Homemade Wine as a Way of Life in Europe
From Ancient Vineyards to Family Cellars
Part 2
🍷 The Wine of the Poor and the Wine of the Wealthy
How a Shared Wine Culture Gradually Divided into Home Production and a Market for Fine Wine
In the Middle Ages, homemade wine was still a normal part of everyday life. Yet within this shared wine culture, two very different worlds were already beginning to take shape.
For a peasant, wine was part of the household economy, part of the harvest and the daily table. He grew the grapes, gathered them, crushed them, stored the wine, and drank what his family had produced. Its quality depended on the harvest, the weather, his experience, and the condition of the barrels. But he did not choose between dozens of different wines.
There was only his own.
For a wealthy landowner, aristocrat, or prosperous townsman, the situation was different. Wine was a commodity that could be selected, brought from distant regions, aged, served to distinguished guests and judged by its place of origin.
He, too, might drink wine produced on his own estate, which technically made it “homemade.” But this was a very different kind of homemade wine. It could be made from the best plots. Grapes could be selected more carefully. The young wine could be stored in better cellars, there was a wider choice of barrels, and experienced people could be placed in charge of production.
Homemade wine now existed on both sides of the social divide, but it served entirely different purposes.
One man needed wine of his own. The other needed good wine
Wine on a poor man’s table and wine on a lord’s table might have been produced only a few hundred yards apart. Yet they already belonged to two different worlds.
Still, the distinction should not be exaggerated. In a favorable year, an experienced peasant could make perfectly sound wine. And in the cellars of a wealthy estate, barrels sometimes spoiled as well.
The true social boundary lay not only in quality, but also in the freedom to choose
A poor man drank what his household or the surrounding countryside produced. A wealthy man could afford not only his own wine, but also wine brought from another region and, later, from another country.
Wealth was gradually turning wine from part of the household economy into an object of choice, taste and status.
While the poor continued to drink the wine of their own land, the wealthy increasingly decided which wine to place on the table—and for what occasion.
It was this freedom of choice that slowly began to transform the centuries-old relationship between people and homemade wine.
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…Tuscany. Late fifteenth century. A small village near Florence. A peasant’s cottage.
Evening had come, and supper was ready. A loaf of bread rested on the wooden table. A bowl of thick vegetable stew sent up curls of steam. Beside it lay an onion and a wheel of homemade cheese.
The farmer lifted the trapdoor in the floor and climbed down into the small cellar. A few minutes later he returned carrying an earthenware jug and set it on the table.
His wife poured a little wine into a cup, tasted it, and frowned.
— Too sour.
— I know, — her husband replied. — We didn’t get enough sun last summer. The grapes never became as sweet as they should have.
He filled the others’ cups.
— Should we keep it for cooking? — his wife asked.
He shook his head.
— And what would we drink instead? This is all we have. We might as well finish it.
He looked at the children, then at the jug.
— Let’s hope this autumn is warmer. The grapes will ripen better.
No one complained again. The wine was sour, but it was theirs. It had been made from the harvest their own land had given them.
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…Florence. Late fifteenth century. The home of a wealthy merchant.
At that same hour, servants in the city were preparing a lavish dinner. Meat sizzled in the kitchen. Spices arrived from the pantry. Candles were being lit in the dining hall.
The master of the house was reading his correspondence when his wife asked,
— Which wine shall we serve tonight?
— Who is joining us?
— Signor Lodovico from Milan. He’s here on business and will stay for dinner.
The merchant thought for a moment.
— Then don’t open our young wine.
— Shall I bring the Tuscan from the far cellar?
— No. For a guest of his standing, serve the Umbrian wine Bartolomeo brought us. It’s softer and better aged.
She nodded.
— But it’s expensive.
— All the better. Lodovico should see how much we value his visit.
A servant soon disappeared into the cellar. There stood barrels and jugs from many different places—local wines, wines from Umbria, wines from Romagna, and a few vessels brought from even farther away.
A prosperous man was no longer limited to whatever had grown on his own land. He could choose.
One era, one country, two tables. The peasant drank the wine his land gave him. The wealthy man could already choose which wine to serve at his table
For the peasant, what mattered most was that the wine was his own
For the wealthy, what increasingly mattered was which wine appeared on the table
One depended on his own harvest. The other could already choose among different harvests, different regions, and different merchants.
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🏭 The Nineteenth Century: When Wine Left the Home
For centuries, the journey from vine to table had been short and familiar. The grapes grew close to home. Families—and often their neighbors—harvested them together. The wine fermented in the household cellar, then found its way upstairs to the lunch or dinner table.
In the nineteenth century, that familiar chain began to break.
Europe was changing. Cities expanded, factories multiplied, and millions of people left the countryside. Yesterday’s peasant became today’s factory worker.
Instead of a family home, he now rented a cramped room in an industrial neighborhood. Instead of tending a vineyard, he stood beside a steam engine or a factory machine. Instead of drawing wine from his own cellar, he bought it from the shop around the corner.
Several profound changes were taking place at once.
• Industrialization and urbanization. Millions of people physically lost the ability to make wine at home. People became separated from the land. A vintner’s son moved to the city and, for the first time in his life, lived without vines, a wine press, barrels, or a cellar.
• The transportation revolution. Railroads allowed wine to travel farther, faster, and more cheaply than ever before. City dwellers no longer depended entirely on the nearest vineyard.
• The growth of trade and mass production. Wine increasingly became a commercial product, made not only for one’s own family or neighbors but for anonymous customers living dozens or even hundreds of miles away. Mass-produced glass bottles and the rise of large commercial wineries accelerated this transformation.
Yet although millions left the countryside, they did not abandon the habit of drinking wine. Someone else simply had to make it. And for the first time, ordinary people could buy wine whenever they wished instead of waiting for the next harvest.
More and more often, a person no longer descended into a family cellar to fetch a jug of wine. Instead, he stepped outside and crossed the street to buy a bottle.
If, during the Middle Ages, only the wealthy could choose which wine to place on the table, the nineteenth century expanded that privilege to millions of ordinary townspeople. Their tables now held wines produced far from home.
Homemade wine did not disappear because people forgot how to make it.
It disappeared because the way of life that had once required it was slowly disappearing
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...Northern Italy. The 1860s.
Freight cars were being unloaded at a railway station. Antonio had worked there for almost two years. He arrived before dawn every morning and returned each evening to the small room he shared with two other laborers.
He rarely visited his village.
One day his landlord handed him a small wooden crate.
— Someone sent this for you.
Antonio recognized his father’s handwriting immediately. Inside were a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, several dried sausages—and a bottle of wine.
A short note lay on top.
«The new wine is ready. It’s better than last year’s. Your mother packed you some food as well. Come home when you can. We miss you.»
That evening Antonio placed the bottle on the table.
— Any good? — his roommate asked.
Antonio poured a glass and took a sip. An ordinary country wine. Slightly tannic. Perhaps his father had racked it off the lees a little too early.
Back home he had drunk this kind of wine almost every day without giving it much thought.
— So? — his roommate asked again.
Antonio took another sip.
— It’s good.
He replaced the cork and put the bottle away in the cupboard.
— Why aren’t you finishing it?
— Later.
The following evening he poured himself another small glass. The bottle lasted nearly a week. His father had sent him nothing extraordinary—just the family’s new wine from the latest harvest.
But somewhere between the village and the city, it had become something more than simply wine
For his father, homemade wine remained part of everyday life. It stood in the cellar beside the previous year’s barrels, appeared on the table at lunch and dinner, and was shared with neighbors.
For the son, however, the same bottle meant something different. He no longer harvested grapes. He no longer descended into the cellar. He no longer watched the wine ferment. Little by little, homemade wine was ceasing to be part of his daily routine. It was becoming a memory of the rural life he had left behind.
It had become the taste of home
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🪲 Phylloxera: When Family Vineyards Began to Die
Homemade winemaking had already begun to weaken under the pressures of urbanization and expanding trade. Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Europe was confronted by an enemy that at first almost no one noticed.
Phylloxera—a tiny insect accidentally introduced from North America—attacked the roots of European grapevines. The vines weakened, their harvests declined, and eventually they died. The epidemic began in France before spreading across the great wine regions of Europe.
The story of phylloxera is usually told through the devastation of famous vineyards, renowned estates, and staggering economic losses.
But there was another story.
On the edge of a village stood a few rows of vines. The grandfather had planted them. The father had cared for them. Now they belonged to the son. They had never produced a legendary wine. Their bottles were never sold in Paris, London, or Vienna. Their wine had no label, no reputation, and no famous name.
Yet every autumn the family gathered the grapes. Every winter a barrel of new wine stood in the cellar. It had been that way in the grandfather’s time. It had been that way in the father’s time. It seemed as though it always would be.
Then the vines began to die. First one. Then several more. Within a few years, almost nothing remained of the vineyard. For a great estate, losing a vineyard meant enormous financial losses—sometimes even ruin.
For this family, it meant something else.
For the first time in generations, there was no harvest to carry down into the cellar
The great vineyards of Europe were eventually saved. The solution came through grafting European grape varieties onto American rootstocks that were resistant to phylloxera.
Large estates could afford the grafting, hire specialists, and replant their vineyards. It was difficult, expensive work. But it could be done.
A small farming family often had neither the money, nor the time, nor even the desire to begin again. Some replaced their vines with other crops. Some left for the cities. And some, for the first time in their lives, began buying the wine they had always made themselves.
For an ordinary farming family, the loss of a few rows of vines could mean the end of a tradition that had passed from one generation to the next. And even if the vineyard was eventually replanted years later, the children might already be living in the city, with no desire to return.
Industrialization was taking people away from the vineyards. Phylloxera was taking the vineyards away
Together, they broke one of the oldest and most enduring patterns of European life—the bond between a family, its own vines, its cellar, and the wine on its table.
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…Southern France. A small village. The 1880s.
They ate supper in silence. On the table stood the usual bowl of soup, bread, vegetables, and a couple of small fish. The place where the family’s own jug of wine had always stood was empty.
The wife broke a loaf of bread and handed half to her husband.
— What are we going to do?
He did not answer.
— The last vines are gone. The cellar is empty. We have nothing left to drink—and nothing to take to market.
— I know.
— The roof leaks. Jean needs a doctor. How are we going to pay for any of it?
The man continued eating his soup in silence.
— We could plant something else, — she said quietly.
— We could.
— But we need money now.
He laid down his spoon. Beyond the window stretched rows of dead vines.
— Pierre wrote that the factory is looking for workers.
She looked at him.
— In the city?
— In the city.
— And what would you do there?
— I don’t know.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
— Maybe we should go to him.
The man looked at the empty place in the middle of the table. Only a few years earlier, a jug of homemade wine had stood there every evening. His father had placed one on this very table. His grandfather had done the same.
— Maybe, — he said at last.
His wife brushed the crumbs from the table.
— When?
He looked out at the vineyard once more.
— After winter.
For the first time in generations, the family began to consider leaving the home where they had always lived.
Phylloxera was driving rural families away from their vineyards. The industrial city was already waiting to receive them
For history, it was just one more family leaving the village. For homemade wine, it was one more empty cellar and one more jug that no one would ever fill again
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🚢 A European Tradition Crosses the Atlantic
By the beginning of the twentieth century, homemade wine was gradually losing its traditional place in everyday European life. But the story of this tradition did not end there.
Together with millions of European immigrants, it crossed the Atlantic. Italians, French, Spaniards, Germans, Hungarians, Jews, people from the Balkan countries, and many others from Europe’s wine-growing regions brought more than their language, family customs, recipes, and traditions to America.
They could not bring the land itself. A vineyard could not be loaded onto a steamship. A family cellar could not be packed into a suitcase. But memory could travel.
People remembered harvesting their own grapes. They remembered crushing them. They remembered watching them become young wine. They remembered the first time a father allowed his son to taste it from his own cup. They remembered the smell of the cellar every autumn.
None of these memories required space in their luggage. They crossed the Atlantic free of charge.
Life in the New World was different. Yesterday’s peasant became a factory worker, a construction laborer, or a railroad employee. Instead of a family home, he lived in a small apartment in a crowded neighborhood.
Instead of a vineyard, he might have only a few flowerpots on a windowsill or a tiny backyard behind the house.
Yet some traditions survived the ocean crossing. In Italian, Portuguese, and many other European immigrant families, wine remained part of the family table. They bought it. And whenever circumstances allowed, they made it themselves.
Parents passed on more than their language, recipes, and family stories. They also passed on the belief that wine did not have to come only from a store.
It could be made with your own hands
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…New York. An Italian neighborhood. Early twentieth century.
A father and his young son walk past a neighborhood grocery store. Baskets of fresh grapes stand outside the entrance.
The father stops.
— Dad, what are you looking at?
— The grapes.
—I know.
The father picks up a single grape and tastes it.
— Not the same.
— Not the same as what?
— Not the same as back home.
The boy shrugs.
— Where is home?
The father looks at his son. The boy was born in New York.
— Far away, — he says.
And they continue walking.
In America, the grapes no longer belonged to European immigrants. But the habit of making wine from them remained.
Much had changed in the New World: the country, the city, the home, and even the grapes, which now had to travel from far away. But the family tradition of making their own wine had crossed the ocean with the people who carried it
They would soon discover that the Atlantic had not been the greatest obstacle their tradition would have to overcome.
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