France: Modern history

The social turmoil of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century made few important changes to the patterns of wine production (although it did engender an entirely new class of consumers, and new styles of restauration for them). Until the middle of the 19th century, the vine was cultivated much more widely in France than it is today, and such now-abandoned areas as, for example, the Côtes d’auvergne on the Massif Central, Paris, and the moselle were flourishing wine regions. As communications improved, the patterns of the wine trade changed, although Bordeaux continued to operate with a certain degree of autonomy, thanks to its geographical position and long-established trading links with northern Europe, first england and then the dutch wine trade. The 17th and 18th centuries saw an explosion of interest in wine production in the Gironde, and by the mid 19th century, when the world’s most famous wine classification was formalized at a magnificent exhibition in Paris, the great châteaux of the médoc were enjoying a period of prosperity that would not be rivalled until the 1980s. Wine continued to be important to the Burgundian economy, and French wine was recognized throughout the civilized world as one of the cornerstones of civilization itself. chaptal had devised ways of improving overall wine quality (for adulteration and fraud was rife in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution), and France was beginning to produce its own wine experts such as the widely travelled and independently minded jullien. A historian might say that a catastrophe to end this golden age was inevitable.