Les vignes et vignerons d’Orléans à la fin du Moyen Âge
Abstract
Orléans, a large city in the royal domains at the end of the Middle Ages, was famous for its river and its university but also for its vast holdings in vineyards, from which a rather large part of the population, in and outside the town, was able to make a living. Documentation is uneven and can be found in the records of some religious establishments, but is especially in the fairly rich sources based on solicitors’ offices and the city’s accounting records. There were vineyards in forty-three surrounding parishes and even right up to the town walls, with wines known as l’"auvernat", "pinot noir", or "fromenteau". The significant wine trade led to the creation, after 1385, of the so-called tax of the "twelfth" upon purchased wine, one of the city’s main resources. The cultivation practices are not particularly noteworthy, except that they were often carried out by contractors who passed the work on to apprentices, some of whom were so old that they could only have been low-wage workers and who eventually even replaced women during the grape harvests.
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