A European walk through Bordeaux 25
John Locke's "Studies".
1, rue des Piliers
de Tutelle.
In the 16th century, there was a Renaissance residence called the Maison dorée
[golden house], on account of its
rich decorations. It belonged to Jean de Pontac, “chief clerk to the Parliament.” More than any other family,
the Pontac family are an
institution in Bordeaux. Jean de Pontac had three sons. The first two – Arnaud de Pontac, bishop of
Bazas, and his brother
Raymond, who became president of investigations for Bordeaux – entered the judiciary and were forever faithful
to the noble traditions of their ancestors.
The third preferred a military career. The family counted several presidents, counsellors, public prosecutors
and chief clerks of the
Bordeaux parliament, treasurers
of France, a First President to the taxation court,
and the list goes on. To
the point that, according
to legend, Arnaud de Pontac
(1599-1681) had four “P”s cut in stone above his door, for Pontac
Premier Président du Parlement [Pontac First President of the Parliament]. Legend also has it that, because
at the time justice was slow, the inhabitants
of Bordeaux, derisively, assigned
another meaning to the
inscription: Pauvres Plaideurs, Prenez Patience [poor
litigants, be patient]. The Pontacs
also owned Château
Haut-Brion.
Arnaud de Pontac knew from experience
that the British aristocracy,
a rich clientele par
excellence, remained faithful
by tradition to the wines of Bordeaux. He came up with the idea of proposing a totally different wine for them, sold at a more expensive price and with an immediately recognisable brand name. On 10
April 1663, a London diarist,
Samuel Pepys, noted in his diary that he
had been fully satisfied by the distinctive taste of a French wine called Ho Bryan, which he had
drunk at the Royal Oak Tavern. In the same year, Arnaud de Pontac decided to send his son to London to set up a fashionable tavern, where his
family’s wines were sold. It was
called The Pontack’s Head.
The wine, sold at a price almost four times higher than traditional
claret, was an immediate commercial success. Ho
Bryan was of course Haut-Brion. It was sought by the finest minds in London: Daniel
Defoe, Jonathan Swift and the English philosopher John Locke (1602-1734) all flocked to The Pontack’s Head to
taste this fashionable nectar.
Some twelve
years later, in 1675, John Locke, author of An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Civil Government, who was severely asthmatic
and had therefore travelled to the south of France
in search of a milder climate, remembered it. He arrived at Bordeaux on Monday 5 April 1677, having travelled through Agen, Tonneins
and Cadillac. He visited Château Trompette, “a very strong fortress
north of the river, with
four bastions, that brought
four churches to the ground
without firing a single cannon...” He remembered The Pontack’s Head and so, uncertain given the price of Haut-Brion wines, went to the château four days before leaving for Paris, on 14
May, one hundred and nine years before Thomas Jefferson. He
made the following observations: “The Pontac vineyard [...] grows on a hilltop that is oriented
to the west; the soil, which looks like it could produce
nothing, is composed of white sand mixed with a bit of gravel.” He had studied the direct relationship between the soil and the quality of the wines, re-proclaimed the consubstantial link between the distinctive features
of a product and this “bit
of gravel” in the soil. In
Bordeaux, the Ho Bryan was not apparently
his only object of study. Another can be
found in his Journal, between 26 March and 9 May 1677, one of his
few writings devoted to education, an essay entitled Study.
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Grand Théâtre.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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