::

:: JOHANN COLER (COLERUS) ::

:: Oeconomia oder Haussbuch, Wittenberg 1600 ::

:: By far the most important early description of German wine-making; from Coler's Haussbuch, a text dense with character & medieval atmosphere. A 17th-century best-seller, with good reason. (In German)

:: Johann Coler (1566-1639) was a preacher, & indeed a shepherd to his flock - as will be clear enough to anyone who reads him - who came from a family that had made important contributions to the intellectual and spiritual life of Germany before his time, and continued to do so long afterwards.
:: It is not known to me what turned him to write an encyclopedic masterwork on the management of rural life, but clearly it was a family interest, to the point that some scholars feel the work should actually be ascribed to his father, Jacob Coler. For what it's worth, I don't agree; but certainly it was a joint enterprise between father and son, drawing greatly upon the father's long years of experience, which we know because Coler says so.
:: Whatever the details of authorship, it is hard to think of another book that exudes a more remarkable sense of an author's prickly and engaging personality. For this reason alone, it would be a pleasure to read; but I have made so long a transcription of it here because it is an important document in the history of wine-making.
::This is a surprise because Coler was a Berliner, and after all, Berlin is less than famous for its vineyards. Before seeing the book, I had assumed anything it had to say about wine would be the usual cellaring instructions, mostly about "correcting" spoiled wine by drastic infusions of herbs & spices. But no; these are the extensive and detailed instructions of someone who has seen the work done, has done the work himself, has thought about it carefully, and has asked the opinions of others whom he regards as expert (including his father's Weinmeister) - while in the meanwhile, of course, attending to the spiritual welfare of all concerned, which he does with great diligence. Woe be it, for example, to the proprietor who harvests all his grapes, leaving none for the poor.
:: I hope soon to have time for a more complete introduction to Coler, including an attempt to disentangle the many editions of his work & its component parts. In the meanwhile, the following should be enough to get anyone started, and is taken from the first edition of his book of Weinbaw, dated 1597 in the publisher's preface, with a short excerpt from the 1600 edition of the Calendarium perpetuum. Both of these texts are exceptionally difficult to read in places, and no doubt there will be more than the usual number of mistakes in the transcriptions. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: OLIVIER DE SERRES ::

:: Le Theatre d'Agriculture & Mesnage des Champs, 1608 (1600) ::

:: An extensive selection of the wine-making instructions from what is traditionally considered to be the most important of all French agricultural texts. (In French)

:: Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), was a French Protestant aristocrat while there could still be such a thing, and an advisor to Henri IV; more importantly, he is generally regarded as the father of French agriculture. This doesn't mean that no one French grew wheat or made wine before he came along, but it does mean that he understood and discussed the details of agriculture in a way that took hold; he set a tone of reasonableness and intelligent inquiry, and established by his own example that an emblem of enlightened nobility was to be concerned with the working of the land.
:: His masterwork is Le Theatre d'Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs, published first in 1600. The extracts that follow are taken from the definitive edition of 1608, which contains de Serres' final revisions & additions.
:: Not too surprisingly, the transcriptions I've made concern winemaking; but in fairness, viticulture and wine-making were necessarily major components of any general agricultural work written in any region of Europe where wine-grapes could successfully be grown, if only because these together comprised the most profitable branch of agriculture.
:: And I hope these extracts from de Serres will add further emphasis to what I have so many times said elsewhere, that the most important information about the early history of wine-making is seldom in works with the word "wine" in the title.
:: This is a provisional posting; soon I hope to have time to do a decent introduction, re-edit the transcriptions, and so on. In the meanwhile, in keeping with my general determination to post texts first and worry about commentary later, I'm posting these; the in-text notes & emphases in red were originally intended just for myself, and although they should be revised, I saw no reason to remove them. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: CHARLES ESTIENNE, (d. 1564) & JEAN LIÉBAULT (c.1535-1596) ::

:: Maison Rustique, or, The Countrey Farme, London, 1616 (1600) ::

:: The first detailed description in English of the wines of France, and in the magnificent Elizabethan English of Richard Surflet at that. With other notes on the narcissism of mares, the perils of drink, love apples, and so on. (In English)

:: Although the immense popularity of Estienne & Liébault's Maison Rustique did little enough to help its authors - Estienne died in debtor's prison & Liébault as a beggar on the streets of Paris - it did ensure that the book was widely translated, & thus widely read outside of France.
:: Among these many translations is the present one into Elizabethan English, by Richard Surflet. It was published first in 1600, with a second edition in 1606; it was then revised and expanded by Gervase Markham, and published again in 1616, which is the edition from which the following transcriptions were made.
:: And of course, among the many virtues of this translation is the sheer pleasure of its language, as when "Aristotle sayeth, That the seed of drunkards becommeth dead and fruitlesse, and their children blocke-headed groutnolles", or when we are told about the new-fangled tomato, that "Many licorish mouthes let not to be eating of these, no more than of mushroomes: they take away their pilling, they cut them in slices, boyle them in water, and after frie them in the flower of meale and butter or oyle, and then cast vpon them pepper and salt: this kind of meat is good for such men as are inclined to dallie with common dames, and short-heeld huswiues, because it is windie, and withall ingendreth cholericke humours, infinite obstructions and head-ach, sadnesse, melancholicke dreames, and in the end long continuing agues: and therefore it were better to forbeare them."
:: But it also contains the first detailed description in English of the wines of France. Not least because no one seems to realize that this is the case, I have transcribed that account in its entirety.
:: And I couldn't resist including a splendid hymn to the goddess nature by Richard Surflet, just possibly influenced by the presence of Elizabeth I on the throne; a very early account of cider-making; a mean-spirited (in my opinion) little note on curing the narcissistic frenzy of mares by showing them how homely they really are; and some other odds & ends, all of which I do hope a few readers will enjoy as much as I do. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: PLAINTE FAICTE AU ROY. PAR LE SYNDIC DES VIGNERONS DE RUEIL, SURESNE, NANTERRE, COULOMBE, ARGENTEÜIL, & AUTRES VIGNOBLES DU PLAT PAYS PROCHE DE PARIS, SUR L'EMPESCHEMENT DU COMMERCE DE LA LIBERTÉ DE LEURS VINS. Paris; 1623 ::

:: An extremely rare little pamphlet reproduced here in its entirety, protesting the extraordinary (but only to those who don't make wine) reality that no wine made from the vineyards around Paris was allowed to be sold in Paris. A reality that continued until, well, there were no longer any vineyards left around Paris. (in French)

:: Of course I shall, and possibly should, be criticised for asserting that there is no other field of human endeavor where greed, lust for dominance, pretense and (therefore) hypocrisy, combine more wretchedly than in the sale, distribution and regulation of wine.
:: But I'll be very interested to hear the opposing arguments.
:: After all, I'm not saying there's nothing else that's as bad; nor that there aren't infinite numbers of issues more important in themselves; I simply say that the infernal combination noted above only goes to 100%; it simply can't go any further. By the very nature of the ugliness involved, if it could, it would.
:: As Exhibit A in my defense, I present the following extremely rare little pamphlet. It refers to a law difficult, for those who aren't wine-makers, to quite believe was as it was. It applies to the wines made in the bassin Parisien; thus made, of course, to be sold to the citizens of Paris, incomparably the largest city in France, and its capitol; and made, given the climate, under the most difficult wine-making conditions, even had regulation been no problem whatever.
:: The law was simple. No wine made within twenty leagues of Paris could be sold in Paris, at all.
:: This went on from the late 16th century until the late 18th, when the last king was beheaded; and by then, it was far too late to save the vineyards of Paris from sharing his fate.
:: In fact, the vineyards only survived that long because their wine was still permitted to be sold outside the city walls; which meant that an entire popular culture of wine taverns, called guinguettes, sprang up and flourished just exactly outside that boundary, contributing a long and rich chapter of its own to the folklore of Paris. But whatever the charms of the guinguette as folklore, as a market, it needed the cheapest wine possible, since that's all its working class clientele could afford. Which meant that anyone trying to earn a living as a vigneron in the Paris region had no choice but to push for maximum production, counting on the tricks of tavern owners to make the result even drinkable.
:: Of course, that doesn't mean those whose income was assured elsewhere couldn't make wine from their own private vineyards that may well have been excellent. Two texts posted elsewhere on this site are witness to at least the possibility: Nicolas de Bonnefons' Parisian wine-making instructions from 1654, and Louis-François de Calonne's from more than a century later.
:: So it really is a remarkable story, how the wines of Paris came to be banned from Paris itself; and this little pamphlet really is a key document in the early history of that story. But I'm not the one to tell the rest of it. Unlike the history of wine-making itself, which is essentially untold, the history of the wine trade, and of the laws respecting the sale and distribution of wine, has been documented in great detail.
:: As usual, the place to start is with Roger Dion, certainly the greatest of all wine historians, utterly and admirably French, but oddly an uncomfortable scholarly presence for the French, perhaps because he himself is so uncomfortable with received wisdom, even when it's French.
:: A perfect example would be his treatment of the theory of "terroir", that Maginot Line of French wine mechandising, breached on all sides, but still the darling of yuppie sommeliers, because it's so simple, and so inhuman:
:: "Ces témoignages [i.e., the actual texts that record and describe the history of wine-making in France] ont été imprimés, et sont à portée de notre main dans les grandes bibliothèques. On s'etonne qu'ils soient ignorés d'un aussi large public en l'un des pays du monde où la vigne jouit du plus grand prestige. C'est là, peut-être, un effet de ce prestige même: il nous plairait de voir, dans les vertus de nos vignobles, l'effet d'un privilège naturel, d'une grâce particulière accordée à la terre de France, comme s'il y avait eu plus d'honneur, pour notre pays, à recevoir du Ciel que de la peine des hommes cette renommée vinicole où nos ancêtres ont trouvé un sujet de fierté collective avant même que ne se fût éveillé en eux le sentiment d'une patrie française. De là, dans les notions d'histoire viticole communément répandues, tant de représentations illusoires et d'explications faciles. Une belle réussite, quand elle est le fruit d'un long et dur travail, se reconnait à ceci qu'elle le fait oublier."
:: (These accounts [i.e., the actual texts that record and describe the history of wine-making in France] have been printed, and are readily to hand in major libraries. It is astonishing that they are ignored by so large a public in one of the countries of the world where wine enjoys the greatest prestige. Perhaps it is the effect of that prestige itself; it pleases us to see, in the virtues of our vineyards, the effect of a natural privilege, of a particular grace accorded to the soil of France, as though our country would derive greater honor by receiving from Heaven, rather than from the painstaking labors of humanity, this renown for the wines of France which our ancestors found to be a matter of collective pride before even the sense of a French nation had arisen among them. Thus all the received wisdom & the accepted truths of viticultural history; so many illusory representations and facile explanations. So great a success, when it is the result of such long and hard labor, may be recognized by precisely this, that it makes us forget what it actually took to achieve it.)
:: Roger Dion, Histoire de la Vigne et du Vin en France; 1959. p.VIII
:: Another issue, of course; but relevant in at least one crucial respect; which is that if Dion can discuss a Sacred Cow such as this, with such passion, intelligence, and truthfulness to the historical record - something hard to imagine from most wine-writers of this era - he's someone to pay attention to on other combustible topics; and he devotes pp. 461-539 to our current question, which is the fate of the wines of Paris. So, while of course I disagree with him in some details, I couldn't recommend him more highly to anyone actually interested in all this; and there are many more scholars after him well worth reading.
:: After all, the subject isn't mere wine-making, it's monopoly and greed; so it's not neglected.
:: We should be so fortunate.

Sean Thackrey
© 2004
www.wine-maker.net
::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: MAURIZIO TIRELLI ::

:: De historia vini, et febrium, libri duo…, Venice, 1630 ::

:: A few selections from a long, complex, and very nuanced discussion of the meanings of color, flavor, and aroma in wine. To be read in conjunction with the Præfectus of 1559 already posted on this site. (In Latin) ::

TO THE TEXT

:: The only French wine-making text of the seventeenth century known to me, and a unique memorial to the lost world of Parisian wine-making. (in French)


:: Nicolas de Bonnefons was valet-de-chambre to Louis XIV, not a post one would normally associate with a best-selling author of cookbooks for the housewife & femme de ménage; nonetheless that is indeed what he very successfully wrote, and is well known as such in the unfortunately small world of people seriously interested in the history of gastronomy.(1)
:: However, if there were yet such a thing as the history of wine-making, he would not be known as a significant contributor to it at all; whereas, in fact, his contribution is not only significant, but unique. The text transcribed here is the only description of French wine-making known to me to have been published during the entire course of the seventeenth century, (2) and is particularly interesting in that the wine-making it describes is specifically Parisian. Of course, no one but a tiny coterie of Parisian local history buffs now thinks of there ever having been such a thing; certainly there is none beyond the garden level now, and effectively there has been none since the early nineteenth century.
:: In part, this is due to a change in taste. The wines of the Parisian basin were never other than delicate; but that is a word a Parisian would now use (favorably) to describe wines (only French, of course) that a Parisian of the sixteenth century would nonetheless have found utterly grossière - or as Liger put it, toujours bon à garder, jamais bon à boire - and Australia wasn't even discovered yet.
:: En revanche, it is quite probable that the Parisian wines Baccius, in 1596, described as being among the finest in the world (and he was Italian), would seem undrinkably thin, sour, and green to most contemporary wine lovers.
:: Granting all this as a factor, Parisian wine was really done in by quite another force, namely, the Parisian wine trade itself. This may seem surprising, but only to those who don't make wine; to those, such as myself, who do, it's somewhere between inevitable and self-explanatory. In the United States today, this is accomplished by the wondrous "three-tier system", meaning, ya don't sell ta nobody but Uncle Tony, you wanna sell wine in dis state; in Paris, it was even worse. After the late sixteenth century, essentially & for the next two hundred years, no wine produced within twenty leagues of Paris was allowed to be sold within Paris itself, at all.
:: Of course, neither the Parisian working classes nor the winegrowers of the bassin Parisien took this lying down; posted earlier on this site is the Plainte Faicte au Roy: Par le Sindic des Vignerons de Rueil, Suresne, Nanterre, Coulombe, Argenteüil, & autres vignobles du plat païs proche de Paris, sur l'empeschement de la liberté du commerce de leurs vins (1623); and the King himself responded quite movingly, one might have thought, to this petition (Comme le vin est vn alimen des plus necessaires pour l'entretien de la vie humaine, cultiué & recueilly auec vne extreme peine & despence par plusieurs milliers de personnes qui n'ont autre attente pour la substance de leur vie, le commerce n'en peut estre peruerti ny alteré sans que le public en reçoiue vne extreme incommodité).
:: But it is not for nothing that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose is a French expression: because, of course, nothing actually changed at all.
:: The result was that Parisian winegrowers, their wine banned from Paris, could only sell it on the outskirts; since it was too light to travel well, there was no other market for it; but they couldn't sell it for much, since their only customers were working-class families who couldn't afford what was sold by the Parisian Fat Boys.
:: Thus an entire culture of taverns (guinguettes) grew up exactly on the outside of the city walls of Paris, a culture in itself with many problems but great charms; unfortunately, the effect on Parisian vineyards wasn't ambiguous at all. With no market allowed but at the lowest possible price, the only possible means of survival was high volume, meaning execrable quality, particularly in a climate so marginal to begin with. The only chance of good wine would have been to burn the effigy of Richard Smart (3) as a Rite of Spring, and proceed to reduce crop; but neither was possible. Instead, they fertilized and pruned for yield until the vines groaned with unripe, flavorless grapes, made into unripe, flavorless wine, which was then flavored in innumerable artificial ways to make it saleable at all. Needless to say, the moment inexpensive wine could be supplied in quantity from the south of France, where at least it could be made from ripe fruit, the vineyards of Paris would disappear; and with the advent of the railroad, they did just that.
:: But it is easy to overlook two important points when reading early texts on wine-making. First, the majority of these texts weren't intended for commercial winegrowers to begin with. Of course an estate owner might sell some of his excess production; but he, his family and friends would drink the rest; thus, he had a direct interest in its quality, and the purpose of these texts was to increase that quality, not to increase his income. Second, the fact that so much of the wine in any region is wretched should by no means imply that none is good, any more than it would with respect to food. So I believe we should read and enjoy Bonnefons as the memorial of a wine culture perfectly deserving of our respect, which is all he asks of us; after all, he announces at the outset that the Gormets prefer the wines of Burgundy.
:: And since this introduction is already far too long, I won't review his instructions themselves, except to note that they're generally entirely reasonable; are detailed enough that a modern wine-maker interested in what Parisian wine of the seventeenth century tasted like could come up with a decent facsimile of it; and are full of wonderful details, such as the way both tavern owners and orders of mendicant friars used a barrel full of wood-shavings to both clarify and ensure consistency in wine blended from many sources.

_________________

(1) For example, the following from a recent bookseller's description, quoted with commentary after the Bibliothèque Nationale catalogue, Livres en Bouche: "Bonnefons abandonne les épices qui masquent le goût des aliments et plaide en faveur de la simplicité et de la saveurs des produits du terroir. 'Parmi les livres de cuisine du XVIIe siècle, les Délices de la campagne offrent l'originalité d'être le fait d'un horticulteur et spécialiste des jardins potagers, et non d'un cuisinier. Cette particularité se traduit dans le plan du livre(...) : les recettes n'y sont pas présentées dans un ordre dicté par la consommation des plats mais selon la nature des produits : d'abord le pain et le vin et ce qui peut s'y rattacher (recettes de pâtisseries et boissons diverses), puis les racines et toutes espèces de légumes et de fruits, en y ajoutant les œufs et les laitages, enfin les viandes et poissons.' Par ailleurs, l'ouvrage n'entend pas s'adresser aux friands de la Cour mais aux dames mesnagères. L'art culinaire de Bonnefons, 'pensé comme recherche du goust naturel ou vray goust, repose sur une sobriété qui, détachée de sa dimension ascétique, définit une esthétique classique de la table : art de la clarté et de la diversité des objets et des saveurs, où la frugalité ne signifie plus abstinence, mais volupté du fruit retrouvé dans sa simplicité naturelle. Les Délices de la campagne sont le manifeste d'une frugalité jouissive, élevé en principe de plaisir.'"

(2) I have elsewhere asserted that there was none, which is untrue; that is, this text is the exception, and thus far, the only one known to me. The other candidates fall off opposite ends of the century; they would be Olivier de Serres' Theâtre d'Agriculture, published in 1600, but obviously written in the 1590's; and Louis Liger's Oeconomie Generale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique, written in the 1690's but not published until 1700 (excerpts from both of which are posted separately on this site). In any case, the point isn't to split antiquarian hairs, but to emphasize the strangeness that for an entire century, so little was published in France about a subject of such major importance both to the economy and to the daily life of the French.

(3) An in-joke, I'm afraid. Dr. Smart (!) is an evangelist of pruning systems which he believe demonstrate, to the immense satisfaction of the vineyard investors who employ him, that the supposed relation between small yield and high quality is nothing but an old wive's tale. In my own opinion, the old wife he has in mind is Mother Nature. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: ANNIBAL BARLET ::

:: Le vray et methodique cours de la Physique resolutive, vulgairement dite Chymie… ::

:: How God Does It; an extremely interesting work at the transition between alchemy and modern science, discussing questions we not only haven't answered but rarely ask. (In French)

:: To write a preface to this text is beyond my competence. To have written the text may have been beyond Barlet's; because his subject may be beyond what competence can address. His subject is the limits - and what lies beyond the limits - of competence itself.
:: To so many current scientific minds, this is playing with words; nothing is beyond competence. The purpose of science is reproducible results, by which we mean predictable manipulation; procedure A. applied to entity B. produces result C., and if this result is reproducible, we have knowledge. What we want at all cost to avoid is asking what it is that makes energy move; or what the "universe" is expanding into, if it isn't part of the "universe"; and if it isn't, why do we use the term "universe" at all; and what came before the big bang, and so on. Science is - read, we are - in control here; questions we can't answer are from maybe nice people, but they just don't understand the mathematics.
:: Barlet, whatever his considerable eccentricities, wasn't that kind of intellectual coward. At the same time, he shared many of the faults and virtues of the modern technologist, although from an intellectual and spiritual foundation that is to us almost incomprehensibly different. Both the resemblances and the differences are obvious enough from the subtitle to his text: La Theotechnie Ergocosmique, a neologism of which I'm positive Barlet was excessively proud, which means "the sacred technology by which God created the cosmos out of his own being". And certainly that is the object of his book; it is science and technology, but from the inside out; not from the outside in, which is all that concerns us today.
:: It is this complexity that makes him so interesting to me, and that is why I have made such an extensive transcription from his work. I hope it will interest someone else. Barlet is an intriguing and original voice at a critical juncture in the evolution of modern consciousness, who should be heard again, particularly since the problems he discusses aren't ones we've solved, or even think there's much point in asking. ::

:: In, Le vray et methodique cours de la Physique resolutive, vulgairement dite Chymie. Representé par figures generales et particulieres. Pour connoistre la Theotechnie ergocosmique, c'est à dire, l'art de Dieu en l'ouvrage de l'Univers Paris, 1657

TO THE TEXT

::

:: LORENZO MAGALOTTI ::

:: Sopra il detto del Galileo. Il Vino è un composto di umore, e di luce. ::

:: A remarkably rich evocation of the sensuality of wine within the world of a late 17-century Florentine aristocratic intellectual, who was also one of the great prose stylists of the Italian Baroque. Among its many charms is the thought that what sparkles in wine is powdered light.

:: Including even the productions of fin-de-siècle Paris, it would be difficult to imagine a more bejewelled and aromatic prose that that of Magalotti; yet Count Lorenzo Magalotti (1637-1712), in addition to being a counsellor of state to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, and so forth and so on, was a well-respected scientist, and secretary of the most important Italian scientific society of his day; his friends were such as Redi and Viviani, and his idol was Galileo.
:: But Redi would chide Magalotti for not realizing that his letter upon an aphorism of Galileo's, was really upon an aphorism of Dante's. In the rarefied civilization of such 17th-century Florentine aristocrats as were civilized, it was taken for granted that any scientist knew Dante by heart, in minute detail, and could give support to any scientific proposition by an appropriate citation from an unpublished Provençal poet, preferably from a manuscript in one's own library.
:: Thus we are not in the presence here of a scientist for whom the pencil-protector is the coat of arms, "reproducible results" (predictable manipulation) the only object of science, and the repression of all that is not, a defense of truth. That doesn't mean we're in the presence of a better scientist; but certainly one whose idea of science was different than ours, and certainly one to whom it would have been unimaginable to take pride in the narrowness of his field of knowledge.
:: For Magalotti, clearly, one of life's most desirable purposes was to refine the pleasures of living it, and science was simply one such pleasure, as was wine. To the point that when he came to combine these two pleasures in the following essay, it isn't entirely clear whether he meant more to be taken in earnest than to give pleasure to his friends.
:: If his object was to give pleasure, he succeeded, without question. It would be hard to think of another short essay that more sensuously evokes an atmosphere of late 17th-century Florentine aristocratic intelligence: passionate, yet ironic; refined, so with melancholy; aristocratic, but not proud. A Symbolist poet couldn't have invented a better Magalotti.
:: But if his object was to provide a scientific explanation of the influences of solar radiation upon grapes and upon the wine produced from them, then, I'm afraid, he succeeded in giving pleasure instead.
:: He asks what Galileo meant by saying that wine is a compound of light and humor.
:: For anyone in the wine trade, this is already pretty humorous; but we know he didn't really mean that. So we should ask what the word actually does mean here.
:: It means "moisture", as in "humid": umore.
:: It also means "temperament, disposition of mind, caprice", and in Magalotti's era was still used in this sense, which was the sense given to it in Roman medecine, particularly by Galen. And it would be one of the many pleasures of etymology to trace the path by which "humorous" ("all wet") came to mean amusing or funny, but this is beyond both my competence and my present object. I think it's sufficient to say that Magalotti (and Galileo before him, and Dante before Galileo) meant "humor" in this particular context to mean the "characteristic moisture" of a particular vineyard - a concept rather like terroir, except more intelligent - which, when acted upon by sunlight, produces wine.
:: So far so good, and so much for umore. As to light, Magalotti's theory is this:
:: Light rays fall upon all fruits, yet grapes are exceptional. Why? Because they absorb more of the light that falls on them, just as black absorbs more light than white. How do grapes do this? By their pores, which are cunningly designed to trap light rays, just as certain bird or fish nets let birds or fish in, but not out. So, light rays, once trapped in the grape, cannot escape, and in their attempts, ultimately shatter to powder.
:: But they shatter over time; thus, the rays which fall on the vineyard in late summer, being still intact & having lost none of their energy, boil forth when released from their prison by the crushing of the grapes at harvest, "whence the must conceives its heat, whence the boiling, the rarefaction, and the steaming." Whereas those rays which entered the grape early in the year, being shattered into powder, remain in the wine, emerging only when the wine is tasted, "making themselves felt upon the tongue, and palate, by the charming prickle of their many corners and twists".
:: Well, the same may be said of the letter itself, which also is charming in the prickle of its many corners and twists, but particularly in proposing that fermentation is simply sunlight escaping from the must, and that what sparkles in wine is powdered light. Whether Magalotti intended it to be, in addition, a monument in the history of plant physiology, is unkown to me, may at this point be unknowable, and may even be superfluous.
:: We know that it gave great pleasure to his friends, since Redi refers to it as "quella vostra lettera dotta e maravigliosa, dottissima ed elegantissima", and I think it gives great pleasure to us now: which is why I've transcribed it here, in its entirety.

:: in, Lettere Scientifiche, ed Erudite del Conte Lorenzo Magalotti. Florence, 1721. (but, c. 1670?)

TO THE TEXT

::

:: John Evelyn (1620-1706) ::

:: The earliest wine-making instructions to be written in - as distinct from translated into - the English language.

:: in, The Vintage, as appended to The English Vineyard Vindicated, and published in The French Gardiner, 1669 [1672]

:: John Evelyn's interest in cider resulted in his Pomona; Or, An Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to CIDER; The Making, and severall wayes of Ordering it, which was published by order of the Royal Society in 1664, & extensive excerpts from which are posted earlier on this site.
:: Even less well known than this is the fact that his interest in the growing of grapes and the production of wine led him to write the following text, which so far as I can determine is the earliest description of wine-making to have been written in - as distinct from translated into - the English language.
:: The text first appeared in 1669 as an attachment to John Rose's The English Vineyard Vindicated., a book actually written by Evelyn from information supplied by Rose, a gardener whom Evelyn greatly admired. But as is clearly stated in Evelyn's preface to it, the attachment - called The Vintage - is by Evelyn alone; and by 1669, both of these texts were published as additions to The French Gardiner, which was a translation by Evelyn from the French of Nicolas de Bonnefons. The transcription which follows is from the edition of 1672::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: JEAN PASCAL ::

:: La nouvelle découverte, et les admirable effets des ferments dans le corps humain; Paris, 1681 ::

:: Fermentation as the explanation for everything, including - finally! - sex. (In French)

:: Just because fermentation was not established to be a microbial process until Pasteur, it does not follow that no one used the word before him. Au contraire, it was used far more widely, particularly in the seventeenth century, but to refer to a general principle of transformation, of which wine was only the most obvious example.
:: What follows is a particularly splendid example of this, by a virtually unknown author, from a virtually unrecorded book.
:: All I know of Jean Pascal is that he was a doctor of medicine in Sarlat, who dedicated his book to the personal physician of Louis XIV; since he is shown in the frontispiece portrait at the age of 21, we may assume he wrote it when he was still younger. This may explain his detailed interest in sex as a particularly important fermentation, although I'm sure most of us would agree anyway. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: JACQUES MOREAU ::

:: De la Véritable Connoissance des Fièvres Continues, Pourprées et Pestilentes…Paris, 1685 ::

:: A Burgundian compares the fevers of the human body to the fermentations of wine. Another unknown text to be read along with the Pascal of almost the same date, & equally startling. (In French)

:: This is another splendid and completely unknown 17th-century text, which I think should be read as a companion piece to the Jean Pascal of almost the same year.
:: The Pascal was published in 1681, the Moreau in 1685; both authors were young French doctors, very much concerned with Seeing The Larger Picture.
:: More to the point, for both of them, fermentation was the secret, and wine the obvious symbol, of all transformation. Of course this idea was something of a 17th-century fad, derived largely from Van Helmont, but these are particularly intense examples.
:: Otherwise, I don't even know Pascal's dates.
:: About Moreau, I have the following biographical information: "The French physician and iatrochemist Moreau (1647-1729)".
:: And, he was a doctor of medicine in Châlons-sur-Saône.
:: So we don't read these things because we know much about them.
:: We don't read them because they are Important Milestones in Humanity's Triumphal March Forward From Darkness And Ignorance Into The Light of Modern Science.
:: And even though we do know Moreau was a Burgundian, and I'm sure we all agree he should be admired for writing an entire book comparing the fermentation of purple and pestilent fevers to wine, without once suggesting the wines of Bordeaux as the obvious example, that's not why we read these things either.
:: We read them because they are wonderful.

TO THE TEXT

::

:: AUTHOR UNKNOWN ::

:: In, Ce que c'est que la nature; manuscript, 372pp., French, ca. 1690.

:: A recurring theme of this website is the thought that the savoring of wine is a model for the savoring of life in general, and that savoring is both an approach to experience and an understanding of "knowledge" as applicable to metaphysics as to Burgundy. Thus, whatever is here on this site, is here to be savored, but not necessarily because it concerns wine.
:: The present text, in fact, concerns nothing less than the essential nature of nature. It is taken from an extensive autograph manuscript, about which I can say almost nothing useful. It is French, almost certainly late 17th-century; it is written in a single remarkably fine and legible hand; and its author is unknown. The contemporary binding is luxurious and meticulous, with, for example, all edges carefully marbled to match the endpapers, and very well preserved; so clearly it was valued. Yet, it was not a luxury volume prepared for presentation; its unusual neatness, the lack of erasures and corrections, clearly are as they are simply because the author was as he was; textually, it is very much a personal work in progress: many chapters are revised versions of earlier ones, and these, in turn, give no impression that they are meant necessarily to be final.
:: The only identifying mark is an early armorial bookplate of the Potier de Gesvres; it has been attributed specifically to Léon Potier (ca.1620-1704), "Comte de Sceaux, puis Marquis de Gesvres, puis Duc de Tresmes et Pair de France, puis Duc de Gesvres et Pair de France; Capitaine des Gardes du Corps du Roi; Chevalier du Saint-Esprit" etc.; or as another genealogy more amusingly describes him, "POTIER, Léon; Naissance: 1620; Décès: 09 décembre 1704 à 75, Paris; Occupation: Duc de Gesvres."
:: Perhaps Léon longed for a more fundamental occupation than the ennuis of dukedom, and found it in this prolonged speculation on the essence of nature. Perhaps not; there is no more reason to think this thought than to refuse it, although I suppose probability would have to favor the fantasy that this was the life's work of, say, a favorite tutor.
:: Fortunately, we don't have to decide any of this. A peculiar beauty of literacy is the purity with which it transmits attention: the pure attention of a particular human spirit to the material, which is to say, to that particular spirit's material - the material which it chooses, or which chooses it - leaving us with the sense of that spirit's character as attention, and the work of its attentiveness, even when, as here, we know next to nothing else.
:: It is a transmission of great importance, and of course mystery, particularly in the case of a manuscript, since any manuscript is so wholly carnal in itself. As someone once said to me about a Rembrandt drawing, "the thing is, it's just marks on paper".
:: And that is absolutely true. Particular hands smoothed these particular sheets of paper 300 years ago, in a particular room with its particular air and light, and made these particular marks in an atmosphere as immediately real, present and carnal as any in which we read these words now; and then, it all vanished, with no trace remaining but these sheets of paper and these marks, and they're no different now than they were in that room; as simple, present, and carnal as ever: just marks on paper.
:: But whatever the intrigue and mystery of the physicality of the medium, and no matter how much we may savor its presence, at the same time, in this case, the medium is not the message. The essence of literacy is not the transmission of physicality, but of mind; the miracle is that by a medium so purely physical, it should succeed so well. Because what we have in the selections that follow is the attentiveness of a 17th-century mind to its own native materials - to those particular ideas that attracted its attention and provoked the desire for a larger understanding. Since that is why the manuscript exists in the first place, it is surely what its author should have wanted to have transmitted.
:: Speaking for myself, savoring the complexities of merely all this alone would be more than enough to justify an interest in the text. Of course it does not establish what might interest historians of philosophy or of science; on the other hand, while it interests me that, say, the author argues consistently with Descartes, quotes Gassendi with many reservations, approves of Boyle, is not orthodox Catholic on several counts, evolves a cosmology of considerable originality, (and so on), I can't agree that the only issue here is to decide his importance by determining which of the details of his thought happen to have turned out to agree with what we now think, because I'm not that happy with what we now think.
:: It's hard to defer to those whose confidence that we have the essential answers involves refusing to ask the uncomfortable questions; and at least this is a charge that cannot be levelled against the author of this text, which is only one of many reasons his company is so agreeable.
:: Some others are his thoughtfulness, his remarkable intelligence, the depth of his reading in other texts about which we have since become stupid, a genuine turn of spirit that is all his own, and the fact that, being 300 years old, he has a lot to tell those of us who will listen.

:: NOTES:
1. This is a long manuscript, of some 372 very closely-written pages. So I've only transcribed a sample: the introduction, the chapter on flavor and taste, and the analysis of light.
2. As usual, I've tried to transcribe the text precisely as it is on the original page. In this case, I've skipped the long "s", since it's not a big issue in the original; I've retained the use of "u" where we would use "v", since that is the author's usage; but I've corrected his almost complete avoidance of hyphenation, since I couldn't see that reading "dautant" instead of "d'autant", or "il nya qun" instead of "il n'y a qu'un" would contribute to anything but dyslexia.::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: MARTIN LISTER ::

:: A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698. London, 1699 ::

:: Dr. Lister describes the wines he found in Paris in the late winter and spring of 1698; including, for example, "Coste Bruslee on the Rosne", one of the earliest printed references I have seen to Côte-Rôtie. (In English)

:: Doctor Martin Lister (1638-1712) was a well-known zoologist and antiquarian, of a type - although of an older generation - known perfectly to any reader of the Aubrey-Maturin novels; he and Stephen would have been inseparable, e.g.: "I was to see Monsieur Verney at his Apartment at the upper-end of the Physick-Garden; but missing my Visit, went up with a young Gentleman of My Lord Ambassador's Retinue, to see Mr. Bennis, who was in the Dissecting Room, working by himself upon a dead Body, with its Breast open and Belly gutted: There were very odd things to be seen in the Room. My Companion, it being Morning, and his Senses very quick and vigorous, was strangely surprized and offended; and retired down the Stairs much faster than he came up. And indeed, a private Anatomy Room is to one not accustomed to this kind of Manufacture, very irksome if not frightful: Here a Basket of Dissecting Instruments, as Knives, Saws, &c. and there a Form with a Thigh and Leg flayed, and the Muscles parted asunder: On another Form an Arm served after the same manner: Here a Trey full of Bits of Flesh, for the more minute discovery of the Veins and Nerves; and every where such discouraging Objects." Or: "Monsieur Poupart of the Academic-Royal did accompany him in this Visit to my Lodgings, who very kindly invited me to his House to see his Dissections of Insects, particularly of the Horse-Leech lately publisht, he was unwilling to hear that Francisco Redi had made the Dissection of that Animal at least 20 Years ago, and discovered it to be androgynous…"; and so on. As with so many wines, either you enjoy the flavors of this kind of prose, or you don't; obviously, I do.
:: In any case, Dr. Lister, being in a mood for Paris, "the first opportunity which offered it self I readily embraced, which was my Lord Portland's Acceptance of my Attendance of him in his Extraordinary Embassie". In other words, he went along for the ride, arriving on the first of January, 1698; and thereafter, "I busied my self in a place where I had little to do, but to walk up and down; well knowing, that the Character of a Stranger gave me free Admittance to Men and Things. The French Nation value themselves upon Civility, and build and dress mostly for Figure: This Humour makes the Curiosity of Strangers very easie and welcome to them." When he returned to London, he wrote a book about everything he saw, called, with his characteristic straightforwardness, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698. By Dr. Martin Lister.
:: And that's just what it is: what a lively, intelligent, curious, and good-humored Englishman saw as he wandered all over Paris in the late winter of 1698. And as he says, "to content you, Reader, I promise you not to trouble you with Ceremonies either of State or Church, or Politicks; for I entred willingly into neither of them, but only, where they would make a part of the Conversation, or my Walk was ordered me. You'll easily find by my Observations, that I incline rather to Nature than to Dominion; and that I took more pleasure to see Monsieur Breman in his White Wastcoat [sic] digging in the Royal Physick Garden, and sowing his Couches, than Monsieur de Saintot making room for an Ambassador; and I found my self better disposed, and more apt to learn the Names and Physiognomy of a Hundred Plants, than of Five or Six Princes…I was no more concerned in the Embassy, than in the sailing of the Ship which carried me over: 'Tis enough for me, with the rest of the People of England, to feel the good Effects of it, and to pass away this Life in Peace and Quietness. 'Tis a happy Turn for us, when Kings are made Friends again."
:: I don't know if he was surprised by how popular the book was - the French even published an edition in French, surely an English tourist's ultimate fantasy for the fate of his Paris travel diary - but it's not hard to see what made it that way; he's simply such excellent company, and tells us so many details we wouldn't otherwise know.
:: The following brief excerpt is a perfect example: what wines he was served, and what he thought about them. There's nothing much to it, and yet little else like it; and his very lack of expertise makes it so much more credible what he was served than the regional marketing campaigns ("and Charlemagne himself, passing through the valley of the Merde, raised his hand in salute to the fine wines of…" etc.) usually served up to us as wine history instead. ::

TO THE TEXT