https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/politics-wine-18th-century-england Skip to main content Home User menu logged out * Subscribe * Sign in December issue Subscription Offers Give a Gift Enter your keywords [Search ] [Search] Subscribe Search Toggle navigation Main menu * Home * The Magazine * Subscribe * Buy the Current Issue * The Archive * App * Reviews * Sign in Home Mini header menu * Search * Magazine * Latest * Subscribe [printnew] Subscribe Feature The Politics of Wine in 18th-century England After the upheavals of 1688, England's shifting social order needed new ways to define itself. A taste for fine claret became one such marker of wealth and power, as Charles Ludington explains. Charles Ludington | Published in History Today Volume 63 Issue 7 July 2013 An anonymous satire on the Excise Bill 1733 shows the Prime Minister Robert Wapole seated astride a wine barrel. His government's taxes on wine and tobacco were seen as an infringement of British liberty; the lion is constrained by continental clogs. British MuseumPolitical authority needs many props and in early 18th-century England claret was among them. Wine was symbolic of both the court and the church: the former because of its heavy use by the aristocracy and its importance as a source of royal revenue; the latter due to its central role in the Eucharist. It is not surprising therefore that claret (red wine from Bordeaux), the most widely consumed wine in England since the 12th-century, became a symbol of the Tory party in the late 17th century, as it stood for both a powerful monarch and a strong Anglican Church. What is surprising, however, is that the most conspicuous consumers of claret in early 18th-century England were not Tories but wealthy and powerful Whigs. This irony raises the question of why prominent Whigs, favoured since the 'Glorious Revolution', drank a wine whose consumption they condemned on a popular level as being antithetical to England's national interest. Were prominent Whigs hypocrites, or 'Tom Doubles', as the Tory economist Charles Davenant mockingly called them? Indeed, how could men who denounced trade with France drink so much fancy French wine themselves? To explain how claret became the preferred wine of politically powerful Whigs in the early 18th century it is first necessary to establish the different types of claret available on the English market. On the one hand there was a traditional, haphazardly made, generic variety of claret that had probably changed little since the Middle Ages and dominated the English market until the late 17th century. On the other hand there was a new type of luxury claret, which was carefully produced, discernibly superior in taste and expensive because of both high production costs in France and the high import tariffs that were introduced in England in the 1690s. Wealthy Whig consumers drew a clear distinction between this 'New French Claret', which only a few could afford, and traditional claret, which, prior to the tariff hikes, was an inexpensive and popular wine. So while luxury claret was permissible in elite Whig minds because high cost and low production levels precluded large-scale importation, traditional claret had to be discouraged through embargoes and exorbitant customs duties, lest English tavern-goers drink away the nation's economic health by sending too much precious coin to France. Tories considered the distinction between types of claret to be blatant hypocrisy. To Whigs it was no such thing. Not only was drinking luxury claret perfectly permissible among Whig party leaders, it was essential. This was because the taste for luxury claret helped to confirm the aesthetic sensibilities and, therefore, moral credentials of the post-1688 political elite. Such confirmation was especially critical for Whig leaders, who sometimes came from gentry or commercial backgrounds. Because their political legitimacy did not necessarily spring from a deep well of aristocratic inheritance, they had to ground it in some other criterion and that was aesthetic appreciation. They had to have good taste. One of the many ways that the post-1688 elite could express their good taste was by drinking and discussing fine wines. Among fine wines, luxury claret was clearly the favourite. Pontac and Haut-Brion The triumph of luxury claret on the English market occurred during the reign of Queen Anne (r.1702-14). However, as with most historical phenomena, this one had antecedents. A limited number of London-based wine drinkers had enjoyed an early version of luxury claret in the 1660s. This was largely the result of changes in the production and marketing of claret by one man, Arnaud de Pontac (1599-1681), president of the Bordeaux Parlement and a major landowner in the region. Pontac keenly perceived the changes in English and especially metropolitan consumption habits that came with the Restoration. The re-establishment of a royal court and of court culture generally required an increase in luxury goods. This demand inspired Pontac to launch the prototype of top-growth claret in London. The wine was called Haut-Brion, after the name of the estate from which it came. Historians and oenophiles have long thought that the first mention of Haut-Brion by name comes from Samuel Pepys's Diary in 1663, but I have discovered an even older reference in Charles II's cellar book from 1660. What Pepys provided, however, was the first tasting note of Haut-Brion. 'Off the Exchange with Sir J. Cutler and Mr Grant to the Royall Oak Taverne in Lumbard-Street,' he wrote on April 10th, 1663. 'And there drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.' Although his tasting note is vague by modern standards, it is clear that Pepys, like many since, was highly impressed. Charles II's 1660 cellar book and Pepys' Diary provide the first mention in any language of estate-named claret and are among the many proofs that Haut-Brion wine was created specifically for the English market. It is also an indication that Pontac's new production techniques and marketing ideas had worked. Before the Restoration, and indeed for long after it, most claret was generically named and could be differentiated only by price. These traditional clarets were probably light in body, between red and rose in colour, and were made for drinking within the year of production. By improving and 'branding' a product, what Pontac did was extraordinary for his time; he created and named a wine that came from a small, circumscribed area of land for the purpose of enhancing its value in the minds and on the palates of discerning English customers. Nor was that all. Immediately following the Great Fire of 1666 Pontac sent his son, Francois-Auguste, to London to open a tavern from which the family could sell their wine directly. Pontack's Head, so named because of the portrait of Pontac pere that hung above the entrance, was on Abchurch Lane in the City. It quickly became London's finest tavern, if not exactly its first restaurant in the modern sense. It was the meeting and dining place of the aristocracy and the literati: Dryden, Locke, Wren, Swift, Defoe and the French exile Saint-Evremond all dined there and it was the location of Royal Society dinners until 1746. More importantly for the history of wine it was here that customers could purchase and drink Haut-Brion directly from the producer. Clearly this move by the Pontac family had an effect because in the decades following Pepys' remark Haut-Brion was known by name (in London at least) and esteemed by English wine drinkers. So intrigued was the English philosopher John Locke that in May 1677 he made a special visit to Chateau Haut-Brion to discover for himself why the wine of Monsieur de Pontac was so extraordinarily good. The answer, he found, lay principally in the south-facing slope of the vineyard and the peculiar, indeed miserable quality of the gravelly soil in which the grapes were grown. Locke was hardly alone in his appreciation of Pontac's wines. The polymath John Evelyn wrote in his diary in July 1683 of having met in London the 'owner of that excellent Vignoble of Pontaque and Obrien, whence the choicest of our Burdeaux-Wines come'. The popularity of 'New French Claret' Pontac's wines were so esteemed in Restoration London for their high quality that neither embargoes against French wine (from 1679-85 and again from 1689-1696), nor increased tariffs, nor even poor vintages in France throughout the 1690s could suppress the desire for them among discerning English customers. When the Nine Years War and the accompanying embargo ended in 1697 the revived wine trade between France and England was small but, significantly, it included the most expensive red wines from Bordeaux. Furthermore, legal and illicit trade in luxury claret increased rapidly over the next five years, so that by 1702, when England and France went back to war over the issue of the Spanish Succession, the English appetite for luxury claret was firmly established. This demand is clearly indicated in the list of seized French goods that were advertised in the London Gazette, the official voice of the English government. Early in the war contraband claret was auctioned at wildly different prices: PS8, PS16 and PS40 per tun. Clearly there was a qualitative difference in the wines. By 1704 the more expensive claret was being referred to as 'New French Claret', indicating that the nomenclature of wine was catching up with its distinctive qualities, and in 1705 'Obrian' and 'Pontack' (the distinction remains unclear) were once again being referred to by name. Also in 1705 wine named 'Margaux' was mentioned for the first time, although typically the Court of Exchequer found the French spelling difficult, calling it instead 'Margoose'. Finally, in 1707, wines named Lafite and Latour joined Haut Brion and Margaux among the vast amounts of seized wines for sale in London, proving that all four of the original first growth wines were known by name in England by the first decade of the 18th century. What is still more remarkable is that throughout the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) the entire annual production of these prime vineyards was being sold at auction in England. As the wine critic and historian Hugh Johnson surmised, the only explanation for how and why all of this wine was being seized at sea is that there was an unorthodox arrangement between producer and merchant in which the English 'privateers' were under charter to the chateaux owners. While the details of this arrangement can only be imagined, it is evident that these luxury clarets were intended for none other than the English market. No Bordeaux proprietor who was investing extra money to make a better wine would be so foolish as to have his wine stolen every year unless that was his actual intention. Because luxury claret was so expensive, only the very wealthy could afford it. But purchase it they did. The royal court of Queen Anne consumed roughly 40 hogsheads (10,800 quart bottles) of Haut-Brion, Pontac and Margaux per year. John Hervey, 1st Baron Hervey, later 1st Earl of Bristol and an ardent Whig, was also a devotee of the finest 'New French Clarets'. Between 1702 and 1741 he spent over PS2,406 on wine, most of it lux-ury claret, including Haut-Brion, Margaux, Lafite and Latour. Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and a major Whig leader until his downfall in the South Sea Bubble crash of 1720, also preferred luxury claret to all other wines. When he died in 1722 the most common bottled wine in his cellar was Lafite, followed in order by Lucena (from southern Spain), Moselle, Rhenish and Latour. As usual for the era, luxury clarets were the only wines known by their estate name as opposed to some broader geographical designation. If the last Stuart monarch and leading Whig aristocrats preferred luxury claret to all other wines, no one was so devoted to it as the first de facto British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). The son of a port-drinking Norfolk squire, Walpole fils needed a wine to match his ambition and his new station in life. That wine was luxury claret. In 1733, when he was at the height of his power, he spent over PS1,150 on wine, of which luxury claret accounted for 44 per cent of the total value. Specifically, Walpole purchased seven hogsheads of Margaux, three of Lafite, one of Haut-Brion and 36 bottles of 'New French Claret', which when added together amounted to approximately 234 quart bottles of luxury claret per month, more in volume and far more in value than any other type of wine in his cellar. Walpole also bought smaller amounts of fashionable burgundy and champagne, which were slightly more expensive than luxury claret due to their high transport costs, and vast quantities of inexpensive white Lisbon and red port. These latter wines seem to have been his workaday wines, or the wines for his 'public tables', where he entertained dozens, sometimes hundreds of City merchants and prosperous country squires, the core of the Whig party that kept him in power. However when Walpole meant to impress the elite, among whom he had placed himself, his wine of choice was luxury claret. In a letter to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in July 1731, John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, described one of Walpole's annual 'Norfolk Congresses' (a gathering of his Whig supporters at Houghton) as being 'up to the chin in beef, venison, geese and turkeys, etc.; and generally over the chin in claret'. Records show that the claret in question was Haut-Brion. But, other than the apparent quality of the wine, what made luxury claret such a compelling indicator of Walpole's status as the most powerful and one of the most fashionable and wealthy men in England? Indeed, what does the emergence of luxury claret in the early 18th century explain about the English society for which it was created? The answer, in short, is 'politeness'. Politeness and 'New French Claret' Politeness as a discourse and form of behaviour was a major fixture of early 18th-century England. From its origins in the courts of Renaissance Italy politeness was transformed in England into a broad concept, used both to prescribe and describe the conversation, conduct and aesthetic standards of the elite and aspiring middle ranks. In the post-1688 English context politeness became contested ground between Tories and Whigs and it was the latter, with the help of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and the journalists Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, who claimed the prize. The Whig vision of politeness was anti-Tory and anti-French: it was gentlemanly not courtly, discursive not codified. In this schema politeness, as the historian Lawrence Klein states, was 'situated wherever gentlemanly (and lady-like) society existed (the club, the drawing room, the coffee house, among others)', while 'its characteristic activity was conversation, the substance of which was worldly, urbane things'. By definition, to be polite was to have good taste. Politeness reached maturity in England during the very same era that luxury claret was so ardently embraced by the English elite. All wines had the potential to be polite; wine was a key motif in classical civilisation, which was itself a model for polite culture. Furthermore, almost all wine in England had to be imported. As a result, wine, like the Grand Tour, was a symbol of cosmopolitanism, which enhanced politeness. Finally, all wines could be part of polite display; chilled in large silver wine coolers, served from glass decanters and poured into lead-crystal glasses, wine positively promoted polite taste in a variety of objects. And, while there were many wines available in early 18th-century England, luxury claret was the most fashionable wine among the most polite people. It was, therefore, the most polite of all wines. Wine was also important in promoting conversation, which was the characteristic activity of politeness, especially when it focused on 'civilising' commodities. This aspect of wine consumption is particularly apparent in the genre of painting called 'conversation pieces'. These paintings typically depict gentlemen, and sometimes ladies, engaged in decorous conversation inside their well-appointed homes, or in the manicured parks outside their homes. A frequent theme in these conversation pieces is men drinking red wine together while talking about it. One can never know if the wine depicted in any of these paintings was luxury claret or any other specific type of wine. What matters is what the subjects and artist wanted to convey and what the viewers believed. The point of each painting was to use wine and the subjects' attitude towards it to convey their essential politeness. The men in these conversation pieces - aristocrats, wealthy gentry and successful urban professionals - had the money not only for polite performance, but also to record that performance on canvas, which in turn helped to reinforce and publicise their politeness. Wine was a prop in their performance and, because luxury claret was the most polite wine of all, it may well have been the wine that the viewer was supposed to imagine was being drunk and discussed. After all, what could be more polite than talking about a wine that was expensive and discernibly excellent, that differed subtly from year to year and from vineyard to vineyard and that changed over time (and often for the better) while simply resting in one's cellar? And what polite person would not want to talk about that? The emergence of the polite connoisseur It is hardly surprising that the language used to describe luxury claret became increasingly descriptive during the early 18th century. The advertisements for luxury claret in the London Gazette began by using the generic term 'claret' and using only the price to distinguish between the different qualities. But soon the most expensive clarets became 'New French Claret' and this was quickly followed by specific estate names, which remain benchmarks of quality. By 1711 the estate names began to be elaborated upon, so that these top wines were referred to as 'of the best growths, deep, bright, fresh, neat', to give but one example. This description is nothing like the purple prose favoured by modern wine writers, but it marks the beginning of recorded polite wine talk. Even better evidence for the emergence of a new, polite way to think and talk about wine comes from the cellar notes of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744). A contemporary of Hervey, Spencer and Walpole, Brydges began his political career as a moderate Tory, moving toward the Whigs by 1714. His wine cellar at Cannons, the palatial house he built just north of London, was perhaps the most impressively diverse in all England. It contained everything from Spanish Alicante to Greek Zante and a great deal of luxury claret in between. But Brydges was more than a Whig grandee with a well-stocked cellar; he was also an epicure, who remarked upon the qualities of the wine he drank and aged them to see if they would improve. This self-conscious awareness of his own taste and of the taste of his wines tied him to the culture of politeness and reveals the emergence of the wine 'connoisseur'. Brydges' wines were not just 'good', 'bad' or 'tolerable'. Instead, wines had multiple dimensions: colour, smell and texture. He frequently compared his wines to one another. In one cellar entry he described his Margaux from Mr Taunton in Southampton as being murky and tasting like Cahors mixed with port. Luxury claret was first created for very specific conditions in the English market by a Frenchman who could not have foreseen that the rapid increase of duties on French wine would be conducive to his endeavour. The claret he produced became the only style that was worth its high cost, a price that was dictated by English tariffs regardless of the wine's quality. Thus by 1700 most claret imported into England was the luxury variety. Nothing less than the finest claret would sell in a market that was flooded with inexpensive Portuguese and Spanish wines, not to mention a host of other new and fashionable beverages such as coffee, tea and cocoa. As it turned out, this 'New French Claret' was precisely what the post-revolution social order demanded. Indeed, luxury claret, although a product of France, was a cultural artefact of England. It was a wine that only wealthy consumers could afford, but more importantly it was a wine that could be appreciated, contemplated and discussed. Its arrival in England might have been inspired by Restoration courtliness, but its triumph as the wine of fashion in the early 18th century reflected the fact that the old order had changed. Luxury claret not only reflected the new political order, it also helped to construct it because it confirmed the consumer's politeness and good taste. As Robert Walpole understood better than most, this was a world where political legitimacy was increasingly determined by wealth as much as by birth. Taste was power. Charles Ludington is Teaching Assistant Professor of History at North Carolina State University Glorious RevolutionEnglandSir Robert Walpole Related Articles Drinking.jpg The Rules of Drinking Advertisement for wine grower F. Seneclauze, 20th century (c) Patrice Cartier/Bridgeman Images. Through a Glass Darkly Popular articles wine_main.jpg The Politics of Wine in 18th-century England The Patha Bhavan Half a Life Recently published Study by Albrecht Durer, 1508 (c) akg-images. 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