Tasting 1660s Bordeaux claret: temporal transformation and wine economics

The advent of a stronger, darker style of Bordeaux red wine, known as claret, in the English market has drawn substantial scholarly interest because it played a pivotal role in the balance of trade and international political economy during the eighteenth century. This new wine style also defined claret’s modern organoleptic qualities, underpinned by its ability to age for substantial periods. Most scholarship dates this to 1704 and after. Economic historians have posited that Bordeaux vignerons developed high-quality, high-priced claret in response to England’s fixed, volume-based tariffs on French wine. This article contextualizes and analyses evidence of claret’s organoleptic qualities, including prominently Robert Boyle’s claret experiments from 1669 to 1674, to show that the new claret style pre-existed England’s tariff regime. Boyle proved its capacity to age for years without spoiling. This related to an increasing tendency in England to bottle wine. His notes also provide an early example of a kind of modern sensory analysis that remains relevant today.