The French word “monopole,” as applied to wines, really means a firm’s trade-mark, a proprietary brand: in fact very much the same sort of thing as the popular blends of Scotch Whisky advertised by the leading distillers. At present these Monopoles are chiefly confined to the Côte d’Or and the Bordelais, though specimens have already made their appearance in the lists of certain Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Touraine and Anjou wine-merchants who specialise in these particular growths. To explain what these Monopoles really are—an authority of the eminence of M. Raymond Baudouin has not hesitated to stigmatise them as “pharmacy, but not wine”—the French law concerning appellations of origin, which the Monopoles have been devised to circumvent, must first be briefly examined. A wine may now no longer be sold under a territorial designation unless it is territorially entitled to its use: that is to say only when it has been grown exclusively within territory having an identical geographical (but not necessarily administrative) appellation, or within the area of such adjacent communes as may enjoy a recognised and long-established right to the better-known name of their neighbour. For instance, a red wine sold as “Pommard” in France must have been grown within the Commune of Pommard, Département de la Côte d’Or, and none other; a white wine sold as Pouilly (not to be confused with the white wine of Pouilly-sur-Loir from the common border of the Départements of the Cher and the Nièvre), which is the name of a tiny hamlet in the Mâconnais and not of any one commune, must have been grown either in the Commune of Solutré (in which this hamlet actually lies), the Commune of Fuissé, the Commune of Vergisson and a cadastrally delimited part of the Commune of Chaintré, in the Département of Saône-et-Loire, and nowhere else.

In the Côte d’Or there are two kinds of red vines: one the proud “plant noble,” called the Pinot of Pineau, which alone has made the wine of Burgundy the nectar that it is, that will grow in few places and then only on the lower slope—a niggardly beggar so delicate as to be prone to practically every malady that the vine is heir to; and the Gamay,⁠[6] a “plant commun,” which will thrive anywhere, especially where the Pinot will not—a hardy vine that is a heavy bearer and causes little anxiety or expense to the vigneron.

As there is very little slope with the right exposure in each commune, it follows that there is a considerable extent of Gamay plantations, since the wine of the Gamay vineyards has just as much right to be sold as “Pommard,” if it is grown in that commune, as wine grown in the most famous of the historic “climats” which have been planted exclusively with Pinot vines since time immemorial. (In England, in so far as our “Pommard” ever comes from that Commune, or the Burgundy region at all, it is nearly always Gamay wine, French growers and shippers having long ago discovered that most English wine-drinkers, and many English wine-merchants, cannot distinguish it from a Pinot growth, though these respective flavours, once they become familiar, are as dissimilar as chalk and cheese.) An amendment to the Loi des Appellations d’Origine, called the Amendment Capus after the name of the Senator who introduced it, is now before the French Chambers, the object of which, should it, as seems probable, be ratified, is to limit any given “appellation d’origine” ampelographically as well as territorially: that is, to confine it to wines grown from those auguster vines that are historically as much an integral part of the wine itself as the traditional area of ground and the geological nature of the soil it has always been grown on. The first important effect of this amendment to the existing state of the law would be that Gamay wines grown in Côte d’Or communes would no longer be entitled to any local appellation of origin (such as “Pommard”), unless it were the generic name “Bourgogne,” the lowest, because the most general, qualification of all for any Burgundy, red or white. A given wine, enjoying the right to a special secondary appellation, can always be made to descend the scale from the particular to the general in bad years, or for any other cause that may have marred its quality; but a wine can never be promoted to a higher category than that in which it was born and bred. A simple instance for exemplifying this point is afforded by the official grouping in the Beaujolais. The local appellations of origin here recognised as “pouvant revendiquer les usages loyaux, locaux et constants,” are Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Morgon, Juliénas, Brouilly, Thorins, and Chénas. Now none of these wines can under any circumstances appropriate to itself the name of one of its fellows. Chénas may not style itself Moulin-à-Vent; nor, for that matter, though there is no sort of temptation to do so, may Moulin-à-Vent style itself Chénas. Yet all are Beaujolais and “Beaujolais” is the common name to which every other wine grown in that region has an equal right. Thus any of these seven “named” wines may call itself simply “Beaujolais,” and being a Beaujolais has a clear title to the seemingly magnificent, but in reality exceedingly common and unassuming, patronymic of “Bourgogne.” There is only one Mackintosh of Mackintosh, but Andrew Mackintosh, gillie to THE Mackintosh, is as much a “Mackintosh” as the exalted Chief of the Clan.

None the less any wine-merchant has the right to sell a wine, or blend of wines, French or foreign, called by some fantastic name, or whatever title of his own invention he chooses to employ, provided it is not identical with an existing appellation of origin. More often than not the bottler selects a name nicely calculated to seem a genuine territorial appellation to the unwary, such as Château This or Clos That, Roc d’Or or Monvalloir; or, keeping within the law, slightly adapts the spelling of some classic growth with fraudulent intent: Romani for Romanée, etc. Several of the more important Bordeaux and Beaune firms sell Monopoles purely on the strength of their own names and previous reputations as Chose’s Blue and Green Labels, or Red and Yellow Capsules, much as English grocers sell different qualities of well-known brands of tea. Where Saints’ names are invoked because of their prevalence in Bordelais communes, the wines they consecrate are no more catholic for the doubtful compliment of a spurious, or impersonated, canonisation. Certainly good St Vincent would have none of these imposters either as brother saints or tipplers.

According to M. Raymond Baudouin, a typical recipe adopted by the Côte d’Or alchemists is

25% genuine Côte d’Or Burgundy for flavouring.

30% good Côtes du Rhône wine to eke out this flavouring.

20% ordinary Algerian wine to reduce the cost.

25% natural wine (i.e., wine with no special flavour or other salient characteristic) to drown the taste of the hot Algerian blending wine and still further reduce the cost of production.

The Bordeaux houses are said to employ

25% genuine Bordeaux.

30% good Midi wine.

20% ordinary Algerian wine.

25% neutral wine.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that these formulas are only approximate, and that the actual ingredients of each Monopole vary in nature and ratio with the firm of wine-cooks concerned. Indeed, there are some Côte d’Or houses which claim that their Monopoles are blended exclusively from pure, territorially genuine, Burgundies: a claim which, whether justifiable or not in fact, is best rejected on principle, because there is seldom any inducement to blend a wine good enough to be sold unblended.

A widely organised conspiracy now exists to foist these vinous compounds, which may conceivably be wine and even French wine, but are certainly neither Bordeaux nor Burgundy according to any legal or loyal interpretation of those terms, on purchasers of single bottles and diners at restaurants because they yield much bigger profits than ordinary wines. Thanks to our national ignorance of wines, Monopole brands of White Graves (one boasts that it is supplied to the House of Lords), and other so-called “Oyster-Wines,” have already gained a certain footing on the English market because they are supposed to offer “more regular and uniform quality” than wines bearing straightforward territorial designations, together with a sustained standard of flavour, independent of vintage vagaries: a thing which it is simplicity itself to produce once “coupage,” or scientific blending, is resorted to. In the Côte d’Or, where the demand for authentic Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune Burgundies is anything up to five times as much as can be genuinely produced, while bad vintages are much more frequent than good, the evil of the “Marques Personnelles” has made such rapid progress that already more Monopole wines than territorial growths are sold and the integrity of the sacred name of Burgundy is definitely compromised. Many of these mixtures are quite agreeable to drink, provided always that they are taken for what they really are and not for what they pretend to be, but to offer them to one’s friends is an unpardonable insult, however merited the insult may sometimes be. The proper sphere for these beverages—if, indeed, they can be said to have any proper sphere other than the hoodwinking of the credulous and ignorant for whom they are lavishly and alluringly labelled in regulation Burgundy and Bordeaux bottles—is for splashing down a hustled and jolted meal in a dining-car. A Monopole may be defined as the Train Bleu wine par excellence, since it can always be relied upon to be none the worse for the most violent shaking before taking.

A word of caution is, however, necessary because in French commercial usage this dangerous word “monopole” can have two very different interpretations. The first, which is infinitely the more common, as we have just seen, applies to blended wines sold as proprietary brands under the euphemism which the law requires to be printed in the wine-merchant’s price-list but not on the label of the bottle: “exclusif de toute considération d’origine et de cépage” (cépage means in this context the types of vine traditionally associated with particular growths of wine). The second, and entirely respectable sense, which the same term may have, is in the case where a certain firm may own or lease the whole of a particular vineyard and can thus claim that it possesses a “monopoly” of its wine. An outstanding instance is provided by Romanée-Conti of Vosne, perhaps the most famous vineyard in the whole world, which is “Monopole de la Maison De Villaine et Cambon” for the very good and sufficient reason that this old and honourable firm owns the freehold of the hallowed hectare and a half and bottles every drop of its priceless wine in its own cellars.

Strictly speaking, Champagne (where the term originated and where it is still extensively used), practically all other sparkling wines and most Ports, Sherries, Madeiras and Marsalas are likewise Monopoles, because they are sold under the names of different makers—each separate shipper representing one or more proprietary brands—instead of under the names of particular vineyards or communes. In each of these cases, however, the blending formula, which has made the reputation and constitutes the most jealously guarded secret of each firm, relies wholly on wines enjoying co-equal local appellations. Every drop of Première Zone Champagne is territorially genuine “Champagne,” although as many as six separate communes, each with its own appellation of origin, may have contributed to its composition. The only way to avoid pitfalls is to know your Côte d’Or communes and “climats” and your Bordeaux districts, with their constituent communes and satellite Crus, Clos and Châteaux (the latter is almost the work of a lifetime), more or less by heart, and to apply the cold test of geography to every bottle you are invited to buy. Even then you have no real guarantee in England, for English wine-merchants seem to be able to label wines, or other vinous mixtures, with more or less any names that suit their fancies, and yet enjoy virtual immunity from prosecution, so long as they do not describe as “Port” or “Madeira” wines that were not originally shipped from Oporto and Funchal with the appropriate Portuguese Certificate of Origin.