During the Middle Ages, Europe’s winemaking went from super primitive to setting the world’s standards. How did this happen? One way to answer is, well, that was Europe’s genius. Something about the close-set rivers and mountains kept the land broken into locally-governed, competitive regions and fostered the spirit of self-improvement among the people. Another answer lies in the way vast tracts of land were donated to monastic orders. While the choir monks prayed and sang, lay brothers found themselves part of national and multi-national farming and mining corporations, without family and profit-earning distractions. The orderly spirit of monasticism applied itself to farming and iron-working, resulting in the first attempts at basic scientific method in agriculture.
First place goes to the Cistercian monasteries of France and Germany. In central France, the Cistercians became owners of many stony hillsides at the edge of more valuable farmland. They set out to put this wilderness to use. Particularly in the area known as the Côte d’Or, along the Saône River, they used the rocky hillside’s small arable shelf plots as vineyards. As they kept records of wine output, they began to see that some elevations worked better for grapes than others. Small fields on hillsides led to a new method, the creation of enclosed fields in which grape varieties could be controlled. Each “clos” had only one kind of grapevine.
The Cistercian lay brothers all through central France used the Clos system to test and learn about all the factors that went into better viticulture. They could control the product, so that the wine of Clos St. Jean or Clos de Bèze always tasted the same. The Cistercian method spread among the monasteries of their order, through Burgundy and into Germany. The Cistercian monastery at Eberbach, Germany was the largest wine producer of its time. Cistercian abbeys in the Beaune region of France shipped casks of their product, made with dark-red grapes, to the Popes at Avignon. Bordeaux, a French region under English control until the late Middle Ages, supplied most of England’s wine. There, the vineyards developed a method halfway between white and red wine; the wine was fermented with the colored skins for one day, then the skins removed to complete fermentation of this light red, clear wine that became known as Claret.
Wine in the Mediterranean region took a different turn. Under the hot sun, grapes could be left on the vine as long as possible, then partially dried before going into the fermentation process. They had a much higher sugar concentration; the wine was both higher in alcohol and sweeter. It became very popular in England, known as Malmsey. Traders from Venice, whose galley ships took over much northern trade from the flagging Hanse monopoly, carried many butts of Malmsey northward. By 1478, there was enough Malmsey among the aristocracy for a legend that the Duke of Clarence had drowned in it.
The last real improvement of the period came about in Germany, where someone discovered that smoking the inside of a barrel with burning sulfur disinfected it. Wine lasted much longer before souring this way. Germany’s wines were sweeter than France’s, so it was an important international market improvement to make them keep longer, too.
By the end of the Middle Ages, the famous wine names of Europe were all in place. While more improvements would come, particularly with glass storage possibilities, the basic product was not much different from the way it is now.
As a side note, because it seems to go with the wine, cheese was going through the same improvement process in these years. Bleu cheese dates back to the time of Charlemagne, when an Abbot served him cheese streaked with mold and he liked it. By the close of the Middle Ages, every region of Europe had its distinctive cheeses, often made in such large sizes that many dairy farmers had to pool their milk supplies.