The Earliest Statute on the Foreign Wine Trade.
It was enacted (1200) that the wines of Anjou should not be sold for more than 24s. a tun, and that the wines of Poitou should not be higher than 20s. The other wines of France were limited to 25s. a tun, ‘unless they were so good as to induce any one to give for them two marks or more.’ Twelve honest men in every town were to superintend this assize. This ordinance, Holinshed says, could not last long, for the merchants could not bear it; and so they fell to, and sold white wine for eightpence the gallon, and red, or claret, for sixpence. The king claimed, out of every imported cargo, one tun before the mast, and another behind it, under the name of prisa or prisa recta, and officers were appointed to collect and account for the same. From the entries of this reign we discover that the principal wines then consumed in England were—those of Anjou, chiefly white and sweet; Gascon wine, wine of Saxony, and wine of Auxerre, which came from the territory of the Duke of Burgundy.[65]
The introduction of these wines soon began to manifest its effects. Roger de Hoveden, whose annals date as far as the third year of John, says: ‘By this means the land was filled with drink and drinkers.’
That the English had a wide-spread fame for heavy drinking we incidentally learn from an on-dit of Pope Innocent III. When the case of the exemption of the Abbey of Evesham from the Bishop of Worcester was being argued before the pope, the bishop’s counsel said, ‘Holy father, we have learnt in the schools, and this is the opinion of our masters, that there is no prescription against the rights of bishops.’ The pope replied, ‘Certainly, both you and your masters had drunk too much English beer when you learnt this.’
King John founded the Abbey of Beaulieu, which had a famous vineyard. Possibly the imported wines did not please the palate of the monks. Their standard may have been that of a writer of the period who has given the world an enumeration of the qualities of good wine, which he says should be as ‘clear as the tears of a penitent, so that a man may see distinctly to the bottom of his glass. Its colour should represent the greenness of a buffalo’s horn. When drunk, it should descend impetuously like thunder, sweet-tasted as an almond, creeping like a squirrel, leaping like a roebuck, strong, like the building of a Cistercian monastery, glittering like a spark of fire, subtle as the logic of the schools of Paris, delicate as fine silk, and colder than crystal.’[66]
FOOTNOTES:
[57] ‘Le mot en effet paraît être de l’ancienne Chaldée, où il signifiait “brûler.” En trouve-t-on des rudiments chez les peuples d’où nous vint d’abord cet “esprit” des liqueurs fermentées? On a cru longtemps que c’étaient les Arabes, mais nous pensons, avec Mongez et Pauw, que ce sont les Tartares qui en auraient appris la fabrication par les Chaldéens. Certaines liqueurs importées de Perse en Egypte semblent avoir été alcooliques.’ Edouard Fournier, Mélanges, vol. iii. p. 517.