“The Cross ran with claret for the general benefit”

Abstract

In England, wine became a highly politicized commodity as a result of the tumultuous events of the mid-seventeenth century; however, there is no evidence that the regicide, the British Civil Wars, or Cromwellian rule, had a similar effect in Scotland. Nevertheless, by the time of the Treaty of Union in 1707, which united Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain, wine in Scotland, claret specifically, was a politically charged commodity. The politicization of claret in Scotland occurred in the late 1690s and early 1700s as a result of the tensions between the Scottish and English Parliaments, and ultimately, the Treaty of Union between the two. In this environment, savvy, if not also unscrupulous Scottish politicians and merchants recognized that importing French wine was a way to assert Scottish parliamentary independence and make money at the expense of the English, since much of the wine would be re-exported south of the border. Thus, like the thistle that allegedly thwarted Norwegian invaders of Scotland in the Middle Ages by making them howl in pain and thereby awaken the sleeping clansmen, importing claret into Scotland at the turn of the eighteenth century was something that benefitted the Scots in large measure because it made the English squeal.¹