I know, odd topic? But I’ve started reading Morriss’ “Inside Burgundy” and within the first chapter on Gevrey-Chambertin he’s already made mention of two such vineyards:
Cherbaudes (1er) - “Cherbaudes is apparently the site of an ancient cemetary”
Les Corbeaux (1er) - “In the middle ages it was a cemetary - images of birds gathering silently on the tombstones…”
Now I’ve always liked Corbeaux, so after reading this I just had to order some Cherbaudes (from envoyer). Terroir and the expression thereof is a mysterious enough concept as it is, who’s to say the spirits of the dead can’t speak through the vines just as loudly as the winemaker?
Well, OK, so pretty much nobody would claim that, but out of morbid curiosity I’d like to make a list of all such vineyards (and maybe try them all one day). I haven’t finished the book so I don’t know if any more are in Burgundy (although I wouldn’t bet against it). Perhaps there are vineyards in the New World located on ancient Indian burial grounds?
What an interesting topic. When clicking on this, I assumed that you’d have the exact opposite reaction to this information. It’s all Terroir, right? You go back far enough in history and I’m sure there are plenty of vineyards sitting on ancient graveyards.
I would imagine any vineyard in Europe is on top of dead people. Over the centuries people were killing each other energetically and who knows where all the bodies are buried.
Two contemporary descriptions survive showing that this battle had an unparalleled reputation for its carnage. The first is from Jordanes:
For, if we may believe our elders, a brook flowing between low banks through the plain was greatly increased by blood of the slain. It was not flooded by showers, as brooks usually rise, but was swollen by a strange stream and turned into a torrent by the increase of blood. Those whose wounds drove them to slake their parching thirst drank water mingled in gore. In their wretched plight they were forced to drink what they thought was the blood they had poured from their own wounds.
The second comes from the philosopher Damascius, who not many years afterwards heard that the fighting was so severe “that no one survived except only the leaders on either side and a few followers: but the ghosts of those who fell continued the struggle for three whole days and nights as violently as if they had been alive; the clash of their arms was clearly audible”.
Along those lines, the history of [u]the Burgundians[/u] criss-crosses over many famous wine-growing regions, from the Nahe down to the Northern Rhone.
Yikes I forgot about WWI. Comparing the maps it certainly looks like they must have replanted right over the site of some of those battles. But certainly those who died wouldn’t have been buried there, though.
But Caesar supposedly killed a million Celts - men, women, and children, when he was invading Gaul. He’d wipe out a village to make his point and then move on. A lot of those battles were fought near rivers, particularly the Rhone. Then you have whoever the Celts killed off when they moved in and the people killed by the latter Germanic tribes like the Franks when they moved in. I think Hannibal fought some battles on the Rhone and he definitely fought a few in the Iberian peninsula. Henry V demanded territories along the Loire and marched through those.
Until railways and tanks, the most efficient travel was by river so I’d think that in all the European countries, vineyards near rivers have to be on ancient battle sites, if not precisely graveyards.