The longest reign in history"The wines of Burgundy have the longest history of any," says Raymond Dumay. The great wine-growing regions of the ancient world – Falernum, Askalon, Shiraz... where are they now? But Burgundy has held its place for twenty centuries.Much longer than that, in fact, because geology has its part to play. It has taken from 200 to 250 million years to shape the land and create its soils and sub-soils out of the floor of a shallow sea, scattered with many islands. Even before the inhabitants of what is now Burgundy had learnt to drink wine, it played a part in their culture. One of the largest and finest Greek wine-vases ever found (though it never contained any wine) turned up in a princely grave at Vix, which lies on the tin-traders' route between Britain and the Mediterranean. Dating from the 6th century BC, it is now in the museum at Châtillon-sur-Seine. Contacts with Rome Vine and wine reached Burgundy from Italy. Early contacts between the Burgundy and Rome go back to around 400 BC when a surprise Gaulish attack on the Roman Capitol was thwarted by Rome's sacred geese acting as sentries. Some of the invaders later settled in the area between Milan and Lake Como, where they remained for several centuries before succumbing, one supposes, to home sickness and heading back to Gaul taking the vine and the secrets of its cultivation with them.We don't know exactly when this happened. What we know for certain is that vineyards were in existence in Burgundy in the first half of the first century AD. Columella, a Roman writer on agriculture, and Strabo, the Greek geographer who died around 24 AD, both mention them. (Though often quoted, edicts by the Roman emperors Domitian in 92 AD and Probus in 281 AD aren't relevant to Burgundy. The first relates only to the Midi and the second to central Europe.) The "Discourse" of Eumenes In the year 312, Eumenes, a member of the Gallo-Roman élite and President of the University of Autun (Augustodunum), addressed a petition concerning taxation to the Emperor Constantine. It contains the earliest description of the Beaune vineyards.Though Autun was the principal town at the time, it is clear that clear that its upper classes were more interested in the land around Beaune as a place to grow their vines rather than the nearby Morvan district. And at the end of the 6th century, the bishop-historian Gregory of Tours, describes Dijon surrounded by vineyards. Wine amphorae from Italy and Spain, found in plenty at sites such as Alesia and Bibracte, are evidence that wine was supplanting beer among the Celts. Then a Gaulish invention displaced the amphora – wooden barrels filled with local (as opposed to imported) wine. And we have abundant archaeological evidence from the 11th century onwards of the importance of wine in the districts of Beaune, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Auxerre and Mâcon. |  |
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