The Mysterious Disappearance of Vin de Domme

by Charlie Leary

“The whole commune is renowned for red wine,” informed the Mayor of Domme in response to Cyprien Brard’s official 1835 survey, sponsored by the Prefect of the Dordogne. The quasi-scientific Enquete de Cyprien Brard, given to each mayor, had three pages of questions about viticulture and wine in the Périgord, as the region inland from Bordeaux on the Dordogne River is known, including, “Y a-t-il des crûs renommés?”

It was as though the mayor thought it a stupid question, so obvious was the answer.

Yet less than a century later, the Annales de l’Institut national agronomique spoke of vin de Domme in the past tense. The major intervening event was the phylloxera crisis. Although today one producer, appropriately named “Vin de Domme,” makes limited amounts of local wine, the famed vin de Domme of past centuries has vanished. Examining why this occurred, and what was lost, not only provides for some intriguing wine history, but may also present insights for contemporary wine regions facing a climate crisis.

I lived in Domme for two years and owned former vineyards shown on the 1836 Cadastre of Napoleon, their terracing still preserved on slopes within eyeshot of the Dordogne River; remnants of the big wine barrels, the tonneau, decayed in the property’s ancient barn. That caused me to ask, how good was Domme wine and why did it vanish?

After investigation, a few things struck me about vin de Domme, now less than a footnote in any discussion of French wine.

First, the history of phylloxera’s devastation is too often told in abstract and quantitative, as opposed to concrete and qualitative, terms. We also tend to think that the good vineyards, wines, and appellations survived through the miracle of grafting American rootstock. The history of Domme wine gives texture to the story and shows that renowned viti-vini regions can and did simply disappear. At the same time, the analogy with the current climate crisis is too palpable to avoid. Just because a wine growing area once had all the qualities necessary to produce and sell great wine does not mean that intervening ‘natural’ events—be they accelerated warming combined with killing frosts, or a root-consuming louse—will not close the curtain on an entire region’s livelihood.

Elsewhere on this site, speaking of Napa Valley and Bordeaux, wine scientist Gregory Gambetta writes about gripping speculation “that global warming could reshape the distribution of these regions, pushing them to higher latitudes and elevations with cooler temperatures.” In Domme wine´s obituary, the Annales of agronomy stated simply: “the vineyard has moved.” Should this be a moral lesson for the climate crisis? Finally, Domme wine gives some perspective on the history of Bordeaux as it concentrated its commercial power and, in at least one case, co-opted an elite wine family from a celebrated appellation of the Haut Pays, far up the Dordogne.

Was Vin de Domme good?

The Mayor of Domme was right to be proud of the local red wine’s status in 1835. Domme is both a former canton and King Philip The Hardy’s walled bastide town, perched on a defensive hilltop overlooking the Dordogne River and, once upon a time, hectare upon hectare of vineyards. From the adjacent Port of Domme the flat-bottomed gabarre barges floated wine downstream towards Bergerac and Bordeaux. Before official appellations, wine names adhered to ports and “vin de Domme” was any wine shipped from there. It came from a large area; the former Canton of Domme had 14 communes and covered over 220 square kilometres.

Understanding Domme wine inevitably gets tangled up with Bordeaux because this was not just tipple or piquet for local consumption. Historically, Bordeaux constituted the commercial entrepot of a huge wine production area stretching geographically well beyond the boundaries of the modern appellation, extending past Bergerac, Cahors, and Gaillac.

I visualise it as a big, sloping bowl of wine draining towards the Garonne River and the city. It was a catchment area for all kinds of produce—charcoal, truffles, wood, vine stakes, walnut oil—but most importantly wine. Domme, 170 kilometres from Chartrons, formed part and parcel of a single production zone for the wine trade over centuries. Political, religious, and commercial decision-making either granted or delimited Domme wine access to national and international commerce. Members of the Domme trade were happy to sell their wine downstream, but quite obviously, the name and place of origin mattered; even as early as the 13^th century, Domme wine was a brand.

Bordeaux was also a brand, and by the late 18^th century an increasingly more powerful one. So, this story occurs against the background of Bordeaux’s protectionism and  dominance. The issue seems not to have destroyed the production of Domme wine (which was needed), but rather determined how it would be marketed. From the 13^th century, the Bordelais used privileges to control competition in search of higher profits, and the municipal councillors or jurats, exerted control over the shipment of wines from anywhere upstream classified as the Haut-Pays (like Domme), prohibiting them from entering Bordeaux before St. Martin’s Day and, after 1373, before Christmas.

These protectionist measures continued until Louis XVI’s comptroller-general Jacques Turgot abolished them in 1776, and did not include river tolls exhorted in places like Bergerac. Bringing tonneaux (the origin of the word “ton”) barrels of Domme wine in for blending, then exporting it as vin de Bordeaux, was commonplace.

First mentions of Domme wine and vineyards start in the 13^th century, when the golden age of commerce with England commenced with Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to the Plantagenet king. With lots of money being made in wine, Domme’s product possessed enough quality, renown, and volume to attract the attention of its downstream competitors.

In 1365 the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who controlled a strategic toll at Bigarroque, placed a higher tariff on wines coming from above Saint Cyprien, Domme’s immediate downstream neighbour. For three centuries Cahors prevented Domme wines from passing their bridge; the same was true at times for Bergerac, located between Domme and Bordeaux on the Dordogne. Records mention Bergerac banning Domme wines from river passage in the mid-17^th century. By an order of the Parlement on September 4, 1739, all wine from Domme entering Bordeaux had to be marked with the “armes et cachets” of the canton, including wooden barrels and any other wine containers, which could not be the same size and dimension as Bordeaux barrels (barriques).

Vin de Domme had other outlets and domestic fans. Around 1550, the wine market in Limoges changed from consuming local wine to produce from afar; “the white wine from Bergerac was the highest luxury;  it was dethroned by the wine of Domme.” It became a favourite in all of the Limousin, spurred by improvements to the inland road network in the 16^th century.  The Annales reported: “From then on, the wines of Bergerac and Domme . . . prevailed.” By the late 17^th century “Bordeaux and Muscat wines came to be used as quality wines, without yet competing, for quantity, with the wines of Domme.”

Market Differentiation

The late 17^th and 18^th centuries were a heyday for Domme wine. “All the slopes of the Sarladais are covered with vines, especially those of Domme and [neighbouring] Vitrac . . .” A review of historical maps gives a good sense of the extent of vineyards supplying the Domme wine trade. The 18^th century Cassini map shows sprawling vineyards near the village. The Carte de Belleyme reflects the period of the 1760s and 1770s in greater detail and shows the Domme area blanketed with vines.

Indeed, market differentiation and site selection for making fine wines was well practiced. In 1835, the Domme mayor distinguished between grape varieties grown for quality and those grown for quantity. The latter grew on the hillsides, the former on the flatlands, often near the river. “Before phylloxera raged, the hillsides were the domain of the vineyard: every farmer cultivated vines on the sunny slopes, using a hoe rather than a plow.”

The Annales de l’Institut national agronomique noted: “The Domme vineyard stretched over all the Jurassic hillsides that run through the canton, on some Cretaceous hillsides and on Tertiary plateaus. The limestone hillsides with shallow stony subsoil gave the best wines. . . .The flat lands produced a lower quality but provided a much higher yield.”  The 1836 Cadaste of Napoleon shows numerous plots taxed as vineyard, marked with a “V,” oriented with the slopes and the sun.

After Turgot abolished Bordeaux’s privileges, the Domme wine trade continued to prosper. The Mayor reported grape production as the primary economic activity in the canton. He estimated vineyards occupied 1/12 of the land, which makes for over 1,830 hectares planted to vines, pruned as goblets as well using stake trellising, called echalas and carrassone. The number of grape farmers was growing, said the Mayor.

The Fine Wine of Domme

Domme vintners produced both red and white wine, though by the 19^th century red predominated; despite its prominence in 16^th century Limoges, Brard’s survey did not even mention white wine.

The most common grape for quality red wine was Pied de Perdrix, or Partridge Foot. Writing in 2010, Roger Voss clarified, “Pied de Perdrix is a relative of Malbec, almost lost but rediscovered in a vineyard near Cahors. In style, this wine, all fruit and firm tannins, has much in common with a lighter Cahors.” Other varieties included sauvignon (blanc), fer (“iron),” “butcher” (boucher) and merlot. Fer or fer servadour which means “easy to keep” in the Occitan language, is a black grape with medium-sized clusters and firm and juicy berries; it is characterised by its herbaceous taste, similar to that found in Cabernet Franc.

“The butcher” is in fact Cabernet Franc in the southwest dialect. The Journal du viticulture pratique, published in Paris before the phylloxera crisis, described “full-bodied wines with great colour that lack the acrid flavour of the dark wines of Aude or common wines without appreciable quality, as in the canton of Terrason.”The Annales of Agronomy stated: “These were very full-bodied, of an intense colour and much sought after by the Bordeaux trade, which used them to reassemble the lightest wines of the Gironde. They were very similar to Cahors wines, produced under similar conditions.” The Journal clearly admired the wine: “these wines have a strong colour, strength, spirit, and a good taste. Domme wines are preferred for blending with the light wines of the Bordelais. These wines should be stored for four to five years in tonneaux; these end up excellent and acquire many qualities when aged.” The Brard survey confirmed ageing Domme wine before sale: “several individuals do it,” reported the Mayor.

The Domme Brand Weakens, then Vanishes

Phylloxera was the coup de grâce for Domme wine, but other factors played a role, including market changes favouring Bordeaux’s commercial dominance. Vin de Domme lost its renown as vin de Bordeaux gained market share. In the 18^th century, prior to Turgot’s proclamation, Domme négociants disguised their wine as vin de Bordeaux. In 1740, a nobleman named Carbonierre had 66 barrels (barriques not tonneau) of Domme wine seized by the Jurats of Castillon. The problem was precisely that the wine was contained in Bordeaux barrels without the required Domme markings, considered counterfeiting. In a court case Carbonniere argued his right to use the barriques. He lost. The Jurats confiscated the wine and ordered him to pay a 300 livres fine. Four years later, he was caught and fined again. Putting Domme wine in Bordeaux barriques had simply continued.

In the 1740s there was plenty of demand, as Bordeaux négociants exported Domme wine to Nouvelle France in Canada. “Wines from these regions, transiting through the harbor of Bordeaux, were amalgamated with other wines and/or simply sold under the name of Bordeaux,” speculates Catherine Ferland. She also notes that full-bodied, red Domme wine was better suited to trans-Atlantic trade than local claret. “Whether it was Bordeaux or not, the settlers gave their preference to red wine.

In 1705, a Bordeaux merchant wrote that merchants mainly exported to Canada red wines that were ‘very full and full-bodied’, meaning wines that met both modern tastes and the required conservation criteria for wines crossing the ocean.” This was a two-way contest. On the one hand, Bordeaux´s Jurats actively battled Domme’s counterfeiting. On the other, Bordeaux négociants needed Domme wine, either for blending or direct export, but either way sold under the Bordeaux name. A text from 1827 reported that wines from Domme reached Paris under the name “vins de Bordeaux”.

At least one prominent Domme wine trade family became rich enough to quickly ascend into late 18^th century Bordeaux society, commercial and otherwise. Although at first specialised in selling Haut-Pays wine, the Delbos clan soon shifted to local wine production, finance, and international commerce, leaving Domme behind.

Dommois Jean-Baptiste Delbos was born in 1707 and died in Bordeaux in 1794. Records identify him as a “bourgeois et négociant.” He brought along his son, also Jean-Baptiste, born in Domme in 1753. He married Jeanne Lafargue of a prominent Bordeaux family, who would lead a very interesting life as the head of the finance and wine dynasty “Veuve Delbos” after her husband died at age 53. He had bought the 24-hectare Chateau Lanessan in 1793 and earlier Chateau Virou, previously a convent, where he and Jeanne hid during the Terror. Chateau Lanessan remains with the same family today. As interesting and detailed as the Delbos family story is, the point here is that Bordeaux acted like a commercial magnet, absorbing its rivals, who saw more opportunity downstream than remaining in the bucolic Perigord. This was Domme’s loss.

Phylloxera, however, ended it all. “The hillsides have remained almost abandoned since the phylloxera invasion,” noted the Annales de l’Institut national agronomique. The more famous Annales reported in 1953 that practically all the vines in Domme had disappeared. Though some tried, replanting was unprofitable, perhaps in part because the Domme brand wasn’t what it once was. The Annales of agronomy gave two reasons: the limestone-dominant soil, “making it very difficult if not impossible to reconstitute” grape production with contemporary rootstocks and “also the extremely steep slope of the terrain, too prone to gullying and only allowing work carried out by hand, with transport only on the back of a mule.”

For the most part, the vineyard moved out of Domme (and the wider Périgord region), foreshadowing, perhaps, current speculation about prime wine regions moving to escape rising temperatures. As the Annales wrote, “As a result, the full-bodied wines of yesteryear, whose reputation was so well known, are no longer made.”

 

The documents consulted include the Enquete de Cyprien Brard, the 1836 Cadaste, and the maps of Belleyme and Cassini, all available from the Dordogne Digital Archives. Other works quoted or relied upon include: Journal de la Viticulture Pratique, Vol. II, Paris, 1867; Bodin, Emile. Histoire du Virou, Blaye, 1906, available at gallica.bnf.fr; Fenelon, P. “Le vignoble de Monbazillac.” Revue geographique des Pyrenees et du Sud-Ouest …, 1945; Fenelon, P. “Commerce et industrie dans la vallee moyenne de la Dordogne.” Annales de geographie, 1936; Higounet, C. “Pour une geographie du vignoble aquitain medieval.” Actes des congres de la Societe des historiens …, 1971; Ducourtieux, Paul. Bulletin de la Société archéologique et historique du Limousin, p. 85, available at gallica.bnf.fr; Cocula Anne-Marie. “L’activité d’un maître de bateau sur la Dordogne au milieu du XVIIe siècle,” Annales du Midi : revue archéologique, historique et philologique de la France méridionale, Tome 82, N°96, 1970; Marty, Christian. Les Campagnes du Perigord; Ferland, C. “La saga du vin au Canada: l’Èpoque de la Nouvelle-France.” Anthropology of food, 2004; Cavoleau, JA. “Oenologie francaise, ou Statistique de tous les vignobles et de toutes les boissons vineuses et spiritueuses de la France: suivie de considerations generales ….”, 1827; Lavaud, Sandrine, “Vignobles et vins d’Aquitaine au Moyen Âge,” 2013; geneanet.org entries on the Delbos family; and Higounet, C. “Pour une geographie du vignoble aquitain medieval.” Actes des congres de la Societe des historiens …, 1971. 

www.charlieleary.com