I try to answer why is it that the British love Bordeaux wines, and they call them claret. Red Bordeaux is called claret. It’s a very long tradition, and people have often said this is an example of British taste and culture. Well, of course, it isn’t. It’s an example of tariff policies for 400 years.
When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II in France — for those of you who remember the movie The Lion in Winter with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole — everything that came out of Bordeaux was tax-free to Britain because of this marriage, because Eleanor of Aquitaine was French and came essentially from Bordeaux, and so all Bordeaux products went to Britain tax-free. As a result, the British developed an enormous liking for this wine.
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/fareed-zakaria/
That’s from Fareed Zakaria’s lovely conversation with Tyler Cowen, and there is a lot else there to unpack and think about. But I hadn’t known this particular story, and reading about it took me down a lovely little rabbit hole of factoids and “huh!” moments.
First of course, is the fact that incentives matter! Claret is a word you will come across sooner or later if you read enough of British literature from a particular era – and it turns out that at least part of the reason for it’s popularity is simply the fact (as Fareed Zakaria points out) that this wine was cheaper to drink because there was no tax on it!
Although domestically popular, French wine was seldom exported, as the areas covered by vineyards and the volume of wine produced was low. In the 12th century however, the popularity of Bordeaux wines increased dramatically following the marriage of Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor d’Aquitaine. The marriage made the province of Aquitaine English territory, and thenceforth the majority of Bordeaux claret was exported in exchange for other goods. Upon the ascension of their son, Richard, to the English throne Bordeaux became the base for Richard’s French operations.
As the popularity of Bordeaux wine increased, the vineyards expanded to accommodate the demands from abroad. Henry and Aliénor’s youngest son, John, was in favor of promoting the wine industry, and to increase it further, abolished the Grande Coutume export tax to England from the Aquitaine region. In the 13th and 14th century, a code of business practices called the police des vins emerged to give Bordeaux wine a distinct trade advantage over its neighboring regions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bordeaux_wine
How to stop reading a completely random Wikipedia article? Or is the correct question to ask this one: why should one stop reading a completely random Wikipedia article? This particular article, about the history of Bordeaux wine, also contained this line:
“In 1855, a classification system was set up that ranked the top chateaus of the Médoc according to their market price.”
That inspired a random series of Google searches (random Google searches is what I was born to do), culminating in I discovering that there is (of course there is) a textbook called Wine Economics:
The third form of reputation originates from recognition by national or supranational authorities. The classification system of wines was started in France in 1855 by order of Napoleon III, who wanted the vineyards of the Bordeaux region to be classified in order of quality for the Exposition Universelle de Paris. In the same year the recognition of the cru classé was attributed to sixty wines (from the Premiers Crus to the Cinquièmes Crus).
The need to create a classification system of wines that clearly and simply identified the best products became even more pressing in the first two decades of the twentieth century when buyers were confused by frauds, phylloxera, and Algerian wine that was passed off as French. In 1935 the French government created the Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée (Controlled Designation of Origin, or AOC), and it established the Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (National Institute of Origin and Quality, or INAO) with the task of regulating the AOC.
Castriota, S. (2020). Wine economics. MIT Press.
How to not then go and read the Wikipedia article on the Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée?
…the INAO was created by a decree initiated by Joseph Capus and enacted on July 30, 1935. Under this law the Comité National des appellations d’origine (CNAO) was given the sole authority to rule on matters related to the quality of wine. The members of the committee included delegates of ministries of agriculture, finance and justice and presidents of viticulture syndicates. They consulted with the top wine producers in each region to define the boundaries of appellations and the rules for a wine to qualify. The CNAO was funded by a fee paid by the producers. Many small wine producers were eager to escape the state regulations imposed on bulk winemakers, and sought to join. However the CNAO enforced high standards and the percentage of French wine designated as AOC actually declined in the first years after the CNAO was formed. The first AOC laws were passed in 1936, and most of the classical wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and Rhône had their initial set of AOC regulations before the end of 1937.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_national_de_l%27origine_et_de_la_qualit%C3%A9
And to think that all of this completely random “research” took place because I decided to traipse down an interesting little path that branched out from a little anecdote that Fareed Zakaria narrated to Tyler Cowen about writing an article for Slate.
Cheers!
P.S. One final point worth a ponder – one of my favorite songs is a song called “Done with Bonaparte”, by Mark Knopfler. It contains the lines:
“My one true love awaits me still,
The flower of the Aquitaine”.
Might this be a reference to Eleanor of Aquitaine? Maybe somebody could shed some light on this – which would be entirely appropriate, since the etymology of the word Eleanor may be related to the Arabic word”Noor”.
EconForEverybody 