The Transformation of Vinedressing

Vinegrowing has often been described as the aristocracy of agriculture, and the vinedresser as the peasant aristocrat. As one nineteenth-century scholar of vines and vineyards, Jules Guyot, noted, "The cultivation of vines is . . . the complement of all good agriculture; it is master by virtue of the money that it produces; it is the force and resource of agriculture by virtue of the . . . mouths that it feeds."^[29] But the peasant aristocrat had to deal with a temperamental product. As Arthur Young remarked in 1789,

There is scarcely any product so variable as that of wine. Corn lands and meadow have their good and bad years, but they always yield something, and the average produce is rarely far removed from that of any particular year. With vines, the difference is enormous; this year yields nothing; in another, perhaps the casks . . . contain the exuberant produce of the vintage; now the price is extravagantly high, and again so low as to menace with poverty all who are concerned in it.^[30]

In fact, Young was right. Vinegrowing involved considerable risks. Too much rain in spring could prevent flowering; fungal diseases, frost, or hail could easily destroy an entire crop. In addition, unlike other crops that could be planted, cultivated, and then forgotten until harvest or where the work rhythm involved alternate periods of intense activity and rest, vines had to be cared for individually, regularly, and throughout the year, following a prescribed routine. These characteristics of vinegrowing shaped the work and mentality of the vinedresser. Thus, the rise of vineyard monoculture not only changed patterns of landownership and capitalist production; it also meant the adaptation of both owners and workers to different techniques, skills, and work rhythms. Workers who tilled wheat fields and dressed vines in the 1840s acquired new skills and developed new expertise in vinedressing just as did the sons of skilled artisans who acquired vines for the first time in the 1860s.

The vinegrower's year commonly ran from one harvest to another. The work year in the Aude began in late October or early November, immediately following the grape harvest, with the first pruning, or l'époudassage , designed primarily to permit access to the vines for cultivating and cleaning.^[31] At this time, southern vinedressers aggressively pruned their vines in the "goblet" shape of three or four main branches typical of vines in lower Languedoc, cultivated the soil, and began winemaking once the crushed grapes were placed in large cisterns to ferment. In December they pruned and cultivated again and performed the first drawing off of the wine (premier soutirage ). In winter they planted new vines and fertilized; winter prunings continued into February and March, and in March came the final drawing off of wine in the cellar. Throughout pruning, workers cleared fallen

branches from the vines, gathered them into bundles, and sold them as kindling, if the vineyard owner did not keep them.

In April, vinedressers cultivated again and began the "green pruning," cutting back unproductive shoots from unproductive wood and pruning woody stems from the base of the vine to encourage more prolific growth on top where leaves and fruit could more easily receive the hot southern sun. The vinedresser spread sulphur in the vines in May and June as a preventive measure against oidium; a third sulphuring would follow in July, and additional cultivation. Finally, in August, if the season had been unusually damp, the vinedresser might give the vines a fourth sulphuring, prepare material for the harvest, and ready the winemaking vessels and equipment in the cave . Then at the end of September came the harvest, the busiest time of the year, lasting about twenty days. And once it was over, the cycle began again.^[32]

The cultivation of vines thus required continuous, regular work throughout the year. Before the 1880s, pruning was the most important of all vinedressing skills; the primary means by which the vinedresser controlled both quality and yield, it required specialized knowledge of the plant and some training.^[33] In the late 1850s, agricultural societies (comices agricoles ) in Carcassonne and Narbonne gave courses in pruning to agricultural workers and vinedressers. Yet the increasingly complex work of the vinedresser in the "golden age of the vine" did not immediately transform tools and equipment, and until the 1870s vinedressers used traditional methods and ancient tools, performing all operations by hand. In the 1860s vinedressers still used wooden swing plows and cultivated by hand, with spades.^[34] Gradually the agricultural revolution brought changes in this domain as well.

As wine prices rose in the 1870s and vineyard owners became more concerned to turn a profit, vinedressers improved techniques. They began to use new equipment, such as the sécateur , a special curved knife for pruning, and the iron plow, and they cared for their vines still more intensively. Now they fertilized their vines regularly and frequently, pruned aggressively, and planted prolific varieties such as the Aramon and Carignan

grapes, to replace older, less productive Terret and Grenache grapes. In order to cultivate with plows, vineyard owners began to plant their vines farther apart in the 1860s and 1870s. Vinedressers in general took a greater interest in increasing yields, and, as Table 3 shows, wine production steadily increased. Partly as a result of more intensive cultivation and the expansion of vineyards between 1860 and 1880, owners of large properties relied on growing numbers of skilled workers. This factor, plus the tremendous profitability of vines in this period, pushed wages up and, as contemporaries themselves observed, accounted for an increased willingness to improve techniques and equipment.^[35] The agricultural revolution and the gradual transformation of vinedressing also affected the labor structure of the estate vineyard.