The French word “_monopole_,” as applied to wines, really means a
firm’s trade-mark, a proprietary brand: in fact very much the same
sort of thing as the popular blends of Scotch Whisky advertised by the
leading distillers. At present these Monopoles are chiefly confined to
the Côte d’Or and the Bordelais, though specimens have already made
their appearance in the lists of certain Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône,
Touraine and Anjou wine-merchants who specialise in these particular
growths. To explain what these Monopoles really are—an authority of the
eminence of M. Raymond Baudouin has not hesitated to stigmatise them
as “pharmacy, but not wine”—the French law concerning appellations of
origin, which the Monopoles have been devised to circumvent, must first
be briefly examined. A wine may now no longer be sold under a territorial
designation unless it is territorially entitled to its use: that is to
say only when it has been grown exclusively within territory having an
identical geographical (but not necessarily administrative) appellation,
or within the area of such adjacent communes as may enjoy a recognised
and long-established right to the better-known name of their neighbour.
For instance, a red wine sold as “Pommard” in France must have been
grown within the Commune of Pommard, Département de la Côte d’Or, and
none other; a white wine sold as Pouilly (not to be confused with the
white wine of Pouilly-sur-Loir from the common border of the Départements
of the Cher and the Nièvre), which is the name of a tiny hamlet in the
Mâconnais and not of any one commune, must have been grown either in the
Commune of Solutré (in which this hamlet actually lies), the Commune of
Fuissé, the Commune of Vergisson and a cadastrally delimited part of the
Commune of Chaintré, in the Département of Saône-et-Loire, and nowhere
else.
In the Côte d’Or there are two kinds of red vines: one the proud “_plant
noble_,” called the Pinot of Pineau, which alone has made the wine of
Burgundy the nectar that it is, that will grow in few places and then
only on the lower slope—a niggardly beggar so delicate as to be prone to
practically every malady that the vine is heir to; and the Gamay,[6] a
“_plant commun_,” which will thrive anywhere, especially where the Pinot
will not—a hardy vine that is a heavy bearer and causes little anxiety or
expense to the vigneron.
As there is very little slope with the right exposure in each commune,
it follows that there is a considerable extent of Gamay plantations,
since the wine of the Gamay vineyards has just as much right to be sold
as “Pommard,” if it is grown in that commune, as wine grown in the most
famous of the historic “_climats_” which have been planted exclusively
with Pinot vines since time immemorial. (In England, in so far as our
“Pommard” ever comes from that Commune, or the Burgundy region at all,
it is nearly always Gamay wine, French growers and shippers having
long ago discovered that most English wine-drinkers, and many English
wine-merchants, cannot distinguish it from a Pinot growth, though these
respective flavours, once they become familiar, are as dissimilar as
chalk and cheese.) An amendment to the _Loi des Appellations d’Origine_,
called the _Amendment Capus_ after the name of the Senator who introduced
it, is now before the French Chambers, the object of which, should it,
as seems probable, be ratified, is to limit any given “_appellation
d’origine_” ampelographically as well as territorially: that is, to
confine it to wines grown from those auguster vines that are historically
as much an integral part of the wine itself as the traditional area of
ground and the geological nature of the soil it has always been grown on.
The first important effect of this amendment to the existing state of the
law would be that Gamay wines grown in Côte d’Or communes would no longer
be entitled to any local appellation of origin (such as “Pommard”),
unless it were the generic name “Bourgogne,” the lowest, because the most
general, qualification of all for any Burgundy, red or white. A given
wine, enjoying the right to a special secondary appellation, can always
be made to descend the scale from the particular to the general in bad
years, or for any other cause that may have marred its quality; but a
wine can never be promoted to a higher category than that in which it was
born and bred. A simple instance for exemplifying this point is afforded
by the official grouping in the Beaujolais. The local appellations of
origin here recognised as “_pouvant revendiquer les usages loyaux,
locaux et constants_,” are Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Morgon, Juliénas,
Brouilly, Thorins, and Chénas. Now none of these wines can under any
circumstances appropriate to itself the name of one of its fellows.
Chénas may not style itself Moulin-à-Vent; nor, for that matter, though
there is no sort of temptation to do so, may Moulin-à-Vent style itself
Chénas. Yet all are Beaujolais and “Beaujolais” is the common name to
which every other wine grown in that region has an equal right. Thus any
of these seven “named” wines may call itself simply “Beaujolais,” and
being a Beaujolais has a clear title to the seemingly magnificent, but
in reality exceedingly common and unassuming, patronymic of “Bourgogne.”
There is only one Mackintosh of Mackintosh, but Andrew Mackintosh, gillie
to THE Mackintosh, is as much a “Mackintosh” as the exalted Chief of the
Clan.
None the less any wine-merchant has the right to sell a wine, or blend
of wines, French or foreign, called by some fantastic name, or whatever
title of his own invention he chooses to employ, provided it is not
identical with an existing appellation of origin. More often than not the
bottler selects a name nicely calculated to seem a genuine territorial
appellation to the unwary, such as Château This or Clos That, Roc d’Or
or Monvalloir; or, keeping within the law, slightly adapts the spelling
of some classic growth with fraudulent intent: Romani for Romanée, etc.
Several of the more important Bordeaux and Beaune firms sell Monopoles
purely on the strength of their own names and previous reputations as
Chose’s Blue and Green Labels, or Red and Yellow Capsules, much as
English grocers sell different qualities of well-known brands of tea.
Where Saints’ names are invoked because of their prevalence in Bordelais
communes, the wines they consecrate are no more catholic for the doubtful
compliment of a spurious, or impersonated, canonisation. Certainly good
St Vincent would have none of these imposters either as brother saints or
tipplers.
According to M. Raymond Baudouin, a typical recipe adopted by the Côte
d’Or alchemists is
25% genuine Côte d’Or Burgundy for flavouring.
30% good Côtes du Rhône wine to eke out this flavouring.
20% ordinary Algerian wine to reduce the cost.
25% natural wine (_i.e._, wine with no special flavour or other
salient characteristic) to drown the taste of the hot Algerian
blending wine and still further reduce the cost of production.