Inside the book

Six chapters follow Bordeaux wine from vineyard to cellar: the vine-growing districts of the Bordelais; the fragmentation and leasing of vineyard holdings; grape varieties and the year's vineyard work; the harvest; and the practical business of vinification, cellars, vats, pressing, and the different qualities of wine that resulted. Barennes opens his chapter on vinification by admitting plainly that the documentary record for actual winemaking technique is thin, arguing that the sources' silence on procedures such as fining suggests that cellar practice remained comparatively rudimentary. A final chapter follows the storage and transport of wine in casks, pipes, and barriques, and the coopers who made them. A documentary appendix, Documents concernant la viticulture en Bordelais au Moyen Age (Documents concerning viticulture in the Bordelais during the Middle Ages), reproduces primary texts in Latin, Gascon, and French. Among them are a notarial release dated by the reign of Edward, eldest son of Edward III of England, as Prince of Aquitaine, and a Bénédiction de la Vigne (Blessing of the Vine), a liturgical blessing transcribed from a Bordeaux diocesan ritual that itself records an older exemplar. A preface by J.-A. Brutails, archivist of the Gironde departmental archives, opens the book, followed by an extensive bibliography and list of manuscript sources drawing on the Archives départementales de la Gironde, several Médoc château archives, the Archives Nationales, and the Bibliothèque Nationale.