CLARET, the name by which the red wines of Bordeaux are known among the English-speaking people. In the 12th and 13th centuries, claret meant .a red wine lighter in colour than the dark red (almost black) wines of southern Europe, and it was even sometimes made up of a blend of red and white wines. Thus, on Nov. 18, 1251, Henry III. ordered the keeper of the royal cellars at York to deliver to one Robert de Montpellier two casks of white wine and one cask of red wine "to make claret thereof." During the three centuries of English rule in Aquitaine, the merchants of Bordeaux enjoying in England all the privileges of subjects of the crown, and the king's eldest son having none but the taxes levied at Bordeaux to replenish his exchequer, the consumption of the wines of Bordeaux was greatly encouraged in England and immense quantities of red and white wines, but more particularly of claret wines, reached London and the outports from Bordeaux every year. All the wines made in Aquitaine, and much of the Languedoc wine, came to Bordeaux to be shipped, and they were sold in England under the name of red, white or claret wines. Claret wines were the most popular: they were those made from the vineyards of Bordeaux, vineyards which have always produced and still produce red wines of greater brilliance and lighter in colour than the vineyards of what was known in the middle ages as the "high country," towards the Pyrenees. Thus it came to pass gradually that the name claret acquired a much more re stricted meaning, a geographical instead of a generic meaning. It has been used in England since the 17th century to refer exclu sively to the red wines of Bordeaux. During the Hundred Years War and since, whenever hostilities between England and France broke out, the sale of English woollens was prohibited in France and claret was penalized in England either by total prohibition or by the imposition of prohibitive duties. Early in the 19th century claret, which cost a penny a gallon in Chaucer's day, cost a pound a bottle in England : the consumption was very small and re stricted entirely to the finest clarets.
On Feb. 29, 1860, the duty on French wines, which had been 5s. 9d. per gallon since 1832, was replaced by a duty of 3s. per gallon on every description of wine. On Jan. 1, 1861, this uniform duty was superseded by a scale of duties based on the alcoholic contents of every wine, beginning with a shilling per gallon rate on wines not exceeding 18° of proof spirit and rising to 2S. I id. per gallon on wines of greater alcoholic strength. The following year, on April 3, 1862, the duty on wines was once more altered and made far simpler, all wines not exceeding 26° of proof spirit paying one shilling per gallon and others, up to 42°, half-a-crown per gallon. As this reduction of duty upon the low-strength or natural wines coincided with a series of very plentiful vintages at Bordeaux, claret reached the consumer, in England, in large quantities, in great variety and at remarkably low prices, so that claret became once more the most popular beverage wine in England.
The excellence of claret, and the reason why it may rightly claim precedence over all other wines is that it is the most har monious and natural of all wines. In the making of claret, the art of man intervenes only to remove every possible cause of imperfection, but not to assist nor to hamper nature. Nothing is added either to the "must" or the wine to improve its colour, body, flavour or alcoholic strength. One of the great charms of claret is that it adapts itself to all tastes, constitutions and purses. The varieties of claret, the difference in excellence and in price, in type and style, are much greater than is the case with other wines.
(A. L. S.)