any risk, to give to the wine a quality which it wants. For a long while the Champenois have been in the habit of smoking their casks with sulphur before using them. The Abbé Rozier, in a Memoir upon the best manner of making the wines of Provence, proposes, when the wine is austere or acid, to dilute honey in the must before it ferments. M. de Prefontaine, in the “Maison Rustique de Cayenne,” published in 1763, speaking of the grapes produced in that island, says that if they were to be used for the purpose of making wine, their natural tartness might be corrected by adding a little sugar. But this practice had been long previously secretly followed in that portion of the Bordelais traversed by the Dordogne, whose principal towns are Bergerac and St. Foi. At the commencement of the last century the wines of this province suddenly acquired such a renown, that there were proprietors who, in a few years, quadrupled the price. The neighbouring proprietors suspected there was something wrong, some secret they could not fathom. They watched for a long while, and at length discovered that immense quantities of sugar arrived in the night. This discovery at first led to nothing; but, in the end a cooper, who knew the secret, having been dismissed from an establishment in which he had been employed, revealed the secret in order to revenge himself. Only five or six families profited by the man’s treason. They took good care to keep the profit to themselves, till a M. Vaucocour published a letter, in which he disclosed the receipt, which consisted in reducing the sugar to a syrup, and then in aromatising it with peach-flowers or the like.
The Marseillais had, in the olden time, another method. This was to boil and smoke their wines in order to thicken them, and to give them the appearance and flavour of old wines:—
“Improba Massiliæ quidquid fumaria cogunt,
Accipit ætatem quisquis ab igne cadus.”