Barrels on wheels

Celebrating the end of the Prohibition (Paris-Bercy, dec 1933) When mass production was still associated with wooden containers
We know that the slow demise of many French wine regions was caused a century ago by both the phylloxera and the development of railroad transportation which helped bring the high-yield wines of Languedoc and Algeria to the big cities and to Paris. Here is a photo story about these barrels on wheels which helped quench the thirst of the working masses.

As header photo I chose this one featuring workers of the Paris-Bercy wine hub celebrating on a wine tank car the end of the alcohol prohibition in the United States. This is december 1933 (80 years ago at the end of this year) and this is good news for the people and businesses of the Entrepots de Bercy, this "wine town" thriving on the eastern edge of Paris where most of the wine négoce was conducted. The lifting of the prohibition opened wide the gates to the United States markets, and was a welcome boost for the wine sector in France.
This type of tank car was seemingly still widely used then in the 1930s' to transport wine from the producing region to the French capital. It is basically a huge foudre (a large-capacity barrel) mounted on a railroad-car chassis.

Casks along the Canal du Midi in Carcassonne The Languedoc was the biggest producing region at that time and along the then-nascent railways, the canals and rivers where the major arteries to pump wine to Paris and other big cities. There must have been thousands of barges with their crew to do the job and supply the masses with wine. These canals were the equivalent of our modern motorways, the locks playing the role of tolls, I guess. Barge on the Canal du Midi The tank car on railroads replaced progressively at that time the barge on canals and rivers, the water system having been for ages the priviledged pipeline for the transportation of goods. The barge offered the advantage of a smooth trip but it was long and the wine spent more time under changing temperatures, so it's hard to tell which was better for the wine. The best wines were transported in smaller barrels (not foudres) but same for the wine from local, small-size wineries which relied on self-sufficient means to deliver their production. Waiting to board ships in Sète Of course regular-size barrels (or rather 500-liter demi-muids like we can see here) were the best option regarding sea transportation at that time, and the cargo was rolled manually into the holds of sailing boats where it made a good ballast.
This is the port of Sète (written here in the old orthograph of Cette) and hundreds of barrels are waiting for their ship. If you are aware of the weather and temperature conditions in Sète you might worry about the wine stranded for hours or days under the scorching sun on the dock. I know more than one vintner using none- or very little SO2 who would get sick at the thought of their wines going through this ordeal. Hopefully this would happen mostly in the cold months when the wines begin to be ready, february or march maybe. Sète, the Port of Wine in the Languedoc The port of Sète played a very important role for the transportation of wine. This small fishing villaged became a strategic commercial port in the 17th century because of its location close to the Rhone and with the useful étang de Thau (a lake) where boats could park.
until the end of the 19th century the Languedoc shipped its wines and spirits through this port. Then in the first half of the 20th century Sète was the entry port for the huge volumes of Algerian wine. Somewhere in the 20th century huge tanks were built near the port of Sète to pump bulk wine directly from wine tankers commuting between Algeria and France, thus dwarfing the use of barrels.
Data for the importation of wines through Sète :
1939 : casks : 384 000 tons bulk : 5000 tons
1947 : casks : 167 000 tons bulk : 153 000 tons
1958 : casks : 18 000 tons bulk : 507 000 tons
Statistics/share regarding the origin of the imported wines through Sète in 1959 :
Algeria 72 %
Spain 10 %
Greece 1,3 %
Tunisia 12 %
Morocco 1,9 %
miscellaneous 2,8 %
Source for these informations. Twin-tank railcar - Négoce advertising The best négoces were the ones that were able to deliver swiftly the wines to their clients, and an efficient transportation system was the key. This advertising for Lucien M.-E. Gauthier, a négoce based in Montereau-Fault-Yonne east of Paris in the direction of Burgundy hints at a well-oiled expertise in the trade. Owning such a tank car was a decisive plus compared to competitors who would ship regular-size casks by third parties.
This is a bi-foudre (twin foudre) tank car, each foudre having a capacity of about 8000 liters or 80 hectoliters (2113 gallons).
The fine print at the bottom of the picture reads "Our wines are well delivered. Why ? Because they come from the property to our stores in our sophisticated wooded wagons-foudres [tank cars] and are thus transported in the best conditions".
Here you can see how they filled casks directly from the tank car. The picture seems to have been shot in an open landscape, presumably Montereau-Fault-Yonne which is not very far from the Paris region. My guess is that this négoce would have its wine shipped by train to Montereau, from which it would be funneled in smaller casks to the big city by horse cart or barge (Monterau-Fault-Yonne sits exactly where the Yonne river flows into the Seine).
The wagon-foudre was "invented" around 1854, and this is no coincidence, this is when railroad tracks were built intensively across France. Filling the wagon-foudre Now at the other end of the lifeline, here is when the wagon-foudre is being filled with as many casks as needed.
This is taking place in Ille-sur-Tet in the Languedoc, the sought-after source for cheap wine then. The picture seems to have been shot in winter (no leaves on the trees), which is better as this region is terribly hot in summer.
The négociant here is Jules Dabat, commissionaire en vins (wine broker). Tank car for rent (location means rental in French) While many négoces owned their fleet of tank cars, they also could rent these wagons-foudres (named here "wagons-reservoirs") by the trip, by the day, by the month or by the year, like you can read on this ad for CES Frères. This rental business with branches in Charenton (near Bercy and Paris), Rouen and Narbonne (in the heart of Languedoc) was taking advantage of the high demand for the cheap Languedoc wines. Rouen was also strategic as this port along the seine was a major hub for shipping wine to England, the Netherlands and the United States. Wine bound for the battlefront (watch this video) A little-know aspect of the wine transportation issue during these early years of the 20th century was the huge volume of wine which was funneled to the theater of operations during the first world war in France (1914-1918). French conscripts were butchered by incompetent generals and politicians who would send wave after wave of young blood through the trenches under artillery barrages, but the commanders would make sure that these unfortunate soldiers have enough wine not to revolt. And wine they got plenty, be sure of that.
Here is a rare video made by the French military during WW1, This video which is named "Le vin de l'Armée" (Army's wine) shows these huge wine trains and barge convoys bound for the battleground and reserve troops. Very interesting.
I asked the ECPAD (the French-military documentation & visual-archives office) for the authorization to embed this video in this story and they just replied that for a website it would cost (take a seat) 800 Euros per minute for a duration of 5 years, making a total cost for this 5-minute video of 4000 Euro (and for 5 years only). The email didn't specify if there was a 20% VAT atop of that... Let's remind that these images were shot at the French-taxpayer expenses, and it seems to me that trying to extort money from them is outrageous, especially in an informative context like this story. It shows also that at the ECPAD they're not very familiar (to say the least) with Internet matters...
You can see on this silent video the filling of the Army's wine-tank trains in Béziers (Languedoc). You can see hand pumps and engine-powered pumps, and also a major railway station with hundreds of wine-tank cars waiting for their turn to hit the railroad toward the battle front. At the end of this video, you can see harvest scenes in the vineyard, plus another one when the grapes are delivered to the winery.
World War 1 killed 1 315 000 french soldiers, or 27 % of the 18-27 age group. Big Rig If the speed and efficiency of railways challenged the traditional barge for the transportation of wine, the trucks were beginning to gather steam and offer also a good alternative. Not that good for the wine, maybe, if you look at this big rig and its wheels without tires, the vibrations on the wines must have been quite bad... I also hope that the brakes were good at the time because that's quite a heavy weight to stop at the full speed of....40 km/hour.
This postcard is an advertising for the transport company "A. Bouley", based in Volnay, Burgundy. The telephone number is quite easy to remember : # 8 Heavy load for draft horses Actually in the early 20th century you had probably all the transportation means working together, like here the draft horses pulling a cart loaded with 3 big foudres. I don't know if they were full but there's a good chance, and on the cobblestone roads that was probably not easy.
The picture was shot at the Maison Robert which seems to be a nécoce dealing with eaux de vie (spirits) in Saint Jean d'Angely near Cognac. Leaving the wine farm, pulled by horse This other visual testimony shows how the wine would leave the wine farm bound for the barge or the train. The picture was shot in Dijon for Maison Boillot, a négoce of the early 20th century which could be the same as Maison Henri Boillot. Unloading casks in Cassis This man on the picture is unloading the 15 casks or so from his horse-drawn cart (several casks rolled away on the ground at a distance). The wine producers at that time would make good use of any port/river/road in their vicinity to ship their wines. Lowrider cart (Antwerp) At the other end of the wine trail, horse-drawn cars were also used like here in Antwerp (Holland). The Netherlands are a good indicator in everything related to wine transport because this country/region has been importing huge amounts of wine (much of it being fine wine) to its shore. According to this webpage, the Netherlands' per capita income was the highest in Europe between 1400 and 1700. The region was trading and importing from all over the world, and for example the carrying capacity of Dutch merchant shipping in 1570 was about the same as the combined fleets of France, Germany and England. If much of the trade was done between third countries, the Netherlands were at the receiving end of the wine export. The webpage says that "wine exports from Bordeaux were running at 25 million gallons a year at the beginning of the fourteenth century. A large proportion of this went to England, some to the Baltic, and a substantial amount to Flanders and Brabant". Oxen-pulled wine cart No need to say that oxen were put to contribute for the transportation of wine until maybe the first quarter of the 20th century, albeit for short distances due to their slow pace. These animals are powerfull but slow, but this was ideal for certain types of plowing which require the couple of power and slowness. This article in the NY Times says that oxen are making a comeback in certain small farms.
The picture was shot near Salins les Bains in the Jura. Wine delivered by donkeys No place would be out of reach for wine, and even the people of Marseilles who spent their weekends in seashore shacks (named cabanons in French) had their wine delivered through arduous trails by donkeys. OK, I'm not 100 % sure that these small casks are filled with wine but I doubt they'd put water in there...
One of the best place near Marseilles to see these cabanons is the hamlet of Goudes. Filling of tank cars at the railway station Back to the wine tank cars
This picture shows the filling of wine tank cars (remplissage des wagons-reservoirs) in the station of Rivesaltes near Perpignan in the Languedoc. The postcard adds a patriotic note by adding the words patrie du Maréchal Joffre, Marshal Joffre getting a hero status in France during WW1. Casks waiting at Villeneuve-les-Corbières Here you can see what looks like a very small train station in the Languedoc, in the village of Villeneuve-les-Corbières.From what we can guess on this picture, there seems to be vineyards all over the region, including along the station. Closer view in Villeneuve-les-Corbières Here it seems that the casks (large-size demi-muids) are loaded directly onto the train without pumping or tank cars. The people on the picture seemed dressed up, it must be winter because the region is very hot in summer. Twin wine-tank car in Croze (Creuse) Railway station at Lézignan (Corbières) A group of wine tank cars This picture shows that there were already mass bottlers producers at the time. This picture shows with pride a 5-car-strong wine train belonging to Vignobles H. Grandin & Co, a 300-hectare estate in Anjou. The scene was pictured in Ingrandes sur Loire in Anjou. Each wagon réservoir has a capacity of 180 hectoliters. Wine-tank cars in Bercy (Paris) The end destination of much of the wine was Bercy, aka les entrepots de Bercy, a sort of gated wine village where dealers and négociants could transfer and store their wine. The place consisted of many warehouses lined along cobblestone streets connected by a maze of railroad tracks. Bercy was remodeled a few years ago and most of it is gone. Tank car in Bercy This picture was shot I think in the 70s' or 80s', because the place already looked abandonned and empty. Torpilleur des Faubourgs (Toulon 1920) You'd better not make the mistake at the time to think this cart was a wine tank on wheels... The torpilleur des faubourgs as it was nicknamed at the time was the horse-drawn cart doing the public collecting of fecal sludge through cities without sewer system, like here in Toulon. The cart would pass at fixed hours so that people could unload their buckets (toupines) into the stinking barrel-on-wheels Not the best job in town I guess. I wonder if they'd use new casks for the job or buy second-hand ones at wineries... Modern version of a torpilleur It seems that the city of Toulon invested then in smart designs for its sewage-collecting cars, and here is a fully-metal one, guaranted without leaks (that's a trade where the breathing of wood is not welcome). Toulon had this type of human-waste collecting until 1905 but some neighboring villages like La Seyne-sur-Mer got this system even later. The buckets used to carry the waste from the houses to the cart were called toupines, a name deriving from the one of a familiar container type in the region (also used for olive oil). The waste was dumped into the sea and later on fields as dry compost.
I am sorry to finish this story on such awful reduction and mercaptan smells but this diversion jumped at me by itself as I was browsing the web looking for images of wheeled barrels in the early 20th century.
you can read more on this page (in French) about this waste-collecting issue in this coastal region a century ago (or more).

Comments

[Oliv]

Superbe article !

[Richard Ewen]

Well documented article of great interest! I was based near Montereau- Fault-Yonne several summers and toured that area thoroughly for painting sites. I was aware of the canals role in hauling wine, but to see the railroad cars and the early trucks vying for the trade that eventually made the canals obsolete. Fortunately, enough pleasure craft use the canals to keep them from disuse and eventual silting in.
I remember the "unused" area of Bercy in the late 80's and its eventual rebuilding into a vast shopping area. I was too late as a visitor there to see the old streets. Many people in Paris go there to shop and have no idea of its history.
Thank you for your research for this very interesting article.

[Jeff]

Great post! Love reading your blog.

[Rafa Bernabé]

Una pasada de fotos, trozos y trazos de la historia del vino, gracias por el post, con tu permiso lo comparto en facebook y twitter, salud

[Thewinemaestro]

Fascinating article, thank you!
Not only were the wheels untired the roads were cobbled. Ouch!

[Jens Hork]

Fascinating video! Thanks for the story and the links.

[Yann]

Great job (as usual)!

[LAINE]

there is a mistake in your link with INGRANDES city.
you connect with INGRANDES of Touraine, but GRANDIN is from INGRANDES sur LOIRE 49123 (MAINE & LOIRE).
Visit us if you wish.
Have a nice night
JP LAINE

[Bert]

Thank you Mr Laine, I corrected the error

[Rajiv Seth]

finest article on transportation of wine in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Great work.