c. 1250–1500 · The Rhine, the Low Countries and the Baltic
The northern wine trade
Rhine wine moved north by river and sea in commercial quantities, and northern Europe acquired a taste it has never lost.
What happened
The Rhine was a wine highway. German wine moved downstream to Cologne and on to the Low Countries, England and the Baltic, and cities along the route grew wealthy on the transit trade.
Cologne’s wine staple rights — the obligation on passing merchants to offer goods for sale there — made it one of the richest cities in northern Europe.
The wines travelled in barrel and were frequently doctored en route, which is part of why later German wine law became so preoccupied with authenticity.
This trade is the origin of the long-standing northern European preference for Rhine wine, and of the English word "hock", from Hochheim.
How firmly this is dated
Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.
Municipal and Hanseatic trade records, customs accounts and guild documents.
What this follows from, and leads to
A timeline is a list; these are the links between its entries.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Deutsches Weininstitut (German Wine Institute) — DWI
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press