I’ve become addicted to a podcast called Revolutions. And yes, it’s about revolutions. It starts with the English Civil war and ends with the Russian revolution of 1917. In between are eight others, including, of course, the French. All are worth listening to, particularly if you are planning to overthrow a despotic government. The odd thing was how little people seemed to learn from the previous one. Or, if they studied them they took different learnings. Here’s what I took out.

You have a bad autocratic government that holds all the power, and most of the wealth.

A new class of wealthy merchants emerges, these people have lots of money but no political power.

This mob use the threat, or actual reality of the masses to gain some power.

The masses feel their lives are about to improve. Their lives don’t improve.

They realise this and try another revolution – this bit can happen more than once.

Eventually, equal rights are given, but the masses are still pretty broke.

Haiti’s was particularly depressing; Simon de Bolivar’s efforts next door in Venezuela and Colombia go a long way to explain the last two centuries of South American history; Mexico’s had a moment when everything could have gone so much better.

And while most of them reminded me of Orwell’s Animal Farm, some led to improvements. Particularly when it comes to wine.

Litres and metres 

Following the French Revolution in 1789, the new government of France, which included the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, tasked the French Academy of Sciences with replacing the numerous, confusing units of weights and measure with a logical system using multiples of 10.

The new system would be based on something immutable, and the Academy settled on the length of 1/10,000,000 of a quadrant of a great circle of the Earth, as measured around the poles of the meridian that passed through Paris (definitely not Greenwich). It took six years to work out an exact measure of 39.37008 inches for what we call the metre.

From that point all metric units were derived from the metre, including the gram for weight, which was equal to one cubic centimetre of water at its maximum density, and the litre which was equal to 1/1,000 of a cubic metre. Don’t worry, there’s no test.

Better and cheaper

For the French to have good-quality wine at an affordable price was considered a right. To achieve that, the price of wine was dramatically lowered in 1791 when all sales taxes were removed (politicians take note) enabling the poor to drink decent wine. Wine wasn’t just cheaper, it was better. Chaptalization, the process of adding sugar to grape juice to increase the alcohol was invented during the revolution. And selling bad wine could cost you your head. In 1793 a tinsmith in Burgundy was condemned to death for endangering the health of French soldiers.

Order out of chaos

In 1848 the French had another revolution – as did most of Europe, and I feel that must have been an amazing time. So much hope for the future, but sadly, so little change. One thing that happened was the French got a new ruler – Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon the third. One of the first things he did was sort out the plethora of Bordeaux wines into a more comprehensible league with the Official Classification of 1855. The best red wines were ranked from ‘Premier Cru’ (first growth) to 5^th Cru based on quality and at the top level this largely remains. White wines, being much less important, were limited to the sweet varieties of Sauternes and Barsac and were ranked superior first growth to second growth.

Marx described religion as the opiate of the masses. I’d argue a good, cheap wine is too. This Cotes du Rhone should keep the revolution at bay, 95 points for only $23.