Rolf Bichsel - Best of Bordeaux

oaks are able to survive in clay and gravel soils – contained what was an ideal

Lafite Rothschild

12

HistoryFact and fiction

winemaking terroir for the Romans, rather than the sandy and gravelly river

sediment on the left bank of the Garonne to the north and west of the city where

the Romans probably grew their vines, or the scree to the south which Bordeaux

locals planted from the 16th century. And least of all on the gravel hilltops of

the Médoc, which only became accessible all year round once Dutch engineers

had drained the surrounding marshes using a sophisticated system of channels

and sluices. But even so, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, whose winemaking his-

tory apparently has Roman roots (the name is a reference to fruit cultivation,

with ‘poma' meaning apple but also fruit in general, so why not grapes?), stood

at the gates of the city of Libourne, which failed to rival Bordeaux despite its

small port. Rural Libourne thus produced wine primarily for personal use until

the mid-18th century.

In fact, the ditches and furrows which the Romans supposedly carved out of

the limestone rock to facilitate the rooting of their vines (as mentioned in nu-

merous scholarly books) have been shown by recent research to date from the

18th century. Furthermore, scholars have long been arguing about the location

of the remains of the grandiose Villa Lucaniacus belonging to Roman statesman

and poet Ausonius. But they are hardly likely to be slumbering in Saint-Emilion

and are thus of no use as proof of the wonderful wines which the town is sup-

posed to have already been producing at the time.

Arnaud II. de Pontac

13

Fact and fiction

Ausonius went down in Bordeaux history because he scratched ‘Oh father-

land, famous for its vines' into a clay tablet, inscribed it on parchment or some

other material, and also noted in passing that he owned around 25 hectares of

vineyards alongside a few hundred hectares of agricultural land. This does not

mean very much, however, as no true Roman estate would have done otherwise,

as wine was a way of raking in extra wealth, prompting Diodorus Siculus to com-

ment in the first century BC: ‘The avaricious temperament of many Roman trad-

ers exploits the Gallic passion for wine. On the boats which follow the waterways

or by wagons which roll across the plain, they transport wine, from which they

make fantastic profits, going as far as trading one amphora for one slave, in such

manner that the buyer brings his servant to pay for the drink.'

The Roman scholar, politician and poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius was born

in Bordeaux in around 310 (other sources refer to Vasate or Bazas) and died after

a long career in 395 on his family's estate in la Réole in southern Gironde. There is

virtually nothing to associate him with Saint-Emilion. The legend that he owned

a winery there emerged in the 17th or 18th century, and I cannot help thinking

that there are prevailing mercantile and chauvinist interests in this interpretation

of history. Here are the facts: Ausonius's writings mention a villa called Lucani-

acus which ‘could rival a palace in Rome' and could apparently be reached from

Ausonius

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Ausonius and the Romans History

Condat with a team of mules. In 1806, local historian Suffrein published a history

of Libourne, which he took to be the former Condat. In Gallic the name means

a place located at a confluence: today around 100 different ‘condats' have been

identified from those times, including what are now Cognac and Angers. Libourne

does not appear on the list. It was on the basis of this meagre evidence that Suf-

frein established Ausonius' villa as being in Saint-Emilion, where Gallo-Roman

artefacts have indeed been found. However, after archaeologists found the foun-

dations of a large Roman villa near Saint-André / Montagne, Suffrein's thesis was

dismissed as pure fabrication. Researchers still argue about which excavations

can be attributed to Ausonius, who owned estates in Bordeaux and Saintes but