Inventing Grand Cru Claret: Irish Wine Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux

Abstract

This article shows that Bordeaux’s most expensive young wines were overwhelmingly purchased by Irish merchants during the long eighteenth century. These merchants then blended the Bordeaux wine with wines from the Rhone Valley and Eastern Spain in preparation for sale in Britain and Ireland. Irish merchants were keenly aware of the frequent deficiencies of even the best wines, and in blending them were responding to the demands of elite British and Irish consumers. Later changes in wine-making, from the vineyard to the cellar, as well as customer demand for pure wines, would end the practice of blending. But the ideal and reputation of great Bordeaux wine, if not the exact taste, was established by Irish merchants in the eighteenth century.

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