Published 2006
Charlemagne’s name is associated by modern wine drinkers with one of the greatest white burgundies, Corton-Charlemagne (whose vineyards include a plot known as Le Charlemagne), produced on land he gave to the Abbey of Saulieu in 775 (see aloxe-corton for more detail). Charlemagne’s secretary and biographer Einhard tells us, however, that Charlemagne was a moderate man: he never drank more than three cups of wine with dinner, and he hated to see people drunk (Life of Charlemagne, ch. 24). Only a temperate man is truly interested in wine: when he renamed the 12 months of the year in his native language, he called October ‘windume-manoth’, the month of the wine harvest (Einhard, ch. 28)—which was presumably true of the vineyards then established in parts of northern Europe considered too cool for viable wine production today.
Advertisement
Advertisement