Claret: Bloodstream of the Auld Alliance

by Billy Kay

Guid claret best keeps out the cauld
an drives awa the winter soon
It maks a man baith gash an bauld
an heaves his saul ayont the mune.

Alan Ramsay’s poem was in praise of clairet, the light, limpid rosé wine of Bordeaux, which became claret, the dark, powerful, purple-red liquid that linked Scotland and France so closely it was known as the Bloodstream of the Auld Alliance. Today it still has the unerring ability to hoist the Scotsman’s soul over the moon, as more and more people re-discover the joy of their other national drink. In the 18th century, when Ramsay wrote, claret was a staple beverage in the Scottish capital, with claret carts as common as milk floats today. In his memoirs, Lord Cockburn wrote:

I have heard Henry MacKenzie and other old people say that when a cargo of claret came to Leith, the common way of proclaiming its arrival was by sending a hogshead of it through the town on a cart with a horn; and that anybody who wanted a sample or a drink under pretence of a sample, had only to go to the cart with a jug, which without much nicety about its size was filled for a sixpence.

Sixpence-worth rarely sufficed, for the common measure at the time was the chopin (a generous quart, the name derived from the French la chopine). The everyday drinking vessel was the mighty Tappit Hen (again French in origin, derived from la topynette), great lidded jugs, mightier than the Bavarian Stein and foaming with a much more generous liquid. Sir Walter Scott’s son-in-law and biographer Lockhart described an old-fashioned Edinburgh repast.

I have seldom seen a more luxurious display. We had Claret of the most exquisite Lafitte flavour which foamed in the glass like the cream of strawberries, and went down as cool as the nectar of Olympus.

But why did the Scots continue drinking fine claret, while their unfortunate neighbours to the South had to make do with a sweet concoction from the wilds of the Douro called Port?

It all goes back over 700 years to the origins of the Auld Alliance, an event precipitated by the death of Alexander III in 1286. The King fell over the cliffs at Kinghorn in Fife, en route to his young French wife, Yolande, and yet another attempt to give Scotland the heir her political stability demanded. It was not to be, and the English manipulated the political vacuum with dire consequences for the Scottish nation. The black rumour is that Alexander’s demise may have been due to over indulgence in claret before setting off.

That offered no consolation to one Jean Mazun, négociant à Bordeaux, to whom Alexander owed more than £2,000 for wine. Mazun tried to obtain satisfaction from the puppet king supported by the English, John Balliol, but he was to die cursing the Scots and their meanness. The Scots today blame their undeserved reputation for greediness on the image made famous by Harry Lauder. But Jean Mazun had the image of l’écossais avare well established in Bordeaux by the beginning of the 14th century! As to non-payment of the wine, it was nothing personal, nor was it anti-French. It was simply that Mazun was an English subject, and therefore got what he deserved. Nothing!

Ever since the 15h century when the Scots fought alongside their Auld Allies to remove the Auld Enemy from their last toehold in south-west France, there has been the underlying suspicion that we were only there for the claret. For one of the long term rewards bestowed on us by the grateful French was the granting of privileges in the wine trade which gave us status and commercial advantage over other nations. A peeved Englishman of the Elizabethan period reluctantly explained the “special relationship” the Scots enjoyed:

“Because he hath always been an useful confederate to France against England, he hath right of pre-emption or first choice of wines in Bordeaux; he is also permitted to carry his ordnance to the very walls of the town.” The practical result of this was that while the English had to surrender their arms when entering the Gironde, apply for passports, and be subject to curfews, the Scots sailed blithely upriver to get the pick of the new vintage at reduced rates, and then head for home in time for Hogmanay! The Scots official privileges lasted until Colbert, showing no sentimental attachment to the land of his ancestors, withdrew them in the 1660s.

Long before that unfortunate event, the Scots and French enjoyed centuries of mutual co-operation, something reflected in the many Scots words of French origin relating to food and wine: Gigot, sybos (ciboulets), grozets (groseille) ashet (assiette); tassie (tasse) gardyveen (garde-vin) and symleir (sommellier). Despite the fate of Alexander, the Kings of Scots continued with claret as their preferred tipple. The court poet of James IV, William Dunbar, for example attempts to persuade the King to desist from hunting and return to the palace of Holyrood by citing the wines he can savour there:

Fresche fragrant clairettis out of France,
of Angers and Orleans.

The landing of wine into Leith – described charmingly in the wine museum in Bordeaux as “le petit Leict” – the principal port, was the responsibility of the Monks of St Anthony. Hailing originally from Vienne on the Rhône, they derived their income from the sale of the wine to the Edinburgh burgesses. When the Reformation came along, the order was disbanded, but a modicum of profits from the wine still went to the church for charitable purposes and the King James Fund is still in existence to help the needy in the port of Leith. The building and cellars called the Vaults where they stored the wine, is also still in existence and houses a fine restaurant, a wine merchant, and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society!

While the Reformation ended the direct French cultural influence at Court, the Scots colony in Bordeaux actually increased as the merchants there were joined by teachers and intellectuals spreading the teachings of Calvin and Knox to this strongly Huguenot part of France. The great humanist, George Buchanan, for example, taught the philosopher Montaigne at Bordeaux University before returning eventually to Scotland to tutor James VI. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, another group of Scots settled in France, Jacobite political exiles loyal to the Stuarts and against the Union with England which had come into force against the will of the majority of the population in 1707. At home, Jacobites and cultural nationalists drank claret as a symbol of Scots independence, rather than succumb to the “politically correct” English favourite, Port. The national standpoint is expressed in rhyme:

Firm and erect, the Caledonian stood
Old was his mutton and his claret good.
Let them drink Port! The English statesman cried,
He drank the poison and his spirit died.

John Home, politically far from being Jacobite, wrote that epigram, proving that the country was united in seeing claret as a symbol of Scottish identity. So much so, that everyone turned a blind eye to the universal practice of smuggling the stuff throughout the 18th century.

Once the wine arrived in Scotland, its origins were an open secret. Among those ignoring the wine’s illegal source were those pillars of Edinburgh society, the lawyers and judges. James Boswell’s diary entry in 1779 sums up the attitude of the age: “It is wonderful what joy there is in excess. I stood it better today than yesterday.” Then, not drinking was socially unacceptable. Lord Cockburn described the attitude of Lord Hermand, a High Court judge of the period. “With Hermand, drinking was a virtue; he had a sincere respect for drinking, indeed a high moral approbation, and serious compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it, and with due contempt of those who could but did not.” Once, horrified by the lenient sentence given to a murderer convicted after a drunken brawl, Hermand remonstrated: “Guid God, my Lords, if he’ll do this when he’s drunk, what is he no capable of when sober?” Another member of the legal fraternity was Lord Newton who bemoaned the change in manners beginning to affect society at the turn of the 19th century. “What shall we come to at last. I believe I shall be left alone on the face of the earth, drinking Claret”.

As far as the lawyers were concerned, he had nothing to worry about it – they continue the unbroken fine claret drinking tradition to this day in their various Dining Societies. But for most people, the close of the 18th century was also the close of a chapter in Scottish society. British government policies against the smugglers and their prohibitive duty on the wine, led to the demise of the wine drinking tradition. The old excess too was frowned upon as a strong Temperance Movement gained momentum. Two ‘new’ drinks arrived in Lowland urban Scotland, from India and the Highlands respectively. Tea, regarded a bit like cannabis resin when it first arrived, quickly gained respectability. Whisky, described by Burns two decades previously as “a rascally liquor drunk by the rascally portion of society”, overcame its initial notoriety to overwhelm the drinking public so totally that everyone presumes it has always been the national drink, instead of in historic terms, the rather uncouth Highland arriviste it undoubtedly is!

While the 19th and early 20th century saw claret move up the social scale, the wine trade in Scotland flourished with the ancient expertise now used to supply England and the Empire with wine. Leith-bottled claret enjoyed an international reputation, supplied by companies such Cockburn’s of Leith. They guarded their reputations jealously, and were extremely aware of the importance of the Scottish market, and the level of expectancy among its connoisseurs. A letter from John Cockburn to a firm of Bordeaux négociants regarding the quality of the premiers crus of the 1828 vintage is revealing:

There is a poverty about them which we did not anticipate. Your opinion of them being so much higher than ours we hope you will have no objection to our sending you what remains which we cannot doubt your easily disposing of in London.

By then, too, the Scots had branched into other wines, and their influence was felt from California to Australia. The great houses of Sherry, Port and Madeira today, for example, resound with names which would not be out of place in the Scottish national rugby selection: Duff, Gordon, Robertson, Rutherford, Sandeman, Graham, Findlater, Campbell and Cockburn.

If the previous century saw fine wine drinking concentrated among an elite in Scottish society, the past 30 years have witnessed a return to the democratic spirit of wine drinking which existed in the past. Scots now enjoy the produce of the world’s vineyards, but given the quality of Bordeaux wine and our historic attachment to it, I am sure claret will always hold a special place in the Scots’ affections.

Of the many Scottish firms once based in the historic Chartrons wine quay at Bordeaux there remains only the Johnstons, but with a boulevard named after them they have an illustrious history in the region and in the wine trade. They share a pride in their Scottish ancestry, and are known to fly the Cross of St Andrew alongside the Tricolour at important gatherings. They also maintain strong business and personal links with Scotland. As parain [godfather] to William Johnston of Chateau Malecau in Pauillac, here is one Scot who will continue to enjoy the wine, the place and the people of that delightful part of the world for the rest of his life.

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