The wines of France in most request from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries were those of Macon, Cahors, Rheims, Choisy, Montargis, Marne, Meulan, and Orleanais.  Amongst the latter there was one which was much appreciated by Henry I., and of which he kept a store, to stimulate his courage when he joined his army.  The little fable of the Battle of Wines, composed in the thirteenth century by Henri d’Andelys, mentions a number of wines which have to this day maintained their reputation:  for instance, the Beaune, in Burgundy; the Saint-Emilion, in Gruyenne; the Chablis, Epernay, Sezanne, in Champagne, &c.  But he places above all, with good reason, according to the taste of those days, the Saint-Pourcain of Auvergne, which was then most expensive and in great request.  Another French poet, in describing the luxurious habits of a young man of fashion, says that he drank nothing but Saint-Pourcain; and in a poem composed by Jean Bruyant, secretary of the Chatelet of Paris, in 1332, we find

                 “Du saint-pourcain
  Que l’on met en son sein pour sain.”

("Saint-Pourcain wine, which you imbibe for the good of your health.”)

[Illustration:  Fig. 110.—­Banner of the Coopers of Bayonne.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 111.—­Banner of the Coopers of La Rochelle.]

Towards 1400, the vineyards of Ai became celebrated for Champagne as those of Beaune were for Burgundy; and it is then that we find, according to the testimony of the learned Paulmier de Grandmesnil, kings and queens making champagne their favourite beverage.  Tradition has it that Francis I., Charles Quint, Henry VIII., and Pope Leon X. all possessed vineyards in Champagne at the same time.  Burgundy, that pure and pleasant wine, was not despised, and it was in its honour that Erasmus said, “Happy province! she may well call herself the mother of men, since she produces such milk.”  Nevertheless, the above-mentioned physician, Paulmier, preferred to burgundy, “if not perhaps for their flavour, yet for their wholesomeness, the vines of the Ile de France or vins francais, which agree, he says, with scholars, invalids, the bourgeois, and all other persons who do not devote themselves to manual labour; for they do not parch the blood, like the wines of Gascony, nor fly to the head like those of Orleans and Chateau-Thierry; nor do they cause obstructions like those of Bordeaux.”  This is also the opinion of Baccius, who in his Latin treatise on the natural history of wines (1596) asserts that the wines of Paris “are in no way inferior to those of any other district of the kingdom.”  These thin and sour wines, so much esteemed in the first periods of monarchy and so long abandoned, first lost favour in the reign of Francis I., who preferred the strong and stimulating productions of the South.