Perpiñán, France.

From the Bibliothèque nationale de France collection

Perpiñán is described as a commercial and industrial wine center, sitting along the Têt River near the Mediterranean, in the Roussillon region, with roughly 106,000 inhabitants.

The vineyards of Roussillon had already been established for centuries. During the XVIII century, vineyards were spreading across the region, with about 12,000 hectares recorded in 1741. By 1836, that had grown to around 38,000 hectares, and by 1851 there were roughly 46,000 hectares under vines. Much of the wine was moved by road, through ports and by coastal shipping, but transporting large quantities to distant markets was still difficult and expensive.

In 1858, the railway finally reached Perpiñán, changing the possibilities for the wine trade. The first steam train arrived on February 20, although the bridge over the Têt had not yet been completed, so the railway initially had to make do with a temporary station. By July 10, trains could cross the river. The railway had not been built specifically for wine, but it gave the region a much easier way to move large quantities of its production into the wider French market.

An 1898 advertisement for Château de l'Esparrou wines, sourced from the Bibliothèque de Perpignan.

The vineyards expanded with that new access to the market. By 1879, Roussillon had around 80,000 hectares under vines, while wine production had risen to extraordinary levels. What had developed over centuries was becoming increasingly concentrated around viticulture, with wine no longer simply being one agricultural product among many but becoming the economic foundation for much of the region.

Then the industry ran into a problem that had nothing to do with transportation or markets. Phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots of grapevines, began spreading through French vineyards during the second half of the XIX century. Roussillon was eventually hit as well, and the enormous expansion of the previous decades was followed by a collapse in production. Vineyards had to be destroyed and replanted, and doing so required considerable money from growers who had just watched their primary source of income disappear.

The solution was to graft European grape varieties onto American rootstocks that could resist the insect. The reconstruction began in the 1880s and accelerated through the following decade. By 1899, around 57,000 hectares in the region had already been replanted on American rootstock.

Recovering the vineyards, however, did not restore the old balance of the industry. Production once again became enormous, and the region soon faced another problem. There was not always enough demand for all the wine being produced, so by the beginning of the XX century, Roussillon had become heavily dependent on viticulture, leaving thousands of growers vulnerable whenever wine prices collapsed. This helped lead to the great wine crisis of 1907.

Winegrowers across the Midi and Roussillon protested falling prices, fraudulent wine production and the difficulties of selling their harvest. In Roussillon, the crisis helped push small growers toward cooperation, with wine cooperatives beginning to appear as a way for producers to share equipment, vinification facilities and the costs of bringing their wine to market. In Perpiñán itself, a cooperative was informally established in 1913 by around forty producers.

The industry eventually developed into something considerably more varied than the enormous bulk-wine production of the XIX century. The crisis of 1907 had exposed just how vulnerable the region had become after decades of depending so heavily on wine, and it also pushed growers toward organizing themselves, while the French government began putting stronger controls on fraud, production and the definition of where particular wines actually came from. The first laws establishing protected areas of origin began appearing in the early XX century, eventually developing into the appellation system used today.

Roussillon gradually built a reputation around wines that were more closely tied to the particular soils, climate and grape varieties of the region. Appellations such as Banyuls, Maury and Rivesaltes were established in 1936, while Muscat de Rivesaltes followed in 1956. The Côtes du Roussillon appellation followed in 1977. Today the region produces both dry wines and the sweet fortified wines for which Roussillon became particularly known.

The story of Perpiñán's wine isn't really the story of one city simply producing a lot of grapes. It was a centuries-long transformation from local viticulture and regional trade into an enormous commercial industry, accelerated by the railway and the ability to reach markets far beyond Roussillon. That expansion created prosperity, but it also created dependence, overproduction and eventually a crisis severe enough to bring thousands of growers into the streets.

The vineyards survived phylloxera, survived the collapse of the old wine market, and gradually moved toward a system where the identity of the wine itself became part of its value. What began as vineyards scattered across Roussillon eventually became a recognized collection of distinct wine-producing territories, each with its own appellations, grapes, soils and traditions, with Perpiñán sitting right in the middle of that history.

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