Wine was both luxury and necessity for medieval society. Wine, taken in moderation, met with great general approval. Bartholomeus Anglicus, an English Franciscan, voiced the opinion of many when he wrote in the 13th century that wine comforts the body, gladdens the heart, soothes anguish and sharpens the wit. Drinking to excess, however, was strongly condemned, and drunkenness was used as the epitome of the vice of gluttony. The history of wine-drinking offers opportunities to explore social and cultural topics, and to examine how the trade sits in the commercial developments of the period. Wine was ‘big business’ and a good source of Crown revenue in the late middle ages, flowing from southern to northern areas where wine growing was difficult and ale and beer drinking more usual. England drew wines from all over Europe (the Rhine, Mediterranean, Spain and Portugal) and was particularly fortunate in having easy access to French wines through Crown possessions in Gascony. Gascony became England’s main supplier and the scale of the trade through Bordeaux was huge; wine remained relatively plentiful in England until the trade was disrupted by England’s loss of Gascony in 1453. Regular wine drinking was a sign of wealth and status but wine was also accessible to more modest ranks through taverns.
The classes will trace the journey of the wine from the vineyard to English tables, covering social and cultural as well as commercial aspects throughout. The introduction will provide a broad overview of attitudes to wine and establish a framework for the themes to follow. The classes will explore changes over time (particularly visible in the supply of wine, where the impact of the Hundred Years War is important) and will also draw on a range of contemporary sources. England’s excellent series of surviving customs accounts are a rich source for wine’s commercial history, and a variety of literary sources illustrate contemporary attitudes and ideas - poems such as Henri d’Andeli’s La Bataille des vins and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, sermons, and treatises such as Bartholomeus Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum
