Thomas Jefferson visited the Bordeaux area in 1787 and noticed that many of the best wine estates had names such as Boyd… Barton…
Dillon… Lynch… and, where we dined last night, Kirwan.
It might have turned out so differently. That is, if the Spanish had been better organised, better informed, better supplied and better captained. At the critical battle of Kinsale, they might have landed their army at the right place…put more men on the job…and had more guns.
For that matter, it would have helped if the Irish had been more on-the-ball too. They had three ‘Hughs’ – Hugh O’Donnell, Hugh O’Neill and Hugh McGuire — all rushing to aid the Spanish. But they were too little, too late and no match for the more disciplined English.
That was at the beginning of the disastrous (for the Irish) seventeenth century. At the end of it they suffered another huge defeat. The Battle of the Boyne was part of a larger war in which James II fought his own daughter and her husband, William III for the English crown. But for the Irish it was a fight to throw off the English and recover the right to own property and practice their Catholic faith.
Again, the Irish suffered a defeat. William had brought trained soldiers from Holland and Denmark (he didn’t trust the English) who proved very effective against the Jacobite locals and their French allies.
These two battles — and the wreckage wrought by Oliver Cromwell between them — caused many of the Irish to flee here, to Bordeaux, France… and set themselves up in the wine business.
We came for a wedding.
So, we drove from our place in Poitou down a long, twisty road. After a couple of hours, we arrived at the Gironde River and were surprised to find that there was no bridge. Instead, cars lined up to get on a ferry for the river crossing to the Pauillac region on the other side. Already, there was something slightly antique about the ferry crossing, reminiscent of an earlier era.
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| Source: Bill Bonner |
The land is mostly flat. Not especially attractive. In some places, it seems a little down-at-the-heels, reminding us of rural Sicily or Spain. Canals cut across the fields, partly for drainage and partly to take the wine casks to market. Good grape-growing land is extremely expensive, but much of the land is too low and swampy to plant.
Already, by the eighteenth century, Bordeaux was enjoying a booming business. It boomed even further when Irish entrepreneurs got into the act and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave the wine very favourable reviews. Prosperous vintners and wine merchants built their great houses… now on the labels of expensive wines…usually with marvellous stone entryways.
In business as in war, or in marriage for that matter, there are no guarantees. Things go awry. Things change. That’s why it is never a good idea to pay too much for a stock…or a wine estate. For a time, Bordeaux was the leading exporter of wine. Called ‘claret’, by the English…and still listed as ‘claret’ on the menu at Garrick Club in London…it was shipped to British colonies all over the world.
But then, the colonies began producing their own wine. In bulk. The famous ‘Judgement of Paris’ — a blind tasting of wines from all over the world — proved that California wines were actually as good or better than those from Bordeaux. Australia, Chile, and Argentina also became leading exporters… with their own distinctive products. Bordeaux no longer has the wine market to itself… and many of the leading wine estates are not as profitable as they once were.
Still today, amid the sunny shabbiness of the pine trees are some grand and glorious chateaux standing out against the landscape.
A friend, a member of the extended Rothschild family, now resident in New York, got married on Saturday to a girl from Boston. Baroness Philippine de Rothschild died in 2016, but the family still owns a few chateaux in the area, including the Chateau de Kirwan, founded by an Irishman in the eighteenth century, which was the site of the reception.
Weddings and funerals are the key landmarks in our lives. Marriage plants the seed of new life. Death cuts it down. Marriages may fail; death never does.
The peculiarity of this marriage is that it was here in France. Both bride and groom are American. And the service was conducted in English, by a French priest.
Perhaps old Bordeaux has found a new business — as a wedding venue. The seventeenth century church — St. Didier — was beautiful… and the bride, advancing slowly down the aisle, flanked by both father and mother, gliding over the smooth stones… with the sun streaming through the large doors behind them… was stunning.
Regards,
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Bill Bonner,
For Fat Tail Daily
