When Wine Flowed Down the Rhône

 

 

Before the Roman conquest, the Gauls were already accomplished winemakers who provided wine for Celtic banquets. Vineyards grew in the Rhône-Saône valley near Lyon and in the south in the Narbonne and Aude Valley. Trade routes fed into the Rhône River where barges transported the wine to ports on the Mediterranean. In 150 B.C.E. Rome took over these trade routes. Bibracte (Chalon-sur-Saône) (200 km northwest of Lyon) was the center for winemaking; archeologists found one million amphores (ceramic vases that held wine).

 

Before and especially after conquest, the Romans imported wine with accelerating speed. Vines from northern Italy were transplanted in these regions. New vineyards opened in Languedoc-Roussillon and in the Côte d’Azur with Vienne as a center for a red wine made with honey called Le Picatum or Mulsum. The Roman patrician class loved this wine. After the conquest, the Loire valley of the Seine began producing Bordelais à la Moselle. By this time Gaul had become the principal exporter of wine in the Mediterranean with Rome its best customer. For a city of one million people, Romans consumed 2.2 million hectoliters of wine per year—that’s over 58 million gallons of wine per year or 58 gallons per person.

 

Wine was transported along “the auto-route of antiquity”, the Rhône and Saône Rivers, and Lugdunum (Lyon) became the capital of Gaul with Arles, the outlet of the river and a Mediterranean port city of exchange. Amphores were made in Tourelles (northern France near Belgium) and barges 30-35 meters long were designed for easy navigation on narrow passageways and deep waters. The amphores of wine were then transferred to “navettes” at the port of Arelate (Arles) and finally taken to Ostie, Rome’s port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea. By the end of the first century, 40 percent of the amphores exported to Rome were from Gaule. Wine from Gaule was also exported to Egypt, southern India (Pondichéry), and various Red Sea ports.

 

The Rhône River provided water routes to other regions of Gaul, which made it much easier to transport commercial goods rather than over land by chariot. For example, it took only a few days to travel from Lyon to Bouches-du-Rhône, a distance of 360 kilometers, compared to one month by chariot.

 

In the third century a political, demographic, and economic crisis in Rome caused farmers to convert their vineyards to pastures. Wine production was severely decreased, and Gaul lost its status as the Mediterranean’s chief wine producer. Moreover, wooden barrels replaced the ceramic amphores, which had been made to last. The Rhône wine routes now became the highways of Christian preachers from Lyon to Vienne to Arles, especially since wine was needed by Christian churches for the celebration of the Eucharist. Previously, the Roman god, Bacchus, had replaced Sucellos, the Gaulois god of wine.

This article was translated from and article by Christèle Dedebant that appeared in GeoHistoire, June-July 2020, pp. 64-71