Les Vins de Bordeaux
CHF 222.00
Sale price
CHF 222.00
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The embryo of a pamphlet destined for wide circulation, with a curious handwritten note.
Chasteigner, Paul de (V.te P. de C.)
Les Vins de Bordeaux
Guide pratique des gens du monde pour le choix, l'usage et la conservation des vins de table
1867, Bordeaux, Émile Crugy
First Edition
CHF 222.00
Sale price
CHF 222.00
Regular price
Overview
In 8vo. Pp. [1] f.e., 31, [1] r.e.
Published anonymously by a provincial Bordeaux press in 1867, under nothing more than the author's initials, this slender 31-page first edition is the seed of a text that would grow fourfold in six years. By its fourth edition of 1873 it had reached Paris under Chasteigner's full name, with a preface by Charles Monselet, the leading gastronomic writer of Second Empire Paris, a frontispiece by Ch. Donzel, and a dedicatory sonnet to the now very public author. Chasteigner was no professional man of letters but a vineyard owner at Bourg-en-Gironde, writing from direct experience of the world he describes: how to buy without being cheated, taste without prejudice, serve a proper Bordeaux dinner, and even warm a bottle correctly on a winter evening. He closes his case with two thousand years of borrowed authority (Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, the Bordeaux-born Ausonius, and a chorus of Church Fathers, with Solomon himself) marshalled in defense of moderate drinking. This copy carries two small, telling traces of its own working life: an ink addition to the wrapper naming the author's district, as though an early owner already knew which Chasteigner stood behind the initials, and a single pencilled word beside the discussion of the nose, evidence of a reader actually using the little guide at the table it describes. This first edition is unrecorded by both Vicaire and Simon.
Inside the book
General considerations and hygienic advice open the book, with quotations from Pliny and Dr. Artaud's De la Vigne. Wine is presented as a "medicinal food": reds are more nourishing and slower to assimilate, whites more rapidly absorbed, stimulating, and diuretic. Its uses in convalescence and illness, contraindications, and even external applications follow, while Bordeaux's tonic reputation is attributed to an iron salt in its composition. Practical advice recommends that buyers specify only price, intended use, and a preference for lighter Graves or fuller Côtes, leaving the choice to the shipper. Dégustation (Tasting) treats tasting as a learned discipline: fine Bordeaux from a cold cellar may need fifteen minutes in the glass to reveal itself. Chasteigner also considers warming bottles in winter, the effects of food on the palate, decanting, and the treatment of opened bottles. Ordre de service des vins à table (Order of serving wines at the table) maps out a formal dinner, from Xérès or dry Madeira after soup and white Graves or Sauternes with oysters, through young Bordeaux and the great growths, to Tokay, Constance, Shiraz, or Cyprus with pastries and chilled Champagne last. The concluding Le vin et la sagesse des nations (Wine and the wisdom of nations) gathers praise of moderate drinking from Pindar, Euripides, Plato, Cicero, the Church Fathers, and King Solomon. The volume closes with French wine proverbs from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, an Italian proverb, and a printer's tailpiece.
Condition
Original wrappers, with light signs of wear. Manuscript ink addition to the front wrapper, "dans le Bourgeais!", added after the author's monogram and "propriétaire de vignobles"; curious pencil marginal note, "le nez" (the nose), at p. 17, beside the text's own phrase for the organ of smell. Fine.
Dimensions (inches): 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 x 1/8
Why La Fenice likes it
From anonymous wine guide to a gastronome's blessing: this modest 1867 pamphlet grew fourfold by 1873, when Charles Monselet supplied its preface. But our favorite evidence is smaller: a reader's pencilled "le nez" (the nose) beside the text's phrase for the organ of smell, making us imagine the little book open on the table, glass in hand, its advice being put to the test.
About the author
Vte Paul de Chasteigner (b. 1827), brother of Alexis de Chasteigner (1821-1900), belonged to the old Chasteigner family, also recorded as Chasteigner de La Rocheposay.
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