France is the land of the chateaux, the Côtes du Rhône and the superior grand vin de Bordeaux. But not everything was known with certainty about how and when the high-quality wine culture came to France. Modern archaeological research in the area around Montpellier now confirms an existing suspicion…
For centuries before our era, alcoholic drinks – and wine in particular – were very popular with all kinds of peoples and cultures. Wine was one of the most important commodities around the Mediterranean and a true culture carrier. Peoples who traded their wine, such as Etruscans, Phoenicians and Greeks, also spread their culture thanks to the wine trade.
Archaeologists have long suspected that the predominantly Celtic ('Gauls', as the Romans later called them) population of what is now southern France first became acquainted with the fine alcoholic beverage around 600 BC. According to this hypothesis, ships full of amphorae with Etruscan wine from Italy arrived around that time in the ancient port city of Latarra, present-day Lattes near Montpellier. Years later, the population on the coast started their own wine production for trade reasons.
The Roman conquests of Gaul would then have taken wine culture further north through the valley of the Rhone. During the Middle Ages and beyond, the art of winemaking in estates, monasteries and abbeys was further perfected into the high-quality French wine culture we know today.
Until now, however, there was no hard evidence that the pitchers or amphorae, which the Etruscans shipped to the French coast according to this scenario, also actually contain wine.
Research by the well-known alcohol archaeologist Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania now shows that this was indeed the case, and that the prevailing theory is probably correct. He further concludes that the Celtic population of France around 425 BC. started making their own wine. McGovern and colleagues publish their findings this week in the journal PNAS.
Stone grape press
McGovern examined amphorae found in Latarra, because the importation of Etruscan goods went on longer there than in other places. An advanced chemical method to detect age-old organic molecules in these amphorae showed that they were indeed used to store wine.
But perhaps even more important is the discovery of grape tracks on a stone press platform, also found in Latarra. The traces indicate that around 425-400 BC. grapes were already pressed in Latarra. This stone press platform is the earliest evidence of the existence of a wine culture in France.
Incidentally, the Gauls imported into Latarra from 525 BC. even jugs with wine from the Greek colony of Massalia, today's Marseille. Amphorae from Massalia found and examined in Latarra were also found to contain traces of wine. According to many archaeologists, the ionic Greeks in that colony already produced their local wine.
But evidence for this, for example in the form of a stone press platform, has not yet been found there. And wine from Massalia, made by Greeks, is of course not French wine, the honest Frenchman would immediately remark.