France: Monastic influence

Monasteries had their own vineyards (see monks and monasteries and burgundy), and so, often, did cathedrals. From the Carolingian era onwards, lay viticulture generally used the system of ‘complant’, which meant that a wine-grower would approach an owner of uncultivated land with an offer to plant it for him. Since it takes about five years for new vines to start yielding a decent quantity of fruit, the grower would be given that length of time to work the vineyard; after that, half the land would revert to the owner, while the vines on the other half would become the possession of the grower, on condition that part of the harvest, or sometimes a monetary payment, be given every year in perpetuity. The Loire wine quarts de chaume, for instance, owes its name to the complant mode of ownership and production: the quart, or fourth, being the share the vigneron owed the landowner (in 1440, the Abbey of Ronceray d’Angers); chaume meaning an uncultivated plot that is to be planted with vines. As labour grew more expensive, the conditions became more favourable to the grower: in the course of the 13th century, the owner would often no longer reclaim the half of his property, but the grower, and his children and his children’s children after him, would continue to make their annual payments in wine or money. The system made it possible for wild country to be colonized and cultivated at no expense to the landowner: in this way, the new wine-growing region of Poitou (see la rochelle) was planted so efficiently in the 12th and 13th centuries. The advantage to the grower was that he was not a serf, tied to the land, but a free man, entitled to a large share of what he produced. It was therefore in his interest to make wine for which he could get a good price; nevertheless the owner exercised ultimate control, for the decision how and with what grapes to plant the vineyard was his, and he had the right to terminate the contract and evict the vigneron if the wine was not good enough.