Food History

I promised Farley - so long ago it’s embarrassing - that I would do a post on a rather cool Medieval poem known as La bataille des vins.

The poem starts off a bit like a chanson de geste (Old French epic legend), which is how I came to know about it. At one stage I researched the introductions and conclusions to chansons de geste and chronicles and romances. Part of my dim and dark past, about twenty years before I promised Farley I’d write about wine.

When you get to the meaning, it’s a bit more like an adults only AA Milne. Instead of butter for his bread, King Phillip (possibly Phillip-Augustus) wanted wine for his table. Not any wine. He wanted the best. All of them white. What was the king looking for in his wines? Not too young, the poem says, and, from shipping records, not too old, either. Perhaps a season in age, or a year.

Most of the poem lists a bunch of wines, starting with wine from Cyprus which wasn’t at all beer from Ypres (the things poets do to find their rhymes. Even I could tell that the two aren’t the same!).

Let me give you a list of the wines, grouped as Henri d’Andeli did, roughly by region. Sorry if I repeat any - I’m following the poem and not alphabetic order. Some of the repeats are places with similar names, so I’m not going to delete them all for tidiness’ sake. If anyone has tasted wines from those places, please tell us about it . (Note: I haven’t always modernised the place names - I’m just a tad short of time this week, sorry. Most of the modernisations are from the French notes with the poem’s edition, as are the comments on the popularity etc of the wines. My sources are at the end of the post.)

The wines:
Aussai, Moussele , Anni, La Rochele, Saintes, Tailleborc, Melans (possibly Milan), Treneborc, Palma (possibly Torre di Palma), Plesence, Spain, Provence, Montpellier, Narbonne, Bediers, Carcassone, Mossac, Saint-Melÿon, Orchise, Saint-Yon, Orleans (a way popular wine at that time, according to a note by Héron), Jargeau, Meulan, Argentueil, Soissons, Hautvillers, Espernai le Bacheler, Sézanne, Samois
Anjou, Gastinois (either the modern Gâtinais or Gâtine), Issoudun, Chastel Raoul, Trilbardou, Nevers, Sancerre, Verdelai, Auxerre (Medieval happiness may well have been a bottle of this), Tonnerre, Flavigni, Saint-Pourçain (this wine also got a lot of Medieval press), Savigny, Chablis, Biaune, two wines from Beauvaisis, Le Mans, Tors, Argences, Chambly, Rennes, three from the Ile-de-France region, Auxerre, Soissons, Autel de Tauçons, Vermendois, Aviler, Chalons (not the same Chalons as before), Rains, Ausois, Moselle, Saint-Jehan d’Angeli, Angouleme , Bordiaus et Saintes, Poitiers, Chagni , Montrichard , Lassy, Châteauroux, Betesi (even the editors weren’t sure where this was, Héron suggests either Béthisy-Saint-Martin or Béthisy-Saint-Pierre), Montmorillon, Ysoudun, Vermendois, Saint-Brice, Auxerre, Goditouet,

The wine of Argentueil was as clear as tears of sorrow, and someone proclaimed it best of all. This led to tussles and some name-calling. My favourite insult, wine to wine, was “son of a gluttonous prostitute.”

You’ll be pleased to know the French wines handled themselves well in the fray and were very polite when they replied to an insult about how weak they were with “So you’re stronger than we are?” Yes, this led to them boasting about their flavour. Wines get like that when one doubts their alcohol content.

There is some discussion of the effects of the alcohol, which I shall not translate. I was going to say I wasn’t going to translate it because it will sully pure minds, but the truth is that it’s that sort of colourful thing that reads fine but translates terribly if done by me. You need a better translator.

And so the Wine Fight ended. Who won? Since the battle took three days and three nights with no sleep and with far too much wine, I’m really not sure the results count.

Bibliographic details for the scholars-at-heart:

The manuscript itself: La bataille des vins, Henri d’Andeli, Ms. Paris, B.N. fr. 837, f. 231-232v
Modern Edition by Alain Corbellari Les Dits d’Henri d’Andeli Champion Paris 2003
Less Modern Edition: H. Héron, La bataille des vins, Paris 1881