Read Online I'll Drink to That by Rudolph Chelminski - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rudolph Chelminski
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head, shreds of the gown and shoes she wore while pregnant with Jesus, a hair of Saint Peter’s beard and a clipping of Saint Paul’s thumbnail.
Religious matters aside, there was already mention of vineyards around Beaujeu at the time of Bérard and Vandalmonde, but it was not until 1473 that the little city came to its great hour of geopolitical glory. It was in that year that Anne, eldest daughter of King Louis XI, was married (at age fourteen) to the youngest son of the House of Bourbon, Pierre de Beaujeu. With that, Anne of France became Anne of Beaujeu. She was a clever, discerning girl, and she rapidly assumed a dominant position in the couple she formed with Pierre, in spite of his twenty years of seniority. Her leadership was not all that surprising, because her father had already predicted great things for her, even if, as it happened in this case, when she married Pierre she had swapped her august patronymic for nothing better than that of an obscure little city in an obscure little wine area. Anne was, King Louis famously allowed, “the least giddy of women, for of levelheaded ones there are none,” but in spite of this faint and indubitably sexist praise, she ruled as de facto queen of France for eight years while her baby brother, Charles VIII, waited to accede to the throne. At no time since has the name Beaujeu exercised such influence and prestige. It is a measure of her brains and charisma that while everywhere in Beaujeu today people refer back to Anne, most citizens would have the devil of a time to give you the name of her husband.
Within less than a hundred years of Anne’s union with Pierre, Beaujeu had slipped back into the shadows of history, supplanted as the region’s administrative center by the larger, more modern and more strategically located city of Villefranche-sur-Saône. As the centuries rolled on, wine replaced politics and war as the great and abiding concern of the area. Even as the acreage given over to vineyards expanded, though, their production seemed doomed to remain a strictly local phenomenon. The twin problems of the frustratingly short life span of wine in general and the primitive state of France’s transportation networks were aggravated by the various interdictions, tolls, inspections and special taxes that barred the free movement of medieval commerce. Customs barriers at the entrance to large communities guaranteed that transport was both slow and expensive, and the inspectors and toll collectors of the Burgundian satraps lying between the Beaujolais and Paris could always be relied upon to follow Philip’s ancient example and make life hell for any enterprising wine seller from Villefranche, Juliénas or Chiroubles who took it into his head to carry his wares on the main road northward. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that dealers in Beaujolais wines were able to establish a regular and fairly reliable liaison with the attractive Paris market, by avoiding their obstructive Burgundian rivals altogether. Improved roads over the hills westward made it possible for heavy oxcarts laden with barrels of wine to reach the river Loire, where horse-drawn barges could take the cargo aboard for the slow plod toward the capital. Even then, though, the vexations and exactions were far from over. Highwaymen frequently attacked wine convoys en route for the river, and the bargees of the Loire were notorious for their great thirst. Adding river water to the casks they broached certainly disguised their theft of Beaujolais, but it did nothing for the reputation of the wine when it finally reached consumers in the big city.
The injustice of the suffocating parochialism into which the gamay’s wines had been closeted for so long might have largely accounted for the inward-looking, somewhat suspicious manner of the peasant vintners of the Beaujolais, one that lasted well into our modern times. It was doubtless this sense of injustice that gave birth to the
Religious matters aside, there was already mention of vineyards around Beaujeu at the time of Bérard and Vandalmonde, but it was not until 1473 that the little city came to its great hour of geopolitical glory. It was in that year that Anne, eldest daughter of King Louis XI, was married (at age fourteen) to the youngest son of the House of Bourbon, Pierre de Beaujeu. With that, Anne of France became Anne of Beaujeu. She was a clever, discerning girl, and she rapidly assumed a dominant position in the couple she formed with Pierre, in spite of his twenty years of seniority. Her leadership was not all that surprising, because her father had already predicted great things for her, even if, as it happened in this case, when she married Pierre she had swapped her august patronymic for nothing better than that of an obscure little city in an obscure little wine area. Anne was, King Louis famously allowed, “the least giddy of women, for of levelheaded ones there are none,” but in spite of this faint and indubitably sexist praise, she ruled as de facto queen of France for eight years while her baby brother, Charles VIII, waited to accede to the throne. At no time since has the name Beaujeu exercised such influence and prestige. It is a measure of her brains and charisma that while everywhere in Beaujeu today people refer back to Anne, most citizens would have the devil of a time to give you the name of her husband.
Within less than a hundred years of Anne’s union with Pierre, Beaujeu had slipped back into the shadows of history, supplanted as the region’s administrative center by the larger, more modern and more strategically located city of Villefranche-sur-Saône. As the centuries rolled on, wine replaced politics and war as the great and abiding concern of the area. Even as the acreage given over to vineyards expanded, though, their production seemed doomed to remain a strictly local phenomenon. The twin problems of the frustratingly short life span of wine in general and the primitive state of France’s transportation networks were aggravated by the various interdictions, tolls, inspections and special taxes that barred the free movement of medieval commerce. Customs barriers at the entrance to large communities guaranteed that transport was both slow and expensive, and the inspectors and toll collectors of the Burgundian satraps lying between the Beaujolais and Paris could always be relied upon to follow Philip’s ancient example and make life hell for any enterprising wine seller from Villefranche, Juliénas or Chiroubles who took it into his head to carry his wares on the main road northward. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that dealers in Beaujolais wines were able to establish a regular and fairly reliable liaison with the attractive Paris market, by avoiding their obstructive Burgundian rivals altogether. Improved roads over the hills westward made it possible for heavy oxcarts laden with barrels of wine to reach the river Loire, where horse-drawn barges could take the cargo aboard for the slow plod toward the capital. Even then, though, the vexations and exactions were far from over. Highwaymen frequently attacked wine convoys en route for the river, and the bargees of the Loire were notorious for their great thirst. Adding river water to the casks they broached certainly disguised their theft of Beaujolais, but it did nothing for the reputation of the wine when it finally reached consumers in the big city.
The injustice of the suffocating parochialism into which the gamay’s wines had been closeted for so long might have largely accounted for the inward-looking, somewhat suspicious manner of the peasant vintners of the Beaujolais, one that lasted well into our modern times. It was doubtless this sense of injustice that gave birth to the
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