Professor Rod Phillips’s latest book, Un curé dans les vignes, which was co-authored by Jean Bart and published earlier this year by Editions Universitaires de Dijon, has been awarded the Prix Vergnette de Lamotte 2024. The annual prize recognizes work on the history of wine in Burgundy.
Un curé dans les vignes is partly a transcription of the main wine records kept by the priest of Volnay, a prestigious wine village in Burgundy. For more than 50 years in the 1700s, François Delachère kept detailed records on the weather, the vines, the harvest, and the wines. His records provide rare granular information on the production of wine in the eighteenth century. Phillips and Bart prepared the transcription and wrote an extended introduction and commentary.