Professor Rod Phillips’s latest book, Un curé dans les vignes (A Priest among the Vines), has just been published in France by Éditions Universitaires de Dijon. It is co-authored by Jean Bart, an old friend of Rod – they met in Paris in 1989, at a conference for the bicentennial of the French Revolution – who is professor emeritus of the history of law at the University of Dijon.
Un curé dans les vignes is based on the records of François Delachère, who was the priest in Volnay, a small Burgundy village now famous for its red wines, from 1726 to 1781. For more than half a century, Delachère kept detailed annual records on the weather, the vines belonging to his parish, the quality and size of the grape harvest, the types of wine produced, and the prices the wines fetched. (The priest kept the revenue from selling the wine to augment his salary.) Delachère editorialized generously, and he recorded his dealings with his employees (sometimes dishonest), his family (frequently dishonest), and wine merchants (generally dishonest).
Rod came across Delachère’s records, kept in two registers, while he was researching the history of wine in an archive in Dijon. As far as he knows, there are no other records like them, in that they give us ground-level, granular information on viticulture, wine production, and the wine trade over a long period during the 1700s. He and Jean Bart discussed the records during many lunches together in Dijon, and several years ago they agreed to prepare a transcription of the main register. They co-wrote a long introduction that discusses Delachère himself and what the records tell us about wine in Burgundy, already a prestigious wine region in the 1700s.
Delachère’s records also provide background to one of Rod’s current projects, a study of the impact of the French Revolution on wine production and wine culture in France (supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant).
Information on the book is here: https://eud.u-bourgogne.fr/histoire/852-un-cure-dans-les-vignes-9782364414518.html