Occasionally, visitors to the Geography and Map Division have expressed interest in viewing maps that show the locations of vineyards. The requests are usually for 19th century maps of the wine regions in France. This led me to become interested in wine maps of all regions of the world. I have found a variety of vintage maps related to viticulture in our collections. I am sharing images of some of them in this post.
The origins of wine can be traced to ancient times; however; detailed wine mapping did not begin until the initial production of topographical maps. During the 18th century César-François Cassini created a topographic series of France. The series took fifty years to complete and consisted of 181 sheets. Below is an example of a sheet from the series. This sheet covers the Champagne wine region in northeast France.
Dr. Wilhelm Hamm, an expert in soil management and author of The Wine Book, designed the map below. The map, published in 1869, showed the annual wine production in Europe.
The next map was made by Charles Joseph Minard. Charles Minard was famous for creating flow maps that showed the transport of products across Europe. The map shows the circulation of wines and spirits in France by rail and waterways during the year 1857.
Joseph James Forrester, a British wine shipper, cartographer and watercolor artist created the map below. Forrester frequently traveled to the Douro wine region of Portugal. He published a brochure which criticized the practices of the Portuguese wine trade. The House of Commons ordered the map to be printed before a Select Committee on Imported Wines in 1852.
During the 17th century Hans Conrad Gyger created a topographic relief map of the Canton of Zurich. The map below shows the changes in the viticulture of northeast Switzerland since Gyger’s survey. The map was published in 1896 by the Swiss Topographical Bureau. The areas with the highest and lowest grape productivity are shown in red.
The origins of wine making in Algeria can be traced back to the ancient Phoenicians who shared their expertise in viticulture with the region. The following map shows the vineyards and wine processing plants of Algeria in 1926. During the late 19th century French colonists significantly increased the production of wine in Algeria after the phylloxera epidemic destroyed most of the vineyards in France.
I have shared a few examples of vintage maps related to the productivity and distribution of wine. The Geography and Map Division also holds hundreds of wine maps that were published during the 20th and 21st centuries. I am unable to share images of recently published maps due to copyright restrictions. Please refer to the following atlases to learn more about the vineyards of the world.
Discover more:
- The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson.
- Oz Clarke’s new wine atlas : wines & wine regions of the world by Oz Clarke.