Wine, The Royal Navy, Columbus and Cortez

The Royal Navy, Tonnes and Chaucer

For nearly three centuries when the whole of south west France belonged to the English crown the wine fleet would sail north from Bordeaux to England and north European ports racing to be first with the new vintage. Pirates forced the English to form a protective flotilla: the birth of the Royal Navy. The wine was transported in massive casks, or tonnes, and it is from this that the calculation of size, a ships tonnage, evolved. The writer Chaucer was the son of a vintner and often made reference to the many wines available in London .

Columbus, Cortez and Missionaries

Explorers found wine indispensable if only to eke out precious water supplies, Rioja went with Columbus to America . Cortez sent to Spain for vine cuttings and in a report of the settlement of Mexico (written in 1536) Spaniards grafted European vines onto native stocks as protection against the aphis phylloxera vastatrix. Missionaries planted vines so as to have wine for Mass; Argentina and Chile were competing at international wine exhibitions by the 1870’s. It was not only the Americas that the vine flourished, South Africa saw vines planted with cuttings from Holland in 1654, the first settlers in Australia planted vines in 1788.