This being the birthday week of Thomas Jefferson, it’s worth recognizing one of the greatest American wine lovers of all time. Jefferson’s passion for wine began at a young age, and one of the first structures at his famous Monticello estate was a wine cellar.
When he arrived in Paris in 1784 as the United States minister at the court of Louis XVI, Jefferson became a true wine connoisseur. Analytic and curious (today he’d be called a wine geek), he systematically began studying European wine. On February 28, 1787, Jefferson left Paris for a 3-month, 1,200-mile journey to southern France and northern Italy, taking careful notes on farming techniques and winemaking practices.
The Canal du Midi (which was then known as the Canal du Languedoc, and which was already a century old when Jefferson traveled it) was of great interest to Jefferson. Time constraints kept him from traveling its entire length from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, but he did do the 200-mile (322-kilometer) leg from Sète, near Béziers, on the Mediterranean to Toulouse, where he began traveling again by carriage to Bordeaux.
His carriage wheels were removed, and the carriage was placed on a canal boat. Other than a 40-mile side trip by horseback to the Montagne Noire to see how water was collected to supply the canal, he either walked the toe path or paddled a small canoe during the nine-day trip. Jefferson wrote in his notes: “Of all the methods of traveling I have ever tried, this is the pleasantest.”
Throughout his travels, Jefferson made careful comparisons of red and white wines, their cultivation and the soils that they were planted in, and their prices. He kept careful notes about the planting and pruning of the vines, undoubtedly for later use in the vineyard that he created at Monticello. He also arranged for the later shipment of different grape variety stock, as well as olive trees that were sent from Marseilles to Charleston, South Carolina.
Anyone with a suitcase containing pâté, charcuterie or a particularly odorous cheese, and who has faced a beefy customs agent and his sniffer dog upon arrival in a U.S. airport, will appreciate the risk that Jefferson took in smuggling rice seed out of Italy. Your punishment today is confiscation of the forbidden food product–which I always assume is rapidly devoured by those same custom agents. The risk to Jefferson was much greater; Sardinian law at that time called for the death of anyone exporting seed rice without permission.
You can follow Jefferson’s example and travel on the Canal du Midi. Now in its fourth century of operation, the canal is still a pleasant way to visit southern France’s wine country.
Thomas Jefferson paddled or walked here.
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Thanks for this interesting post. When Jefferson died, his legendary winecellar at Monticello was 10% full of Blanquette de Limoux (and no champagne!) – so I guess this trip down the Canal du Midi was when he first met Limoux’s famous fizz.
Caryl, thanks for having added that interesting detail about Thomas Jefferson’s taste in wines.
On April 10, 1788 Jefferson visited the village of Hochheim in the Rheingau region in Germany. http://www.schiller-wine.blogspot.com/2009/11/wine-maker-thomas-jefferson-president.html
Thanks for your comment, Christian.