The Spirits of Pawling List of French Wines

Here is a little history of French wines from The Spirits of Pawling.  French wine didn’t achieve its global status easily, and the history of French wine is a story of challenges met and disasters that survived. Just take the period 1860-1950, when many New World wine industries (think of California, Chile, and Australia) were building up steam. Nearly all of France’s vineyards were wiped out by phylloxera (a North American aphid) between 1865 and 1885) and had to be replanted. In the meantime, there was widespread wine fraud, as wines were made with raisins, adulterated with additives, or blended with wines from other countries – practices that undermined the reputation of French wine. That crisis was followed by a period of overproduction and falling prices; Prohibition in the U.S. and events elsewhere that almost destroyed French wine exports; the Great Depression and a wine glut; and finally World War II, with wine requisitioned by Germany and the collaborationist Vichy government hostile to drinking.

The French dusted themselves off after eight decades of these crises and rebuilt the wine industry and the “French wine” brand.

It’s a history that starts with the territory that became France inhabited by beer-drinking Celts (a habit they were cured of by wine-bearing Greeks and Romans) and ends with wine being one of the commodities most closely identified with France. It’s a complicated and messy story, punctuated by wars, revolutions, political battles, vine diseases, and attempts to control drinking, but at its base, it’s an almost heroic tale of the victory of the vine.