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Cooperation and Conflicts: Institutional Innovation in France's Wine Markets, 1870–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

James Simpson
James Simpson
Affiliation:
JAMES SIMPSON is professor of economic history at theUniversidad Pablo de Olavidein Seville and visiting professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
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Abstract

Very different commodity chains had been established over the centuries in France to produce and sell wines as diverse as champagne, fine old clarets, or ordinary table wines. The major shortages caused by the vine disease phylloxera after 1875 forced merchants to search for new sources of supply, often in foreign countries or through the production of artificial wines. When domestic production revived, however, the recovery was not accompanied by a noticeable reduction in these new supplies, with the result that prices, as well as growers' profitability, fell sharply after the turn of the twentieth century, strengthening the merchants' power in the various commodity chains. To overcome this situation, growers in three very different wine-producing areas, namely the Midi, Bordeaux, and Champagne, used their political influence to achieve government intervention in order to control fraud and establish regional appellations or producer cooperatives, which helped them win back some of their market power from merchants.

Type
Special Section: Networks in the Trade of Alcohol
Information
Business History Review , Volume 79 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2005 , pp. 527 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2005

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References

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34 Augé-Laribé, Le problème agraire du socialisme, 19.

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36 Chambre des députés, Enquête sur la situation critique de la viticulture, 4e rapport (1909), Annexe 2512, 2307. It was headed by Cazeaux-Cazalet, a deputy from the Gironde.

37 Warner, Winegrowers of France, 18. One calculation suggested that a local wine price of 10.7 francs/hectoliter was needed to cover variable costs, and the amount of 14.3 francs was required to cover fixed costs, but this second figure was reached only twice in the Midi during the 1900s. Atger, Frédéric, La crise viticole et la viticulture méridionale (1900–1907) (Paris, 1907), 23–27Google Scholar; for prices, see Pech, Entreprise viticole, 512.

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39 Degrully, Essai historique, 350, 353. Atger, La crise viticole, 73, suggests a figure nearer 8 million hectoliters.

40 Postel-Vinay, “Debt and Agricultural,” 171–77, has shown the high level of debt incurred by the large vineyards that made them as anxious as the workers, with their small plots of vines, for a solution.

41 Chambre des députés (1909), 2307–308.

42 Sempé, Régime économique, 175–77.

43 Warner, Winegrowers of France, 32.

44 Ibid., 43. Taxes in real terms increased sharply during periods of low prices, such as the early 1900s, encouraging adulteration. See, for example, Degrully, Essai historique.

45 Growers refer to 1900–09. Lachiver, Vins, vignes et vignerons, 588–89. Some contemporaries did believe the problem was caused by overproduction, and others argued that the high domestic tariffs restricted export markets. Warner, Winegrowers of France, ch. 3.

46 Loubère, Leo A., Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline, 1848–1914 (Albany, 1974), xv, 177Google Scholar.

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48 Frader, Peasants and Protest, 141; and Lachiver, Vins, vignes et vignerons, 468.

49 Warner, Winegrowers of France, 41; Frader, Peasants and Protest, 145.

50 The provision for this was found in the law of 1 August 1905. Warner, Winegrowers of France, 46.

51 Ibid., 46–47.

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56 Calculated from Bulletin de l'Office International du Vin 290 (1955): 40–41Google Scholar. The number of cooperatives in the Midi in 1924 was fifty. Augé-Laribé, Michel, Syndicats et Coopératives agricoles (Paris, 1926), 141Google Scholar.

57 Salavert, Jan, Le Commerce des vins de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1912), 66Google Scholar, argues that until about 1860 even the best-quality wines were still sold under the shipper's brand.

58 Treatment was generally limited to the best vineyards. In 1894 the Gironde had only 7.6 percent of France's land under vines, but 45 percent of the area was being treated with sulfocarbonates, 27 percent of the area was flooded, and 14 percent of the area was being treated with carbon disulfide. Calculated from Pouget, Roger, Histoire de la lutte contre le Phylloxéra de la vigne en France (Paris, 1990), 98–99Google Scholar. This was also true within the Gironde itself. For example, in 1898 in the villages of Cussac, Cantenac, Margaux, St. Estèpe, and St. Julien, which accounted for 2.5 percent of the vines, 4 percent of the area was flooded, 37 percent of the vines were treated with sulfocarbonates, and 12 percent of the vines were treated with carbon disulfide. Archives Départementales de la Gironde (Arch. Gironde), 7M 219.

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60 Quantities were later reduced, but they remained significantly higher than before the phylloxera infestation.

61 Petit-Lafitte, Auguste, La vigne dans le Bordelais; histoire—histoire naturelle—commerce—culture (Paris, 1868)Google Scholar, table C. Between 1820 and 1829 there were three good harvests.

62 Feret, Édouard, Bordeaux et ses vins, 12th ed. (Bordeaux, 1969), 137Google Scholar. The measure of wine quality is not an exact science, especially as an initial judgment of a wine's quality can change by the time it is ready for export. G. Lafforgue, “Cent cinquante ans de production viticole en Gironde,” Bulletin Technique des Ingenieurs des Services Agricoles (1954), 299, provides slightly different results.

63 Château Latour, for example, increased output by 252 percent, but prices fell by 58 percent between 1879–87 and 1898–07, and Château Margaux's output supposedly increased from 450 hogsheads of “premier wine” to 1,200 to 1,400 hogsheads, in 1903, of “indifferent” or “bad”-quality wine. Higounet, Charles, ed., La Seigneurie et le vignoble de Château Latour: Histoire d'un grand cru du Médoc, XIVe–XXe siècle (Bordeaux, 1993), 297Google Scholar; and Ridleys & Co.'s Wine and Spirit Trade Circular (Apr. 1903), 675.

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65 Ministère de l'Agriculture, Statistique agricole de la France. Annexe à l'enquête de 1929, monographie du département de la Gironde (Paris, 1937), 159Google Scholar. Third-growth Château Malescot-Saint Exupéry, for example, was sold in April 1901 for 155,000 francs against the 1,076,000 it had reached in 1869, or the second-growth Château Monrose, which was sold for 800,000 francs in 1896, against 1.5 million in 1889. Pijassou, Le Médoc, 815–16.

66 Cocks, Charles and Féret, Édouard, Bordeaux et ses vins, 8th ed. (Bordeaux, 1908), xvii–xxiiGoogle Scholar; and Higounet, ed., La Seigneurie, 335. The négotiants insisted for Château Latour that “the vineyard can in no way be increased during the period of the contract, and grafted American vines must be excluded, save those that are already there,” ibid., 276–77.

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71 Farou, La Crise Viticole et le Commerce d'Exportation (1909), in Arch. Gironde, 7M 169, 7–12. Phylloxera in Cataluñia and Navarra also created difficulties in obtaining wines from Spain. By contrast, Hamburg merchants bought wines from the cheapest producers, whether in Portugal, Greece, Turkey, or Hungary; they were more efficient at creating wines and even enjoyed lower freight rates to Buenos Aires than Bordeaux.

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81 Ibid., 15 July 1908.

82 Opposition centered around René Lamarre, the author of the pamphlet La Révolution champenoise, published in 1890.

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84 Le Vigneron Champenois, 29 Mar. 1911.

85 Guy, When Champagne Became French, 79.

86 Le Vigneron Champenois, 14 Mar. 1906.

87 The coefficients used are those in Le Vigneron Champenois, 13 Aug. 1904.

88 Guy, When Champagne Became French, 79.

89 Simon, André L., The History of the Champagne Trade in England (London, 1905), 146Google Scholar. For the importance of the British market, see Simpson, Selling to Reluctant Drinkers, 98–100.

90 Guy, When Champagne Became French, 135,140.

91 Vitu, délimitations régionales, 58. Pineau is a synonym for the pinot family of grape varieties and better-quality wines, while gamay denotes a high-yielding variety.

92 Vitu, délimitations régionales, 36. For the conflicts, see especially Bonal, François, Le Livre d'or du champagne (Lausanne, 1994), 161–66Google Scholar; Faith, Nicholas, The Story of Champagne (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Forbes, Patrick, Champagne: The Wine, the Land, and the People (London, 1967), 173–76Google Scholar; and Guy, When Champagne Became French.