Tag: Volnay

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On Wine and Gender: A Critical History

Heidi Klum as both Sophia Loren & Jayne Mansfield. Mark Seliger, 2002.

This is the third and final article on Wine and Gender. The first, on femininity and wine, is here. The second, on masculinity and wine, is here.

WHEN in history did we begin calling wines masculine or feminine?

Prior to wine magazines and the modern tasting note, there was no regularly printed forum dedicated to the aromatic virtues of a wine. However, history still holds several texts that speak critically of specific wines, grapes, and regions — primordial tasting notes, if you will.

From the 1st century to the 20th, often in keeping with Galenic medicine, these texts speak most often of healthfulness (conflating it with goodness or quality). They gauge a wine’s roughness, its color, and they are obsessed with ageworthiness. But there is no trace of gender.

Here’s a typical note from Pliny the Elder’s 1st century AD Natural History: “The people of Dyrrhachium hold in high esteem the vine known as the “basilica,” the same which in Spain is called the “cocolobis.” (…) The sweeter the cocolobis is, the more it is valued; but even if it has a rough taste, the wine will become sweet by keeping, while, on the other hand, that which was sweet at first, will acquire a certain roughness; it is in this last state that the wine is thought to rival that of Alba. It is said that the juice of this grape is remarkably efficacious when drunk as a specific for diseases of the bladder.”

Fast forward to a 1785 source, Dissertation sur la situation de la Bourgogne, searching for traces of wine and gender, and very little has changed. The French author, Claude Arnoux, is sourcing French wine for English royalty. Behold as Arnoux sees no need to characterize Chambertin as masculine, nor Volnay or Savigny as feminine (what follows is my translation): (Click to Read more)

Burgundy vs. Champagne: An 18th Century Flame War

Is this the earliest recorded flame war between wine geeks?

A searing debate raged in France from the mid-17th to mid-18th century between the Universities of Reims and Paris.

Guy-Crescent Fagon, Royal Physician, and Louis XIV.
Guy-Crescent Fagon, Royal Physician, and Louis XIV, his patient.

It all started with a change in Louis XIV’s Royal Physician in 1693.  The previous Royal Physician, Antoine d’Aquin, was a fervent promoter of the wines of Champagne.

The new Royal Physician, Guy-Crescent Fagon, made clear there would be no more Champagne, and that it would instead be Burgundy that would be used as a vehicle while administering quinquina infusions to Louis XIV 1En 1679, Robert Talbor visita la France et l’Espagne. En France, il eut l’opportunité de guérir le Dauphin d’un accès de fièvre et traita avec succès d’autres éminentes personnalités. Ces résultats lui attirèrent les faveurs de Louis XIV qui, moyennant une forte somme d’argent et la garantie d’une pension annuelle, obtint de lui la composition de sa recette. Le secret tenait essentiellement dans l’administration de fortes doses d’écorce de quinquina infusée dans du vin et dans le renouvellement régulier des prises. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/guibourt/exposition_guibourt_1.htm. You may recognize quinquina, or chicona bark, as a source of quinine — a modern day ingredient of tonic water and a whole host of liqueurs, which has retained its reputation as a treatment for fever and malaria.

Bag for cinchona bark, Peru, 1777-1785 Wellcome L0058857; Drug jar for cinchona bark, Italy, 1701-1730 Wellcome L0057626.
Bag for cinchona bark, Peru, 1777-1785 Wellcome L0058857; Drug jar for cinchona bark, Italy, 1701-1730 Wellcome L0057626.

Fagon was seeking to remedy Louis XIV’s fevers 2https://cour-de-france.fr/article1531.html?lang=fr. And once Monsieur Fagon had pushed Champagne off the royal table, each town’s university medical department became engaged in a century-long battle to prove — trading blows, via graduate theses — whether the wines of Burgundy or the wines of Champagne (which were not yet sparkling) were superior.

And it got really dirty, really quick. (Click to Read more)