The vine climbs northwards
Cartographers specializing in the representation of wine-growing France have their work cut out for them. For some years now, vines have been spreading beyond their traditional geographical boundaries, gradually making their way northwards. Here's an overview!
Don't be fooled into thinking that Brittany, Normandy, Ile-de-France and Hauts-de-France have winegrowing "oceans" as far as the eye can see. Vines are invading their landscapes in small, impressionistic touches, but they're becoming less and less discreet. Should we be surprised? After all, wine is produced in Belgium and southern England! And if you read historical works, you'll soon realize that vines were once very much in evidence in regions that until recently were thought to be inhospitable.
Between the 9th and 14th centuries, vines were widely cultivated in Brittany, for example, and not only - far from it - for the liturgical needs of monastic orders. It was mainly in Upper Brittany - the eastern part of the Armorican peninsula - that it developed,in the Rance valley and in the Pays de Redon, encroaching on Lower Brittany via the Rhuys peninsula. Between literary sources, archaeological finds and toponymic legacies, the clues are very serious and concordant! There is less evidence for the period following the Middle Ages, marked by a sharp erosion of winegrowing in Armorica and Normandy.
In the Île-de-France region, the decline came later: at the end of the 18th century, Argenteuil was still France's largest wine-growing commune, with some 1,000 hectares of vines. The development of the railroads, which enabled the circulation of competing wines of better quality, was undoubtedly one of the causes of the gradual disappearance of vines in Brittany, Normandy, Hauts-de-France and Île-de-France.
The role of climate!
what, in this day and age, is responsible for the return of vines to these regions? Global warming, of course, to which a thousand evils and a thousand virtues are attributed.
