Did the Romans make wine from South Downs grapes?
December 10, 2024
Many of us will be raising a toast this festive season as we gather round with family and friends and it may even be a bottle of South Downs bubbly! Anooshka Rawden, the National Park’s Cultural Heritage Lead, takes a look at the history of vineyards in the South East region.
The Domesday Book, published in 1086 and comprising the Great Survey of lands in England and Wales, gives us a valuable picture of 11th century landscape and society. You can get a sense of the fertile soils of Sussex, through its woodlands, mills, meadows and land under the plough. What Domesday also records is vineyards, recording around 45 – and all in South-East England. It’s likely that there were more than this number, given Domesday was not exhaustive of all places in England and Wales.
Today, Britain boasts over 700 vineyards and 160 wineries according to the National Association for British and Welsh Wine Industry, making the 45 vineyards of Domesday seem small by comparison. Well over 50 of them are in the South Downs National Park.
What do we know about winemaking in our history? There is certainly evidence that vineyards were a feature of the British landscape under the Romans, with archaeological analysis of pollen recording the presence of viticulture.
Even with the possibility that not all vineyards were recorded in Domesday, it is probable that from the Norman conquest of 1066, there was an increase in numbers. Domesday notes a number of vineyards as ‘’new’ in 1086, and certainly the 12th century historian, Henry of Huntington, recorded that Winchester was known for wine production, and as no vineyards are documented in Domesday for Hampshire, this again points to the suggestion that under the Normans, viticulture grew.
Wine was central to daily life in this period. It was therefore a product imbedded in cultural practice, and related to this, there was a strong commercial incentive for wine production linked to high demand. It was used as part of religious rites such as the mass, where wine is a requirement of communion. It was also diluted, creating an everyday drink to quench thirst. The agricultural calendar included space for viticulture, with medieval calendars recording September as winemaking month.
One big question, especially in trying to understand the boom of viticulture today, is the role of climate change in creating the conditions that enable adaptation of agricultural practices to include wine production. In the 1st century AD, the Roman writer Tacitus (Agricola 12) records that Britain was“obscured by continual rain and cloud” but that “with the exception of the olive and vine, and plants which usually grow in warmer climates, the soil will yield, and even abundantly, all ordinary produce.”
Fast forward several hundred years and the Medieval Warm Period, which occurred between c. 950 to c. 1250, does seem to correlate with a rise in vineyards in Southern Britain. The so-called Little Ice Age of the 14th century, which is often seen as the reason for the decline in English winemaking was also one of the most disastrous centuries for human health and social cohesion with the toll of the Black Death.
Political and commercial considerations will also have played a role. Even when Medieval English wine production was at its height, it faced stiff competition from French imports, especially when, from 1154, French territories including the duchy of Aquitaine (and its wine-rich region of Gascony), was added to the English crown on the accession of Henry II. Vast quantities of wine arrived into Britain via ports including Southampton, and the English crown were able to levy significant duties on wines arriving from Bordeaux.
What the comparison of Domesday Sussex with viticulture today shows is that people have always adapted to change and to any opportunity that comes with change, whether driven by climate, commercial or cultural factors, and just as Medieval monks and farmers tended the vines in Sussex in the 11th century, today we are seeing cultivation of an ancient practice for new markets.