Locke Wears Another Hat

March 2014

Another modern wine-making fashion, involving arcane rituals redolent of primitive religions, is bio-dynamism-a doctrine created by the Austrian theosophist Rudolf Steiner. Most sane people would find the theory undergirding bio-dynamism hard to accept, and some bio-dynamic practices, such as burying a cow horn full of manure in the vineyard at the autumn equinox, then digging it up six months later and using it as the basis of a liquid fertiliser, seem like pure superstition. But there were similar superstitions abroad around Montpellier in the 1670s, because Locke was "told that a sheep's horn buried at the root of a vine will make it bear well even in barren ground". He prudently added: "I have no great faith in it, but mention it because it may so easily be tried."

In other respects, Locke's notes bear witness to essential truths about viticulture which have never been lost to sight. For instance, the wines of the Côte-d'Or show the importance of a well-oriented slope for the production of the very best wine, and also demonstrate that vines grown in a valley may crop more heavily but yield a less generous and interesting product. The same fact had been noticed by the winegrowers of Provence in the 1670s: "They plant their vineyards both in plains and on hills with indifferency; but say that on hills, especially opening to the east or south, the wine is best: in plains they produce most."

Perhaps most interesting, however, at least for drinkers of fine claret, are Locke's comments on the property which is now known as Château Haut-Brion (but then known by the name of the proprietor, M. Pontac):

The vine de Pontac, so much esteemed in England, grows on a rising opening to the west, in a white sand mixed with a little gravel, which one would think would bear nothing; but there is such a particularity in the soil, that at Mr. Pontac's near Bourdeaux the merchants assured me that the wine growing in the very next vineyards, where there was only a ditch between, and the soil to appearance perfectly the same, was by no means so good.

The wine of Haut-Brion had already been praised by Pepys; hence perhaps Locke's comment about its being "so much esteemed in England". More interesting is what Locke reports about the "terroir". The neighbouring vineyard, over what was then evidently a ditch, and is now the road to Arcachon, is La Mission Haut Brion. It is still a very different wine from Haut-Brion, although it would be a very confident judge who would condemn it today with the phrase "by no means so good".