Philip’s subjects gave up on the capricious pinot noir altogether and massively planted the new vine. This marvel was called the gamay.
But the peasants’ logic was not the same as Philip’s. Where they saw more wine for less work, he saw this overproductive intruder as a mortal danger to Burgundy’s most prestigious product—and, it must be conceded, he was right. Centuries of practice had already shown that the pinot noir vine and the Burgundy terroir were perfectly suited to each other. The gamay certainly did fulfill its promise by delivering large quantities of juice, but its wedding with the soil and climate of Burgundy was not a happy one: the quality simply was not there. Bitter, acid and thin when compared to the great depth and character of the best pinots, the wines descended from this interloper were hardly any better than those of the vineyards of Paris and Île-de-France up north. If allowed to continue, the gamay grape could destroy Burgundy’s reputation for producing the finest wine in Christendom. Philip acted with the swift dispatch of the true medieval despot, and simply ordered the gamay to disappear. Reluctantly, dragging their feet, the Burgundian wine growers obeyed; in due course, Philip’s duchy became virtually gamay-free all the way down to Mâcon.
The land around Mâcon and south, the present Beaujolais, was, then as today, included within the administrative boundaries of Burgundy, but the humiliating truth was this: apparently it was just of no consequence as far as Philip was concerned. Its population was no more than a set of primitive, hill-dwelling peasants, and the wine production there was only occasional, limited to a few fields around a few rural townships. Let them have their gamay. But Philip’s eradication program had a strong and lasting effect for the descendants of these hill dwellers. Like a skillfully orchestrated press campaign, his diatribe launched a persistent and grossly inaccurate canard that continues to have life today still: the assertion that the clear-juiced gamay grape can make only second-rate wines. What the duke could not know was that there was a terroir quite nearby that was just awaiting marriage with the gamay to prove him wrong: the clay, crushed granite and limestone in and around les monts du Beaujolais.
There was no official certificate, no opening ceremony; the wedding just sort of happened. The Romans had been planting gamay vines as early as the third century A.D. on the hills around Lyon, and the practice moved gradually northward by simple emulation, slowed down by the usual vicissitudes of wars, invasions, backslidings and bungles. As a result, Professor Gilbert Garrier of the University of Lyon, the most knowledgeable and prolific historical expert on matters of Beaujolais wines, dates the true beginning of the region’s wine commerce as a separate entity to much more recent times than the Languedoc, Bordeaux or Burgundian wine fields: the early seventeenth century. By then, he writes, the general pattern of Beaujolais peasant life had begun shifting from cattle and subsistence farming to the new hybrid units of self-sufficient family farms with attached vineyards. The gamay grape—the black-skinned, clear-juiced gamay, to be specific—had finally found the terroir where it performed best. From that time onward, right up to the present, there has never been any other red wine grape for the Beaujolais.
Beaujolais is gamay, and it can be said with some justice that gamay is Beaujolais, because this is its true home. Certainly there are gamay vineyards elsewhere in France, notably in the Ardèche region south of Lyon and in the Loire Valley, and some plantings abroad (Switzerland, Italy, Australia, South Africa), but of the eighty thousand or so acres of gamay growing worldwide, fifty-five thousand are located within this little vinous rectangle lying between Lyon and Mâcon, and nowhere else does the little black grape express itself so
But the peasants’ logic was not the same as Philip’s. Where they saw more wine for less work, he saw this overproductive intruder as a mortal danger to Burgundy’s most prestigious product—and, it must be conceded, he was right. Centuries of practice had already shown that the pinot noir vine and the Burgundy terroir were perfectly suited to each other. The gamay certainly did fulfill its promise by delivering large quantities of juice, but its wedding with the soil and climate of Burgundy was not a happy one: the quality simply was not there. Bitter, acid and thin when compared to the great depth and character of the best pinots, the wines descended from this interloper were hardly any better than those of the vineyards of Paris and Île-de-France up north. If allowed to continue, the gamay grape could destroy Burgundy’s reputation for producing the finest wine in Christendom. Philip acted with the swift dispatch of the true medieval despot, and simply ordered the gamay to disappear. Reluctantly, dragging their feet, the Burgundian wine growers obeyed; in due course, Philip’s duchy became virtually gamay-free all the way down to Mâcon.
The land around Mâcon and south, the present Beaujolais, was, then as today, included within the administrative boundaries of Burgundy, but the humiliating truth was this: apparently it was just of no consequence as far as Philip was concerned. Its population was no more than a set of primitive, hill-dwelling peasants, and the wine production there was only occasional, limited to a few fields around a few rural townships. Let them have their gamay. But Philip’s eradication program had a strong and lasting effect for the descendants of these hill dwellers. Like a skillfully orchestrated press campaign, his diatribe launched a persistent and grossly inaccurate canard that continues to have life today still: the assertion that the clear-juiced gamay grape can make only second-rate wines. What the duke could not know was that there was a terroir quite nearby that was just awaiting marriage with the gamay to prove him wrong: the clay, crushed granite and limestone in and around les monts du Beaujolais.
There was no official certificate, no opening ceremony; the wedding just sort of happened. The Romans had been planting gamay vines as early as the third century A.D. on the hills around Lyon, and the practice moved gradually northward by simple emulation, slowed down by the usual vicissitudes of wars, invasions, backslidings and bungles. As a result, Professor Gilbert Garrier of the University of Lyon, the most knowledgeable and prolific historical expert on matters of Beaujolais wines, dates the true beginning of the region’s wine commerce as a separate entity to much more recent times than the Languedoc, Bordeaux or Burgundian wine fields: the early seventeenth century. By then, he writes, the general pattern of Beaujolais peasant life had begun shifting from cattle and subsistence farming to the new hybrid units of self-sufficient family farms with attached vineyards. The gamay grape—the black-skinned, clear-juiced gamay, to be specific—had finally found the terroir where it performed best. From that time onward, right up to the present, there has never been any other red wine grape for the Beaujolais.
Beaujolais is gamay, and it can be said with some justice that gamay is Beaujolais, because this is its true home. Certainly there are gamay vineyards elsewhere in France, notably in the Ardèche region south of Lyon and in the Loire Valley, and some plantings abroad (Switzerland, Italy, Australia, South Africa), but of the eighty thousand or so acres of gamay growing worldwide, fifty-five thousand are located within this little vinous rectangle lying between Lyon and Mâcon, and nowhere else does the little black grape express itself so
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