Rationing of Wine in World War I

To the French soldier of the Great War⁶, one thing was almost as vital as his rifle: his daily ration of wine. Rough, purple and deeply beloved, le pinard was issued by the army as fuel for courage and comfort in the trenches, and by the war’s end France was pouring it out to its troops by the millions of litres. Wine, the French believed, was helping to win the war¹.

Pinard: the soldier’s wine

At the outbreak of war in 1914, every poilu — the affectionate nickname for the French foot soldier — was entitled to about a quarter of a litre of cheap red wine a day². As the war dragged on and its value to morale became clear, the ration only grew: raised to half a litre, and by 1916 to almost three-quarters of a litre for every man, every day.

The delivery of the wine became a daily ritual, and the wine itself — humble, harsh stuff, often barely drinkable — was cherished all the same. The poilu and his pinard became inseparable in the public imagination, joined in what one historian called a “cult of wine.”

Courage in a bottle

Why did the army pour so much wine into its soldiers? Because it seemed to work. Pinard warmed men in the freezing trenches, offered a taste of home, and gave a jolt of Dutch courage before an attack; it was also safer to drink than the foul water of the front⁴. Above all, it was thought to sustain morale — to make men willing to endure the unendurable.

The French were not alone in this. The British army issued its soldiers a daily tot of rum, and drink of one kind or another sustained the men on every side of the war⁵. But no army leaned on wine quite so heavily, or so lovingly, as the French.

Of all the supplies sent to the army, wine was the most anticipated and appreciated by the soldier.— Marshal Philippe Pétain, on wine in the Great War¹

The cult of pinard grew into something close to a secular religion. Soldiers wrote poems and songs in its honour, joked about “Saint Pinard,” and spoke of the wine as the very blood of the French soil, drunk to protect the men who defended it². Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, paid it the ultimate tribute.

The Midi to the rescue

All that wine had to come from somewhere — and here the war worked a strange redemption. The cheap red of the Languedoc, the vast southern “Midi,” had glutted the market so badly a few years earlier that it triggered the great winegrowers’ revolt of 1907³.

Now the army needed exactly that kind of wine, by the ocean-load. In the autumn of 1914 Midi producers donated huge stocks of pinard to the troops, and for the rest of the war the army was a bottomless buyer of southern red — often stretched with wine shipped from French Algeria and Tunisia. The war that ruined so much rescued the growers of the south, turning their unsellable surplus into the fuel of a nation at arms¹.

The wine that helped win the war

When the guns finally fell silent in 1918, the French were in no doubt about pinard’s part in the victory⁴. It had not fired a shot, but it had kept millions of exhausted, frightened men going through four years of horror — and in French memory the poilu and his battered wine cup remain fixed together, an image of endurance. Of all the things the Great War poured out, few were more human, or more French, than the soldier’s daily glass of rough red wine.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Wine and the Christmas Truce of 1914
• The Languedoc wine revolt of 1907
• Wine, the Nazis and Göring’s cellar

References

1. Points (Alcohol and Drugs History Society) — World War I, Part 1: The French Army and Wine. ↑
2. London Review of Books, Julian Barnes — La Chasse au Pinard: Drinking for France. ↑
3. 1914-1918-Online Encyclopedia — Food and Nutrition (France). ↑
4. Sir John Monash Centre — Wine in war: the origins of “plonk.” ↑
5. The Western Front Association — Alcohol in the trenches: the rum ration. ↑
6. Encyclopaedia Britannica — World War I. ↑

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine

Hugh Johnson

A grand history of wine and its place in human life, including its role in war and national identity.

French Wine: A History

Rod Phillips

A definitive history of French wine that covers its central place in French life — and in the trenches of 1914–18.

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