::

:: LOUIS LIGER (1658-1717) ::

:: Oeconomie Generale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique, 1700/1701 ::
:: Le Menage des Champs et de la Ville ou le Cuisinier François, 1716 ::
:: La Nouvelle Maison Rustique, ou Économie Generale de tous les Biens de Campagne, 1762 ::

:: Essentially all we know of 17th-century wine-making in France; and at the same time, the beginning of 18th-century French wine-making literature - a flowering as remarkable in one century as the previous two dozen had been sterile.

:: Since the history of wine-making is such a cabinet of curiosities to begin with, it may be superfluous to notice yet another; still, it is extremely curious that the French should have come so late to writing seriously about winemaking.
:: Wine-making is a craft which began in France no later than the settlement of Marseille by the Phocaean Greeks in the 8th-century BC, yet today, 2700 years later, there is still no word in the French language for that person whose craft it is to make wine; and about this craft the French wrote essentially nothing until the 16th-century AD, some 2300 years after they began to practise it.
:: Anecdotes, some poems and drinking songs, some account books; but not one single work of any importance to the literature of wine-making itself.
:: The 16th-century produced two great French works on agricultural craft in general, the Maison Rustique of Estienne and Liébault, and the Theâtre d'Agriculture of Olivier de Serres, both of which appear elsewhere on this site, and each of which is extremely interesting in its discussion of wines and wine-making; but indeed, an addendum to what makes them so interesting is that without them, we would have essentially nothing; and that is just what we get thereafter from the entire 17th-century, during which the French produced nothing on wine-making at all. Not one single book.
:: Except, arguably, the Oeconomie Generale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique, of "le Sieur Louis Liger, d'Auxerre" (1658-1717). First published in 1700, it is therefore a work of the late 1600's, since that's when it was written, just as de Serre's Theâtre d'Agriculture, first published in 1600, is a work of the late 1500's. If in this sense it is reasonable to view Louis Liger's text as the only major work of 17th-century French wine-making literature, it is also certainly the case that his is the beginning of that literature in the 18th-century, when France produced as remarkable a flowering in one century as the previous dozens had been sterile. Since, predictably, given the current standard of scholarship in the history of wine-making, he is neither recognized to be the one nor the other, I thought it important that this site publish at least a modest anthology of what he had to say.

::

:: Like the Estienne & Liébault and the de Serres which preceeded it, and like the Crescenzi and Columella which in turn preceded them, Liger's text is a general encyclopedic treatment of life and work on a agricultural estate. Not least because nothing but reprints of these earlier texts had been published for a century before, Liger's work was immensely popular. An unauthorized printing of the first edition - falsely identified as the second - appeared in Amsterdam in 1701; the actual & much expanded second edition in 1708; and by the third edition, the subtitle became the title, under which name - La Nouvelle Maison Rustique - it became a virtual French institution, reprinted in a bibliographic jungle of dozens of editions for nearly a century after Liger's death, with ever-increasing additions by an ever-widening circle of largely anonymous editors. And since Liger himself produced a substantial set of subsidiary spinoffs, I have no ambition to unravel all the details here; I'd simply like to present the core of his approach to wine-making, since he literally defines the French (i.e., northern French) winemaking style of an entire era, and does so according to a clearly indicated sense for the pleasures of wine that we might well call "typically French" (i.e., northern French) even today.

NOTES:

:: 1. Liger's taste in wine is extremely clear: the purpose of wine is to be light and elegant. Red wines - which if not Pinot Noir, can only be less than Pinot Noir - should be left on the skins for 12 to 15 hours, maybe even 24 in a really bad year, and should be destemmed completely. Wines left longer are flayed with such epithets as "trés-rude", "gros vins mâtins, sans grace", and - his favorite - "toûjours bons à garder & jamais à boire" ("always good to age, never to drink").
:: 2. He's much in favor of "rapez" (vin rapé, or vino raspato, as the attentive reader will of course recall from having read so many earlier excerpts on this site, such as the Petronio of 1592). Unlike Petronio, Liger includes a kind of "rapez" intended purely to clarify new wine for early drinking; this is simply a barrel loosely stuffed with curls of wood shavings of the sort produced by an ordinary carpenter's plane, but neutralized by soaking in water; the remaining space in the barrel is then filled with new wine; the lees in the wine cling to the wood-shavings, clarifying the wine, which can be drawn off and served without what would otherwise be the considerable delay involved in waiting for it to "fall bright" on its own.
:: 3. The first transcription which follows here, is of Liger's winemaking instructions as given in his Le Menage des Champs et de la Ville ou le Cuisinier François, 2nd edition, published in Paris in 1716, the year before Liger's death & thus pretty much his final thoughts on the subject. In Liger's characteristically elegant & opinionated prose, it is an entirely clear, complete, and self-sufficient treatise in its own right, and stands perfectly well on its own.
:: 4. The second transcription is of essentially the same material, but as treated in the (Amsterdam) first edition of the Oeconomie Generale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique, 1701. The differences are interesting, and not necessarily obvious at first reading. For example, in 1716, he recommends that to conserve a barrel of wine good to the last drop, "on prend à present de ces bouteilles de gros verre, & à petit cou…" ("nowadays one takes these bottles of thick glass & a small neck…"), thus clearly a newfangled item to him, but one he's altogether in favor of ("& le vin s'y conserve tres-bon, jusqu'à ce qu'il soit bû; on ne craint pas alors qu'il s'évente ny qu'il s'affoiblisse."). Since he mentions not a word about bottling of this or any other kind of wine in 1700/1701, that's a nice clue as to when wine began to be bottled in France - instead of being served up "en perce", meaning straight from the barrel - and it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of that change to virtually any aspect of wine-making style.
:: 5. The remaining transcription is included, as is so often the case on this site, simply because I enjoyed it. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: ANGRAN DE RUENEUVE ::

:: La Manière de Façonner les Vins
:: in, Observations sur l'Agriculture et le Jardinage, pour servir d'Instruction à ceux qui desireront s'y rendre habiles. Par M. Angran de Rueneuve. Conseiller du Roy en l'Election d'Orleans. Paris, 1712.
:: A nearly unknown, remakably clear, and very sympathetic evocation of what wine, to a counsellor of Louis XIV, was, and was meant to be.

:: As is so often the case with authors posted on this site, all that appears to be known about Angran de Rueneuve is what is stated on the title-page of his book: Observations sur l'Agriculture et le Jardinage, pour servir d'Instruction à ceux qui desireront s'y rendre habiles. Par M. Angran de Rueneuve. Conseiller du Roy en l'Election d'Orleans. So, he was king's counsellor (the king, in this case, being Louis XIV) in Orléans: yet another example in favor of the argument that an author's only worthwhile chance for an enduring monument is what actually gets down on the pages of his own work.
:: And even so, it's not easy. The first edition of that work appeared in two volumes in 1712, and it is undeniably rare; in fact, it is completely unknown, except to a very few specialists. The reason may well be the publication only a few years before, of a major new text on agriculture and the management of a country estate, the immensely popular Œconomie Generale de la Campagne, ou Nouvelle Maison Rustique of Louis Liger, to which Angran refers with deference, although it may well have been its appearance that doomed his own work to an undeserved obscurity.
:: However, our concern here is with wine-making; and Liger's text was the first new description of wine-making to have been written in French in more than 100 years, which is why an extensive extract from it appears earlier on this site; thus, if Angran's is merely the second or third, that alone should make it worth our attention.
:: But if that's a reason for reading him, it certainly isn't the best one. The best reason is the same I'd list for nearly everything else posted on this site, which is to expand our understanding of what the pleasures of wine can be, or at least can include. Contrary to much commercial propaganda promoting local routine as eternal truth, it is rarely the case that the wines of any region have been made the same way for great lengths of time.
:: Angran is a perfect example, not least because he's discussing the wines of Orléans to begin with, which, speaking of changes, in his day enjoyed a considerable reputation, and today have effectively ceased to exist. And then there's the obvious matter of lightness and delicacy, ideals commonly preached by modern wine-makers (particularly in wet years, if I may say so), but in reference to wines which in Angran's day would have been thought impossibly grossière. For him, wine made from black grapes should be either gris-de-perle (essentially what we would now call blanc de noirs, where the whole grape-clusters are pressed immediately after harvest, and the juice fermented without contact with the skins); or perhaps clairet, which should have no more that three or four hours maceration on the skins; and even vin rouge, which can macerate on the skins for up to six hours; but it is only for vin grossière, made of grapes of mediocre quality, that a maceration of as long as 18-20 hours is permitted, since, after all, "cette sorte de Vin ne peut acquerir son excellence que par la corps qu'il prend dans la Cuve, n'ayant que tres peu de qualité d'ailleurs". In fact, he's not in favor of red wine ever being fermented on the skins at all; just given what we would now call a "cold soak", and he feels that's dangerous enough.
:: Since my own red wines routinely remain on the skins for two months after fermentation is complete, it need hardly be said that I don't think his approach is obligatory; thus, clearly, that's not why I'm presenting his text, nor any other text on this site.
:: But I do imagine his approach was right for what he wanted wine to be; in other words, it was the right way to achieve the pleasure he wanted from wine, and that's what's both intriguing and valuable in reading about it; moreover, given the unlikely chance to taste along with him from a barrel he found to be particularly delicious, I'm quite sure I would completely agree that it was.
:: And, as a footnote, in reading Angran's advice, one cannot help but be struck by the contradiction between, on the one hand, the liveliness of those completely personal observations and opinions based clearly on his own experience (which is what comprises most of the section on making wine), combined with the most foolishly untested assertions of "fact" based solely upon reference to authority (which comprises large portions of the sections on keeping and correcting wine). This is particularly absurd given that the most common "authorities" he cites are many otherwise unknown writers who happened to appear in the Byzantine "Geoponic" anthology of, at the latest, the 9th century AD, and were thought to be ancient then.
:: But, since Angran came at the very start of the eighteenth century, one surely cannot blame him for not realizing all the possibilities of freedom from authoritarianism which that remarkable century has permitted those of us who came after it to take, at our peril, for granted. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: VICENCIO ALARTE (Silvestre Gomes de Morais) ::

:: Agricultura das Vinhas e tudo o que pertence a ellas até perfeito recolhimento do vinho, & relaçaõ das suas virtudes & da cepa, vides, folhas, & borras. Lisbon, 1712 ::

:: The complete description of wine-making as given in the earliest Portuguese book on the subject. (In Portuguese)

:: Portugal is particularly interesting to the student of early wine-making, since so much early wine-making is still in practice there. It's tempting to say that Portugal developed a wine-making style while still a Roman province, & has seen no great reason to change; in places, grapes are still trod by foot in open stone lagares, must is fermented in amphoræ, and so on. Ironically, the technique that popularly defines "Port" - adding brandy to the fermenting must while it is still sweet - is one that is not ancient at all; it only became general in in the Alto Douro in the second half of the 19th century. Of course modern international œnofashions have been adopted here and there, even occasionally for some good reason; but there's a significant movement back toward traditional techniques, on the thought that they may yield wines more distinctive, more Portuguese, and, why, maybe even more interesting to drink, of all things.
:: The following text is from Vicencio Alarte (said to be the pseudonym of Silvestre Gomes de Morais), Agricultura das Vinhas e tudo o que pertence a ellas até perfeito recolhimento do vinho, & relaçaõ das suas virtudes & da cepa, vides, folhas, & borras, published in Lisbon in 1712. So far as I am aware, it is the earliest printed description of Portuguese viticulture and wine-making. My own copy belonged to Hubert de Castilla, one of the pioneers of fine wine in Australia. I don't know of other copies in the United States, although they may well exist, and certainly there must be copies in Portugal; it is nonetheless rare enough to be well worth posting on the Net, in keeping with my thought that the purpose of books is to be read, and that the purpose of collecting them is to preserve them so they can go on being read.
:: Unfortunately this selection will be read only by those who read Portuguese, and I'm sure they will find more that the usual number of mistakes in my transcription, since the typography of the original text is nearly illegible in places.
:: As time permits over the next year or so, I hope to prepare if not a translation, at least a detailed summary in English. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: PIERRE-JOSEPH GARIDEL ::

:: Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs d'Aix, Aix, 1715 ::

:: The first detailed description of the grapes, wines, and winemaking of Provence. (In French)

:: Pierre-Joseph Garidel (1658-1737) was a medical doctor and Royal Professor of Anatomy at the University of Aix-en-Provence. If he is known today, and he is known by few, it is only for having published, in 1715, the first systematic botany of Provence. But in the process, and in the same book, he also accomplished something for which he isn't known at all: he published the first detailed description of Provençal grapes & wines.
:: I have transcribed that entire section here - the entry for "Vitis" - and I think it is very pleasant reading. I imagine Garidel in a light rather like François Truffaut in L'Enfant Sauvage, perhaps older, more sunlit, in a life even further away from The Action, and thus even closer to paradise; and frankly, very close to paradise is what I imagine life must have been like in Aix in 1715 for men of his class & temperament.
:: A certain grape is to be found growing "le long des murailles du blanchissage des toiles du Tholonet"; another "dans l'enclos de Mr. le Visiteur Bec"; another grape he wouldn't have known at all, except that "Mr. Emeric Aucane m'a fait connoître cette espece de raisin , que l'on trouve dans l'enclos de Mr. de Rians, Conseiller en la Chambre des Comptes, & Cour des Aides." Wherever he goes, he is among friends, and is naturally at home in surroundings of ancient familiarity; familiar, because they are familial, which is why he is at home with them, and we with him.
:: And yet, in this atmosphere of intimate familiarity, he is constantly excited by the discovery of new things. Botanising, no doubt in his frock coat with his horse grazing in the shade, he extends the scope of human knowledge; in the candlelight of his study, he brings order to his discoveries and shares them with a wide net of friends and colleagues throughout Europe. In such a life it is possible to see how much we owe to those who like what they're doing, which is all that amateur means. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: "S.J." ::

:: The Vineyard; London; 1727 ::

:: The first detailed description in English of wine-making in Champagne.

:: About this book, nothing is known to me but what can be inferred from reading it. The short title is, THE VINEYARD; it was published in London in 1727; the author gives only his initials, S. J., and does that only in his dedication to the Duke of Chandois [sic]; on the title page, the work is described as "Being the Observations made By a Gentleman in his Travels."
:: Nonetheless it is the first detailed description in English of wine-making in Champagne, and comes within a decade of being the first such description in any language. It is preceded (in French) only by an even less-known pamphlet, the Manière de cultiver la vigne et de faire le vin en Champagne et ce qu'on peut imiter dans les autres provinces pour perfectionner les vins, apparently by the Abbé Godinot, who, according to Louis-Perrier, is "M. Jean Godinot, chanoine de Reims, né en 1662 & mort en 1749". Again according to Louis-Perrier, the Mémoire appeared "pour la première fois en 1718, réimprimé avec des additions considerables en 1722, & compris en grande partie dans la Nouvelle maison rustique de 1736". There may have been another edition printed in Avignon in 1719; an extensive version of the text does indeed appear (uncredited) in later editions of Liger's Nouvelle Maison Rustique, and, in English translation, also uncredited, in Miller's Gardener's Dictionary as well.
:: Clearly, S.J. read Godinot's booklet, and frequently paraphrases it; but he does not copy it, and his own book seems to me to be very much his own, a project undertaken for reasons he declares clearly in his preface to the reader:
:: HOW profitable the planting of Vine-yards would be in England, I need not mention, that is allow'd on all Hands, were the same but Practicable; and such who shall carefully peruse the following Sheets, may be convinc'd that the same is so. The Method practised, both in Champaign and Burgundy, as well as other parts of France, is so plainly laid down therein, as will render it plain and easy to the meanest Capacity, and those not recited barely from the Relation of other Persons, but taken from the daily Practice and Observation of the most Skillful and Industrious of the Inhabitants. Neither have I barely contented myself with a Relation of the Culture, Management, &c. of their Vine-yards, &c. but likewise examined their several Reasons for the same, with the Observations that they have from time to time made thereon, and endeavour'd to account for them in such a Manner, as may be Satisfactory to the Reader, and shall be sufficient to Illustrate the whole Design, so as to induce the Curious to try the Experiment. And by perusing the Directions herein laid down, convince the most Diffident, that the Want of Wines of the Growth of our own Country has not been owing to the Coldness of our Climate, so much as to the Want of due Encouragement, Industry, and a proper Method of Planting, Manuring, and Cultivating the same.
:: In other words, he sees no reason winegrapes of great quality could not be grown, and therefore wine of great quality made, in England; since he takes Champagne to be the archetype of great wine produced in a cold climate, he feels the English should understand how they do it, and proceed by that example to produce great wine of their own. Somewhat less convincingly, and in much less detail, he makes the same case using the example of Burgundy. While this may put his recommendations in perspective, it doesn't make certain of them any the less startling in light of modern preconceptions. For example, he feels that winegrapes shouldn't be allowed to become too ripe, in fact, should often be a bit less ripe than ordinary table grapes in English markets; or that grapes for Champagne should, if at all possible, be harvested only in a fog or light rain, which greatly adds to the quality, not just the quantity, of the wine produced from them.
:: But it is particularly interesting that S.J. had no clear idea how to make Champagne froth or sparkle, nor, apparently, did anyone else in Champagne.
:: Is it pigeon dung?
:: Could it be the moon?.
:: He doesn't mention dosage, nor does the Abbé Godinot, which very distinctly suggests that it was a not a process then known to the Champenois. Which is curious, since the essence of the Méthode Champenoise is dosage: introducing sugar into an already bottled wine, making the wine ferment again - which means, since the carbon dioxide gas produced by fermentation cannot escape from the bottle so long as it remains corked, that it will escape when the bottle is uncorked, producing fizz, froth, and, well, Champagne.
:: This was understood in England by the 1660's at the latest - please note the John Evelyn Sylva of 1664 earlier on this site - making it difficult to understand why two specialist writers about wine-making in Champagne, one of them Champenois & the other English, wouldn't have understood it more that 60 years later.
:: And so on; all of which makes for very interesting reading, helped right along by the charm of S.J.'s prose: as when he advises that "The true Time of gathering the Grapes is, when they are just coming fit for the Tooth", or when he notes that winemakers in Burgundy often crush red grapes by "putting little Children into the Tubs to tread the Grapes to Pieces, who by running about in these large Tubs, as the Grapes are throwing in, tread them under their Feet, which more effectually bruises and heats them, than 'tis posible to do by beating with Sticks or Battoons," surely the paradise of day-care for Burgundian tots, and possibly the only both noble and practical use that has ever been found for all that energy. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: Bordeaux, ca. 1757 ::

:: Nicholas Bidet (1709-1782) was a patriot of the province of Champagne, with a ferocity that is a little startling to us now. Which perhaps is to say only that he took questions of prestige as seriously as the French so often do, and Champagne simply came first: "Champagne ma patrie", as he so often puts it.
:: But on the other hand, while perhaps the Burgundians and the Champenois wouldn't really have declared war with each other - had either possessed an army with which to do so by this point in French history - purely over the question of who produced the more refined and healthful wine, they certainly talked that way at the time.
:: And had Marie-Antoinette said to Bidet, who was her sommelier, "Let them drink Champagne!", I suspect he would have tried to represent this as a royal decree.
:: So in the first edition of Bidet's Traité sur la nature et sur la culture de la vigne, la façon de le faire, et la manière de la bien gouverner (1752), it is hardly surprising that he was interested almost exclusively in explaining how things were done in Champagne. After all, what was different, could only be worse. What is surprising, is that by the second edition (1759), he should have thought that what was different, should at least be studied.
:: I have no idea why this change occurred; possibly it was the influence of his editor, Duhamel du Monceau. In any case, at some point in the late 1750's, he (or perhaps Duhamel?) actually asked the actual people who did the work of viticulture and wine-making in the various regions of France, what it was that they did, & why. This may sound simple enough to us now, but I can't think of anyone before him who had ever done that on a national scale, not just in France, but anywhere else.
:: So the second edition of his Traité was more than eight times as long as the first; and a remarkable percentage of that increase was due to the response he received from "M. de Navarre, de l'Académie des Sciences de Bordeaux, & Conseiller de la Cour des Aides de la même Ville…"
:: About M. de Navarre, I otherwise know nothing; but his treatise on the wines and viticulture of Bordeaux is certainly the earliest such printed work known to me; and surely that's all that needs to be known to justify its posting here.
:: Unfortunately, despite some intriguing hints here and there, he really says not much at all about wine-making. Perhaps Bidet thought his winemaking was unmentionable, and therefore did not publish what he had to say about it; more likely, since Bidet reproduces so many other wine-making descriptions of which he obviously disapproves, de Navarre may have had nothing to say about wine-making to begin with. So Reboul's description of wine-making in Bordeaux, posted elsewhere on this site, remains the earliest I know of.
:: But de Navarre does have a good deal to say about the qualities of Bordeaux wines; and not the least interesting part of what he has to say is, that what he has to say bears so little resemblance to anything we are now supposed to think. Thus I have reproduced this section of his comments in its entirety, the only excisions being a few comments of Bidet's I thought would be pointlessly confusing, since the point here is to present de Navarre's text in and of itself.
:: And I've added to that de Navarre's extensive discussion of soils, since this has blossomed into such a wonderfully profitable obsession of the Bordelais since his time, and certainly in our own; and his related discussion of grape varieties, particularly since so much other information of interest is scattered about within all of this.
:: For anyone interested in the rest of de Navarre's commentary, and for that matter in the rest of Bidet's extremely interesting work, it is fortunately the case that a modern facsimile reprinting of Bidet's Traité, & in the important 2nd edition, is available, something that unfortunately cannot be said for virtually any other text on this site.
:: The publisher's web address is: http://www.introuvables-vin.com/ ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: GUILLAUME-FRANÇOIS ROUELLE ::

:: Traité Elémentaire De Chimie (manuscript, n.d., n.p., but Paris, ca. 1758) ::

:: Winemaking as taught in Paris by Rouelle at the height of the Enlightenment, transcribed from the manuscript lecture notes of Denis Diderot. Previously unpublished. (In French)

:: Guillaume-François Rouelle (1703-1770) was one of the most influential chemists of the mid-eighteenth century, and he was also one of its most famous teachers. His course, given at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, was legendary; Lavoisier was among a long list of his distinguished pupils, as were Desmarest, Macquer, Venel, d'Arcet, and Bayen, all major figures in later eighteenth-century science; but "as impressive is the list of nonscientists known to have attended his lectures: Diderot, d'Holbach, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Malesherbes, and Turgot." D.S.B., XI, p. 562.
:: He never published the text of these lectures; so our only knowledge of what he said comes from manuscript lecture notes taken by some of his students. Remarkably, of the very few such manuscripts that survive, most are from the lecture notes of a single pupil: none other than Denis Diderot (1713-1784), who as much as any man may be called the essence of anything, may be called the essence of the Enlightenment. To be remembered by the notes of such a student is a fate granted to few teachers.
:: In 1996, I was fortunate enough to acquire a particularly splendid example of these notes from my friend Jonathan Hill in New York; although to call the manuscript "notes" is misleading, since it has the effect of being a virtual word-for-word transcription of everything Rouelle said, covering 420 quarto pages very densely inscribed in a small but legible cursive hand.
:: What this manuscript preserves for us is a complete mid-18th century Parisian course in "chemistry" as it was understood at the height of the Enlightenment — ironically, an understanding still largely alchemical by any modern standard — and since this was the introductory course, intended to convey a general understanding of the processes of transformation, it includes a substantial self-contained treatise on fermentation, on wine in all its aspects, and on beer, vinegar, and the distillation of brandy.
:: My transcription of that treatise is what follows. As usual, I have attempted to transcribe precisely what's on the page, in its original spelling and punctuation. In those few cases where the text was illegible, I've placed the marker "[…?]" to indicate a missing word or words.
:: This and the Boisdescourt manuscript also posted on this site are a wonderful complement to each other. Read together, they will provide, for anyone interested enough to read them in the first place, a thorough insight into the making and understanding of wine in eighteenth-century France.
:: Since neither has ever been published before, I'm particularly pleased to be able to publish a part of them here.
:: Note: I'm indebted to M. Alain Marchiset, of Librairie L'intersigne, Paris, for my knowledge of Diderot's relation to this manuscript.

TO THE TEXT

::

:: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE ::


:: Pourquoi les Plantes ne seroient-elles pas de véritables Animaux?
or,
Why aren't plants, really animals? ::

:: In, Observations Physiques sur l'Agriculture, les Plantes, les Minéraux & Végétaux, &c., [Paris], 1765.

:: It is true that few of us spend - or most might even say, waste - much time on this kind of question in the course of daily life; on the other hand, Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche (1722-1774), did.
:: And his way of doing so is exactly what makes him such excellent company. In any ideal dinner-party, I would certainly include him, & personally, would want to sit as close as possible. In any attempt I might make to illustrate that it is possible to savor the pleasures and varieties of speculative thought just as intensely as those of taste or smell, he would be an inspiration and prime example.
:: Certainly he gives every impression that inquiry came to him as naturally as breathing, and that he thought things through simply because it gave him great pleasure to do so; but we should be a little cautious before concluding that this is mere idleness. For example, in his utopian novel Giphantie, published in 1760, he quite precisely imagines photography, and specifically the Daguerreotype, 79 years before its invention was announced; so perhaps the idleness is on the part of those too impatient to read things like this, who thus fail take up the clues freely offered by a such a mind, and therefore never find out what might be done with them.
:: In any event, the text transcribed here is excerpted from a book that seems to be almost completely unknown; perhaps Tiphaigne published it at his own expense, primarily for circulation among friends. It is entitled, Observations Physiques sur l'Agriculture, les Plantes, les Minéraux & Végétaux, &c.; the date is 1765; the author isn't identified, and the place of publication is given as The Hague, which of course is untrue, but indicates that Tiphaigne thought he might have said something controversial, which indeed he did, and does today.
:: Despite the generality of the title, the book in fact contains essays on only two questions; the first is, Ne reste-t-il plus d'épreuves à faire sur la nature des Vignes en Normandie, & autre pays qui ne donnent point de vin, ou en donne un sans qualité ("Aren't there still experiments to be carried out as to the nature of vines in Normandy, and in other regions that either do not yield wine at all, or yield one of no quality?"). Reasonably enough, the proper response is "yes"; in other words, we should develop new varieties suitable to such a climate.
:: The second question is, Pourquoi les Plantes ne seroient-elles pas de véritables Animaux? ("Why aren't plants, really animals?"), and the title is an example of the untranslatably tricky simplicity of Tiphaigne's prose: one could as easily say, "Why shouldn't plants be seen as truly being animals?", or, "Why aren't plants treated with the same respect we accord to animals?", and still not have it right.
:: In any case, the essence of Tiphaigne's actual question is whether plants do, or do not, have feelings; he concludes that they obviously do, and wonders only why we deny this.
:: Since we still do deny this, it's a question worth wondering about, if only to irritate our more piously vegetarian friends by the fact that we dare to ask at all. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: SWITZERLAND ::

:: The earliest description of Swiss wine-making known to me, contrasted with a composite text of only some sixty years later - but an entire world apart - by members of the Société Œconomique de Berne.
:: in,
: Emanuel Koenig, Georgica Helvetica Curiosa, das ist: Neu Curioses Eydgnossisch-Schweitzerisches Hauss-Buch, Basel, 1705/6.
: (unattributed) Traité complet sur la maniere de planter, d'élever et de cultiver la vigne, in 2 volumes, Yverdon, 1768.
: (unattributed) Encyclopédie œconomique, ou système général I. d'oeconomie rustique,…II. d'oeconomie domestique,…III. d'oeconomie politique, in 16 volumes, Yverdon, 1770-1.
: (unattributed) Articles vignes, raisins, vendanges et vins…tirés du grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, Lausanne, 1778.

::

:: Switzerland, to those not Swiss, just doesn't qualify as a land of vines. And evoking the great antiquity, complexity, and intelligence of Swiss wine-making tradition doesn't appear to help: Heidi still seems more comfortable with a cup of chocolate.
:: But, perhaps it's time to assume that she eventually grew up; and following her example, do so ourselves. Swiss wine-making tradition is ancient, complex, and intelligent: it deserves our attention, as do the following texts.
:: The first of them is the earliest description of Swiss wine-making known to me; in, Georgica Helvetica Curiosa, das ist: Neu Curioses Eydgnossisch-Schweitzerisches Hauss-Buch , written by Emanuel Koenig and published by him in Basel in 1705/6. The second is really a composite text from an era a mere 60 years later, but in human consciousness, an entire epoch removed: the Switzerland of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia, and in this case, the Société Œconomique de Berne.
:: In fact, it would be hard to imagine a more evocative illustration of what the 18th-century changed in our consciousness than to sniff and compare the taste of these two texts - or if you prefer, to compare the tonality, and then to consider what tonality says about the room it's in.
:: In the first, we are in a world Breughel could have shown us, medieval, but with Renaissance ornament, earthy and dark, where cat's eyes glow with the flames of the fire that burns within their bodies. An ancient peasant world, but alive and well in rural Switzerland to this day.
:: In the second, cats are affectionately dressed up in a chorus line to perform passe-passe at the Foire St-Germain, and a monkey beats on the drum. As between the two texts, it's as though their vineyards were illuminated by an entirely different sun.
:: The material contained in the second section is not credited to specific authors, although most of it is highly individual, and quite certainly was drawn from individual articles in the voluminous publications of the Société Œconomique de Berne. Nonetheless, as a composite treatise on Swiss wine, it soon acquired a life of its own, appearing first (to my knowledge) as an addendum (pp. 160-280) to the second volume of the Traité complet sur la maniere d'élever et de cultiver la Vigne, pubished in Yverdon in 1768. The rest of this Traité is devoted to a curious version (being a translation into French from the German translation of the original English text) of the wine-related entries in Miller's Gardener's Dictionary; but the title page notes that "on y a ajouté la maniere de cultiver la Vigne dans le Canton, tirée du recueil Oeconomique de la même Société". The anonymous editor further explains, in his preface, that "Pour me procurer les lumieres dont j'avois besoin, je n'ai eu qu'à parcourir l'excellent recueil de la louable Société économique de Berne, j'y ai trouvé une abondante & précieuse récolte, dans les mémoires donnés par MM. les Pasteurs Bertrand d'Orbe & Lereche, M. Perronet, Lieutenant de justice, le vigneron Anet, M. le Capitaine Felice & M. Bourgeois, Docteur en Médecine. J'ai rangé ces noms suivant l'ordre où je les ai vû dans le recueil, mais j'ai sur-tout eû sous les yeux celui de M. Felice qui m'a servi de canevas, & celui de M. Bourgeois, qui m'a fourni des additions, que j'ai insérées dans le texte. Ils ont eu l'un & l'autre l'approbation de l'Illustre Société."
:: So we may assume that the majority of the text is by a "Capitaine Felice", and although I have no idea who he may have been, for our current purposes it's almost more important to read this as a (highly individual) representation of Swiss wine-making practice as of the Enlightenment, and I think the approval of the Société indicates that this is a reasonable thought. Thus the great majority of the transcription that follows is taken from this source; but I have compared it with the version of the same material in the Encyclopédie Œconomique, published in Yverdon in 16 volumes, 1770/1, and have noted by means of red brackets ([]) many passages where the two versions differ. This second version of the text, with additions, itself appeared later in book form under the title, Articles vignes, raisins, vendanges et vins…tirés du grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique…, published in Lausanne in 1778. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: BOISDESCOURT, Capitaine d'Artillerie ::

:: Bibliothèque du Cultivateur et de l'Artiste (manuscript, n.d., n.p., but France, ca. 1770) ::

:: A complete treatise on vineyards and wine-making, from an original but previously unpublished French manuscript of the eighteenth century. (In French)

:: In 1996, I purchased an 18th-century French manuscript from the great London bookdealer, Bernard Quaritch, Ltd. It is an encylopedic work of some 2060 pages, in three volumes, entitled Bibliothèque du Cultivateur et de l'Artiste. Although clearly intended to be published, it never was, and all we can hope to surmise of its author stems from a inscription on the first page of Volume 1: "par Boisdescourt|Capte D'Artillerie," and from a few hints scattered within the text itself. The body of the text is in a single hand throughout, but with occasional notations & minor additions in at least two other hands, seemingly contemporary, as though by friends or family of the author. The attribution to "Boisdescourt Capitaine d'Artillerie" is in one of these hands, and I see no reason to doubt it, particularly since the author of the body of the text refers, in a crossed-out passage on page 1327, to the fact that his manuscript "...sort de la plume d'un vieux caporal reduit à l'eau depuis plus de quatre ans." ["issues from the pen of an old corporal, reduced, for more than four years now, to drinking water"].
:: In any event, whoever the author was - and I don't personally doubt that it was Boisdescourt - I find it impossible not to have a great affection for him, which is why I'm very pleased to publish, even if some 230 years too late, at least a part of his work. He was a man who embodied what I think of the 18th century, which is that it was possibly the last general era when people of good will thought they might actually prevail; since then, we have less thought that than hoped it, and with a certain lack of optimism which our history has confirmed beyond the wildest nightmares of pessimism, or hopes of conservatism.
:: An excerpt from his introduction to the work expresses his purpose, in translation:

:: The troubles that presently afflict Europe will cease one day, peace will be reborn, and men, drawn by a long series of misfortunes back to true principles, will be shamed to have disregarded them. Agriculture alone will be able to return abundance to their midst. They will sense the need to devote themselves to it, and will desire to do so, whether by necessity, by reason, or by fashion. Those indeed least concerned with agriculture in other times, will be obliged to return to it to supply their most essential needs; thus, all that pertains to this art will be of interest, after so long a series of misfortunes. It is according to these reflections that I have undertaken this work. I have profited from some moments of leisure to reunite, in the smallest framework possible, all that is useful in agriculture, particularly for those who until now have not been given to it.
[…]
:: I do not pretend to say anything new in this work. All that I have said is written, is in daily practice, and has been for a very long time. But it is all dispersed, mixed with other purposes in a great number of books both costly and difficult to transport. Thus I have had no other goal, I repeat, than to unite in a small format as inexpensive as it is portable, the principles and practices of an agriculture shed of all that is foreign to it, and of all such baggage of pretended marvels as serves only to fatten books and satisfy the pride of the fop that publishes them. To take the seeds and seedlings of all in horticulture that can yield in a temperate climate, confide these to the earth, cultivate them, make them grow, to give to each what experience has shown that it requires, to prepare them for our own use, or to supply merchants or craftsmen; this, then, is my primary goal.

:: As for my own purpose, it has been simply to transcribe, as meticulously as possible, the sections of his Bibliothèque that relate to viticulture and wine-making. While I would love to profit from enough of Boisdescourt's "moments of leisure" to haved prepared a complete translation, this hasn't happened yet, and perhaps it's just as well not to envy him; I suspect he's being ironic, & was a prisoner of war at the time.
:: So I'm afraid the following text will be useful only to those who read French. What they will find is a useful document, not because Boisdescourt was a innovator of genius, but rather because he succeeds in his objective, which in this part of the text, was to present in a brief but thorough treatment of the [northern French] viticulture and wine-making of his era. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: LOUIS-FRANÇOIS de CALONNE ::

:: Essais d'Agriculture, en Forme d'Entretiens; Paris, 1775 ::

:: Les vendanges Parisiennes de 1775, en cinéma-vérité. Emerging from beneath the asphalt of Vitry-sur-Seine, the most charming and complete account of an 18th-century wine harvest known to me. (In French)

:: Each archæology must have its magic moment, when the pick breaks through the last bit of rubble, and suddenly the depiction of an entire lost world stands revealed, as freshly alive as the day it was painted. This is true of the archæology of texts as well, and the excerpt that follows is a wonderful example of that.
:: To a Californian, it is as though we had an account, in full Early California Costume, of the idyllic vintage of, say, 1856 in downtown Los Angeles, when far more than half of the wine produced in the state came from vineyards in what is now the decaying stucco wasteland of east-central LA, the terroir mostly of Crips & Bloods. It's a little hard to visualize that, for example, "To the southwest of Central Avenue and Seventh Street was the vineyard of Charles Kohler and John Frohling…" - [or ] - "Jean-Louis Vignes'…35-acre vineyard, the Aliso, extended south of Aliso Street from Los Angeles Street to the river" - [or] - [to give west LA its due] - "Sanchez, a native of California, owned the 4,000 acre Rancho La Cienega Paso de la Tijera, near Culver City…" - [or] - "He owned 110 acres extending from the present Washington Street to Pico and from Main to Grand Avenue" - etc.
:: But that's another history; here, we're talking about Paris; and from beneath the asphalt and concrete of Vitry-sur-Seine (an industrial suburb of Paris, where at this point the "chief products are lighting and heating equipment and chemicals", as the Columbia Encylopedia rather tactfully puts it), what emerges is unquestionably the most charming, detailed, and immediate portrayal of an 18th-century wine harvest known to me.
:: It is the work of Louis-François de Calonne. We wouldn't even know his given names except that, near the end of the book, in a touchingly modest but firm declaration of loss, he transcribes the text of his wife's gravestone, where his name appears simply because he was her husband. The same inscription tells us essentially the rest of what I know about him, that he was "avocat au Parlement, juge du bailliage de Vitry".
:: He wrote his book for the same reason that Brillat-Savarin, another lawyer, wrote his a generation later: both were amateurs in the best and most literal sense, and each wrote simply because he loved his subject and enjoyed writing about it. But although the two authors uncannily resembled each other in so many other respects, even to the fact that each published his book for pleasure & at his own expense, they differ supremely in the fame that their books achieved. Brillat-Savarin's is the most famous single text in the history of gastronomy; de Calonne's is absolutely unknown. Only two copies are recorded in the world's libraries, and even these are wrongly ascribed to a "Claude-François de Calonne, 1714-1793", whoever that may have been.
:: Of course, the title didn't help: Essays on Agriculture in the Form of Conversations. In addition to provoking more fatigue than electricity, it's slightly misleading: de Calonne wasn't interested in agriculture in some general and theoretical way, he was fascinated by the skills of his rural neighbors. So, truly exemplary juge du bailliage de Vitry that I imagine he must have been, he studied their work with great attention, questioned them closely about every detail, thought carefully about why they did what they did in the way that they did it; and then presented his conclusions.
:: Part of what they did was vineyard work & wine-making; but about this, clearly, he'd asked his questions long before; by the time he came to write, he knew what he was talking about, because he'd been doing it himself, on his own land, for years.
:: And the form he chose for his presentation of wine-making contributes greatly to the wonder of his success, not because it is graceful as a literary conceit - it could hardly be less so - but because it is so immediate. He, de Calonne, is "Oronte", who leads a friend, "Licidas", on what we would now call a winery tour in the middle of crush. Licidas asks all sorts of questions about what is going on, and Oronte answers him, and as they go from one stage to the next, they even talk about what they see, just as though they're talking for the benefit of the camera in a sort of cinéma-vérité documentary, except that it's the Parisian vintage of 1775! I don't know of anything else even vaguely like it.
:: Anyway, if someone should now ask me what I thought was the most vivid and immediate documentary account of 18th-century French wine-making - the account that would most completely put the modern reader right there in the middle of the process while it was happening - this would be it, without question.
:: Some notes:
:: 1. As a California wine-maker, I deeply resent that I have never yet made wine from grapes harvested by 36 singing French girls in 18th-century costume, n'y respirent que la joie. Things are distinctly different here.
:: 2. De Calonne is wonderfully complete in his description of how his vendangeuses are paid, what they are given to eat & drink, and generally how the details of the harvest - and for that matter of the ban de vendanges - are conducted, information nearly impossible to come by elsewhere.
:: 3. His details of wine-making are completely credible and obviously individual. He believes in overnight skin contact for his whites, for example, although he says most don't; he feels it produces, in his own case, a better wine. He uses a teinturier to color his reds, for another example, so that he can achieve a decent color without - in such northerly grapes - incurring hardness from too intense a maceration. Or another "secret", which I've never seen elsewhere, is that to encourage fermentation in a wet, cold, and unripe year, rye flowers should be added to the must; in other words, when fields of rye bloomed in the early summer, de Calonne would gather the flowers as they were about to drop, dry them in the shade, and save them to revive his stuck fermentations. I haven't tried it; but I admire him: this is a man who pays attention to details, and since both God and the devil are said to be in them, they're important.
:: Which is very much why, in Vitry, they should pay attention to the details of honoring this modest and attentive man, who so persuasively loved the details of what Vitry once was. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: [Author unknown] ::

:: Xeres ::

:: the earliest description known to me of the growing and making of sherry ::

:: Xeres, anglicized as sherry, is certainly the best-known, possibly the least accurately understood, and arguably the most distinctive of all Spanish wines. Its origins are, as usual, unrecorded; but there is no reason wine couldn't have been made in Jerez de la Frontera by the Phœnicians.
:: Also as usual, there is remarkably little early documentary evidence for how it was grown and made. The account that follows is the earliest known to me, and appears to be unknown to scholars, which is why it's here. Since it isn't all that long, I've transcribed it in its entirety.
:: The author does not identify himself; he was an Italian "sojourning" in Jerez, obviously admired the local product, & wrote this account of it in the hope it might help improve Italian wine-making. It was first separately published in 1780 in Venice as, Memoria sulla coltura delle viti in Ispagna, e la maniera come si fa il vino. Si aggiunge un discorso del celebre signor Antonio Matani di Pistoia sulla conservazione de'vini, although it also appeared as an appendix to the fourth edition of Cosimo Trinci's L'Agricoltore Sperimentato, in 1779, & no doubt elsewhere.
:: Interestingly, what he tells us doesn't seem to me to indicate a "sherry" all that different then from what it is now, as opposed to so many other wines of earlier eras, which, although still made today under the same name as their ancestors, otherwise barely resemble them.
:: On the other hand, it doesn't seem all that clear to our author just what it is about wine-making in Jerez that separates it from nearly all other wine-making traditions; namely, the deliberate encouragement of both oxidation & the formation of flor surface yeast.
:: He merely notes that they don't do much to take care of wine once it's in barrels, often leaving them open & not completely full.
:: Indeed; and even in the literature of sherry today, the brilliance of sherry as a wine-making invention, isn't really discussed. No; what matters really is what owners own, namely land, as opposed to what artisans do, which in this case is to make wine, and in this case, to invent a great wine by intentionally employing, as the essence of the process, what would normally be among the worst results of carelessness, namely, oxidation & the formation of flor surface yeast.
:: That is a great invention of Spanish human beings, not Spanish geology; and it is great not simply because the wine is so delicious, but because, since it used the defects that usually ruined wine as the essence of what actually made this particular wine so delicious, it meant that sherry was nearly exempt from damage in transit.
:: Being so, it became for centuries one of the most important of all Spanish exports, and the source of immense wealth for those who owned the process. One might have hoped, if one did not know the nature of those who control the sources of immense wealth, for a nod to those who made it possible; but there isn't even a word for them in Spanish.
:: The word is, "wine-maker". ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: [Author unknown] ::

:: Dialogues françois et italiens, à l'usage de ceux qui se piquent de parler le pur Toscan. Manuscript, n.p, n.d., but Paris, c.1780 ::

:: Brilliantly observed vignettes of Parisian life by a master of satire: a true comédie humaine, but to my knowledge, completely unknown and previously unpublished. (In French & Italian)

:: Paris has always rewarded her lovers with the pleasures of her streets, the profligate daily richness of a comédie humaine the very idea of which was invented as an attempt to describe those particular and most wordly of her many charms.
:: What follows is a contribution to that literature of well-alloyed pleasures, by an author about whom I know nothing but what can be inferred from the manuscript itself. My catalogue entry for it is as follows:
:: "[Author unknown]. Dialogues François et Italiens, à l'usage de ceux qui se piquent de parler le pur Toscan. Manuscript on paper, French, ca. 1780, but could be dated more accurately from internal references to fashion. Folio, unnumbered leaves, 4 ff. blank, 346 ff., 6 ff. blank. Written throughout in a single quite legible cursive hand in ink on recto of each leaf only, verso blank but for very occasional corrections & additions, text divided in two columns, totalling 150 dialogues in 8 'cahiers', French in the left column, Italian in the right. In splendid condtion internally, untrimmed; original thick paper boards, no cover on spine but binding cords completely intact."
:: Already we know that this is someone with an ear (e.g., se piquent de parler) for language, which is just as well, since the obvious practical purpose of the book was to serve as a text for Parisiens who wanted to learn Italian, thus, written by someone who wanted to teach them. But, this being the late 18th-century, I believe he was quite clear that his students needed to be kept amused to be kept as students; and what better to amuse them, than the amusements of the Paris they were already in? What better to amuse us than a Paris we shall never see, but lives on in this text as alive as the day it was written, and as fresh as wit itself?
:: In my opinion, it is a minor masterpiece, at the very least; extremely funny, cynical, bittersweet, ironic, brilliantly observed, and with a love of idiom and slang that is, as least for me, an inexhaustible source of pleasure just in itself.
:: Rescuing such pleasures is the entire purpose of this site. If you can read these few excerpts without laughing, it's possible you should be in them. ::

TO THE TEXT

::

:: Barthélemy Louis Reboul ::

:: Bordeaux ::

:: Barthélemy Louis Reboul was Avocat au Parlement, de l'Académie des Belles Lettres, Sciences & Arts de Marseille, [and] Secrétaire perpétuel de la Société d' Agriculture de Provence, all of which I know only because it says so on the title page of his book; in fact, I know nothing about him that cannot be inferred from the book itself.
:: The book itself is entitled, Observations sur l'Agriculture, et particuliérement sur les objets qui peuvent être plus propres à la Provence, données en 177…, and was published in Aix-en-Provence by Antoine David in 1785.
:: Not too surprisingly, the agricultural objects M. Reboul found to be of particular interest to Provence were wine and olives. Thus, grapes and wine occupy the first 74 pages of the book, olives another 103. The section on grapes and wine is of sufficient interest to our knowledge of wine-making in Provence, and certainly of sufficient rarity, that I'd like to transcribe it in its entirety; but that's going to take some time.
:: In the meanwhile, the addendum which concludes it is really something of entirely separate interest anyway, since it recounts what must have been a "fact-finding mission", as American politicians would put it, that M. Reboul undertook to find out how they did things in Bordeaux.
:: From internal references, this could have happened no later than the early 1770's, and that alone would make it interesting. In fact, I know of only one printed description of viticulture and wine-making in Bordeaux that is earlier, and that, by "M. de Navarre de l'Académie des Sciences de Bordeaux," is almost equally unknown. Nor do I know of another copy of Reboul's book; nor is it cited in any bibliography known to me.
:: All this rarity seems vaguely stupid; at least, there's no reason I can see for it. But while we wait for other copies to emerge, the fact remains that what appears to be one of the two earliest printed description of wine-making in Bordeaux, really does seem to be completely unknown; and that, of course, is why I'm publishing it here.::

TO THE TEXT