1395 · Burgundy

Philip the Bold bans Gamay from the Côte d’Or

A ducal decree ordered Gamay pulled up in favour of Pinot Noir, shaping Burgundy for six centuries.

What happened

In 1395 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, issued an edict ordering the removal of Gamay from the Côte d’Or, on the grounds that it produced abundant but inferior wine and damaged the reputation of Burgundian wine abroad.

The commercial motive was explicit. Burgundy’s wine was a prestige export and a source of ducal revenue, and Gamay’s productivity was undermining the price.

The decree was not immediately effective and had to be reiterated, but the direction it set held: Pinot Noir on the Côte d’Or, and Gamay pushed south into the granite soils of Beaujolais, where it remains.

It is a useful corrective to the monastic origin story, because it is a documented, dated, secular act of policy with a traceable and lasting effect on what grows where.

The version you have probably heard

Often quoted for the phrase "très-déloyaux plant" as evidence Gamay is inherently poor. It is evidence that a duke with an export market to protect thought so about Gamay grown on those particular sites.

How firmly this is dated

Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.

The ducal edict survives. Its wording, including the description of Gamay as "disloyal", is a matter of record.

People: Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy

What people get wrong

Corrections this event bears on directly.

Oversimplified

“Cistercian monks created Burgundy’s vineyards and worked out the crus by tasting the soil.”

Monastic houses were major landowners and careful record-keepers, and their holdings shaped the map. But viticulture in Burgundy long predates them, and secular owners — dukes, merchants, and later smallholders — did at least as much.

What this follows from, and leads to

A timeline is a list; these are the links between its entries.

c. 800–1400

Monasteries and medieval viticulture

Monastic orders preserved and systematised viticulture, and effectively invented the study of terroir.

1789–1804

The Revolution fragments Burgundy

Church and noble estates were confiscated and sold, and inheritance law then divided them again every generation.

Sources

Sources consulted

Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB) — Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne
Inter Beaujolais — Union Interprofessionnelle des Vins du Beaujolais
The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press

Along the timeline

Before · c. 1250–1500

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.

After · 16th–19th century

Viticulture spreads to the New World

European colonisation carried vines to the Americas, the Cape, Australia and New Zealand.

← Full timeline