"The Enclosure of Marshal Pétain" by Jean Vigreux | PUF

The history of the Clos du Maréchal Pétain underscores that wine is no longer just the business of winemakers, it is the product of staging as much as it is of bottling.

By retracing the history of the "Clos du Maréchal Pétain" in Beaune, in the Côte-d'Or region, the dark hours of the Vichy regime are subtly revealed. This little-known gift from the wine-growing terroir, long repressed, shows how much the marshalist cult was present throughout the national territory and mobilized the agrarian and ruralist ideology of the National Revolution. It highlights the attachment of local notables to the values of the French State, but also the customs or representations of vineyards and wine within French society. Such a story is not just political and cultural, it is also economic and social. This article addresses the multiple interconnections between the local and the national, but also between vineyards and politics. Wine is no longer just the concern of winemakers, it is the product of staging as much as of bottling.

Jean Vigreux, professor of contemporary history at the University of Burgundy-Franche-Comté, deputy director of the MSH in Dijon, is a specialist in 20th-century political history. He is the author of several works including "History of Contemporary France. Volume 9. Growth and Protests, 1958-1981" (Seuil, 2014), "Le Clos du Maréchal Pétain" (PUF, 2012), "La Faucille après le marteau. Le communisme aux champs dans l'entre-deux-guerres" (Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2012), and "Waldeck Rochet. Une biographie politique" (La Dispute, 2000).