Host and Guest

by A. V. Kirwan

Wine of a middle age was then, according to Pliny, as indeed it now is, to be preferred, as being the most wholesome and grateful; but then in ancient times it was the fashion, as it is in our own day, to place the greatest value on what was rarest. Thus extravagant sums were given for wines not drinkable, or in a state of decomposition. Who does not know that within the past forty years twelve guineas a dozen was given for Mr. Pattle’s sherry, and half as much for some sherry once the property of the late Sir John Leach, Vice-Chancellor.

Though the ancients often drank very freely, yet no one was obliged to drink on compulsion. The doors were never locked, as they were fifty years ago in Ireland, five and fifty years ago in Scotland, or little more than half a century ago in England. Large cups and more generous wines were frequently brought in, but no one was obliged to drink or to stay. If the guest did not drink on he departed, according to the old convivial rule, “Aut bibe, aut abi.” Some of the wisest sages of antiquity were as great sponges as some of the modern Scots. For instance, Socrates, whether he lived abstemiously or drank copiously, was equally unexcited, equally unaltered; and the very same remark might be made on a remarkable man lately deceased. Cyrus, among other reasons which he urges why he should gain the crown in preference to his elder brother, insists on his being able to drink a larger quantity of wine without being inebriated; for Artaxerxes was not only occasionally subject to getting “right royal,” vulgo vocato, drunk, but also to the infirmity of losing his temper to boot. Athenæus mentions that Darius desired no greater encomium should be engraved on his tomb than that he was able to drink a great quantity of wine without being inebriated.

In his third book the Father of Medicine gives a description of the general qualities and strength of the Greek wines, and of the peculiar medical virtues which they possessed. He likewise points out in what diseases, and in what quantities, they are to be used, so as to render them salutary and innoxious. It is remarkable that Hippocrates rarely directs water alone, but almost invariably orders its exhibition with wine, or combined with honey and vinegar. Water was no doubt the basis of all his cooling drinks; but there was always added to it a moderate proportion of the weak white wines, to render it more effectually diluting. To the infirm and valetudinarian, wine is a necessary comfort beyond all price. When a patient has been long habituated to the use of it, a change in diet cannot be suffered without danger.

There is a remarkable instance of this afforded in the case of the celebrated physician Cornaro, who always revived just after the vintage, when he left off the old and decaying wines of the last vintage, and commenced drinking the new. The passage is in the account which he gives of the rules by which he repaired his constitution, injured as it was by excesses, till the period when he was forty years old. By the régime he prescribed to himself, it is well known he preserved his health and spirits to the age of 100. The efficacy of his system depended on his taking a certain quantity of solids and fluids every day. The fluid consisted entirely of wine, but he gradually diminished the quantity of each as he advanced in years. During this period he enjoyed an equal state of health, except that sometimes, before the vintage returned and the new wine was made, he quickly became so weak and languid that his physicians declared he could not possibly continue to survive many days in that declining state. “But on the return of the vintage,” says he, “and on taking the same quantity of new wine, I very quickly recovered my usual strength and spirits.” The same effect is observed, to compare animals with men, among the mules of Jamaica. When the new sugar-canes are being gathered in, the most exhausted animal, fed on the fresh sugar-canes, gains a revival of strength.

The Romans were in the habit of pitching their wine, nor can it be doubted that the Gauls also followed their example in this respect, with a view to render them more saleable in the Italian markets. The Allobroges had a peculiar pitch, with which they smeared their puncheons, after the manner of the wine-growers of Latium. Many etymologists suggest that the French word poinçon, adopted in many of the French provinces to signify a puncheon common to them, is derived from the vas piceum, of which it is an abbreviation.[35] These, however, are but conjectures, and why should we resort to conjectures in the face of formal proof? Such were the two charters of Charles the Bald in favour of the monasteries of St. Denis and St. Germain des Près. By the first (A.D. 862), the emperor makes an annual grant to the abbey of ten silver livres, for the purchase of the necessary pitch for casks; by the second he grants to the other convent twenty pounds of soap and of pitch, “ad vasa vinaria componenda.” The soap, of which a grant is here made with the pitch, leads me to infer that there were persons who, not content with laying a coat of pitch on their casks, composed a peculiar mastic in mixing the soap and some other substance with the pitch, after the manner of the Romans.

Strabo, in giving a description of Latium (the modern Lombardy), and an idea of the abundance of its vines, says that the puncheons were taller than the houses. It is probable that the Gauls established in these parts, or their descendants, seeing that the ordinary casks were insufficient, or that there was not cellar-room for them, invented those monster puncheons of which the geographer speaks, and which were long ago, and are now, in common use in Germany. But the French, for the most part, in lieu of these not very solid vessels, preferred to construct their wine-tubs or vats, in brick or in stone. De Serres states that, even so late as 1600, many persons thus constructed their vats. It is true, he says, the wine took a longer time to ferment in these receptacles than in wooden tubs; but they were most easily cleaned, contracted no bad taste, lasted longer, and required little or no outlay to keep them in repair. But though these cisterns might be serviceable to the proprietor as a repository for his wine, he was obliged, when he sold it, to have recourse to casks or skins. The skins, notwithstanding the many inconveniences they presented, were long used for that purpose. I have before stated that Charlemagne forbade them in the cellars of his palace. Pierre de Blois, declaiming, in the twelfth century, against the luxury of the chevaliers, represents them as leading horses laden with skins of wine, and all the “creature comforts” that announce gluttony and drunkenness:—“Non ferro, sed vino; non lanceis, sed caseis; non ensibus, sed utribus; non hastis, sed verubus onerantur.”

At the repast which Philippe de Valois gave to the kings of Scotland, of Majorca, and of Bohemia, there was on the royal dresser (le dressour royal) no plate of gold or silver, but only a leathern bottle, in which was the wine of the princes and kings who sat at the festal board. In order to understand this passage, which is extracted from a very old work, it is necessary to mention that, in the time of Philip, there were no bottles, nor were they known for many years afterwards. Wine, at this epoch, in the royal establishment as elsewhere, was drunk from the cask. If many sorts were given at an entertainment, as often happened on occasions of great ceremony—in that event many casks were tapped, and the remains of all belonged to the grand bouteiller. Travellers on horseback, who were apprehensive of not finding wine on the road, carried with them a species of leathern bottle attached to the saddle. In the “Life of St. Maur” we read that, travelling to visit one of the farms of his monastery, he saw suddenly arrive Ansgaire, archdeacon of the church of Angers. The holy abbé wished to refresh him. Unfortunately, there was no other wine at the farmer’s than the little which remained attached to the saddle-bow of St. Maur, “in uno parvissimo vasculo quod ad sellam pendere consuerit.” But the holy man, says the historian, supplied the deficiency by a miracle, and multiplied this remains of the liquor so exceedingly, that it sufficed to quench the thirst of seventy-eight persons who were there present.

In the thirteenth century the vessels of which I have been speaking were called bouchaus, boutiaux, bouties, or boutilles. When the gentry of that day wished to make a long journey, or were on their way to the wars, they took bottles with them of considerable capacity. It appears, by an early charter, that when the Bishop of Amiens marched thus in the arrière ban, the tanners of the city were obliged to furnish him with two good and sufficient leather bottles, one holding a muid and the other twenty-four sétiers of wine. The butchers were, on their part, bound to furnish the grease to cover these bottles. If cover means to cork, as the sense would seem to indicate, it was certainly a strange process to seal a canteen destined for the keeping and transport of wine. These boutiaux, or boutilles, took the name of bouteilles, or bottles. This name was afterwards applied to the decanters which were subsequently used. On the first indication of madness presented by Charles VI., on his journey to Brittany, the officers of his household, who had preceded him, served him with drink; and being suspected of having poisoned him, the Duke of Burgundy, who accompanied them, caused them to undergo an interrogatory: but they protested their innocence, says Froissart, and offered to prove it, as there remained in the bottles a portion of the wine of which the king had drunk. There can be no doubt that the bottles here spoken of were made of leather.

It now remains for me to touch on those wines which have enjoyed the greatest reputation, from the conquest of the Franks to the present time. The earlier writers offer little on this subject. Gregory of Tours speaks of the wines of Maçon, Orleans, Cahors, and Dijon. The wines of Auvergne are spoken of in a “Life of St. Germain,” written in verse by Heric, who lived under Charles the Bald; and there is mention of those of Rheims and of the River Marne, in a letter of Pandulus, Bishop of Lan, to Hircanar. Baldric, or Baudri, author of a Latin poem which Mabillon has cited in the “Benedictine Annals,” says that Henry I. greatly esteemed the wine of Rébréchien (area Bacchi), near Orleans, and that when he went to the army he took a provision with him to animate his courage. There is a letter of Louis le Jeune, written from the Holy Land to Suger and to the Comte de Vermandois, regents of the kingdom in his absence, by which he directs them to give to his intimate friend, Arnould, Bishop of Lisieux, sixty modii of his excellent wine of Orleans. “Dilecto et præcordiali amico, Lexoviensi Episcopo, sexaginta Aurelianenses modios de meo optimo vino Aurelianensi dare non reanatis.” It is probable that this wine of Orleans was the wine called Rébréchien. It is said that the greater number of the Orleanais are one-eyed, lame, and hump-backed, which is attributed by some, most inconsequentially, to the wine of Orleans.

A fabliau of the twelfth century has come down to us which gives us a list of the best reputed wines of that day. Among the wines of the provinces the poet vaunts those of the Gatinias, d’Auxois, d’Anjou, and of Provence. Over the list of the particularly celebrated wines we will not now travel. Suffice it to say, that Burgundy was then renowned for its wine of Auxerre, Beaune, Beauvoisins, Flavigni, and Vermanton; Champagne for its Chabli (not Chablis, the Burgundy wine of the department of the Yonne), Epernai, Rheims, Hauvilliers, Sczanne, Tonnerre.