"Wine & War" - reflections on Veterans Day/L'Armistice
by Max Goldberg Liu
Wednesday, November 11
Every November 11th at 11 am, one can hear church bells ringing throughout France (and Europe) to commemorate l’Armistice - the end of the First World War - which claimed the lives of nearly 1.4 million Frenchmen and 15-22 million soldiers and civilians overall, scarring the involved societies so badly that the young survivors would be known forever after as the “Lost Generation,” coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemmingway in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
Visit any town in France, from its largest cities to the tiniest hamlet and there will inevitably be a monument marked with the names of inhabitants who died in the conflict. Indeed, even the romantic world of wine was inexorably caught up in the gears of history, as one can see in the town squares of Vosne-Romanée, Volnay, Puligny-Montrachet, and everywhere else in Burgundy.
World War II also had an immense impact on France’s wine industry, as documented in the great book Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don & Petie Kladstrup, which describes the attempted looting of France’s greatest chateaux & domaines by the Nazis, as well as the participation of many French winemakers in the Resistance.
I have had the good fortune of hearing one of these stories directly from Véronique Drouhin, whose grandfather Maurice Drouhin lived an extraordinary life, both as an esteemed winegrower and a French patriot.
Maurice was a veteran of the trenches in World War I, served as liaison officer to the American Expeditionary Force and (then) Major Douglas MacArthur and his Rainbow Division, and was awarded the American Distinguished Service Cross for his courage in a battle in Côte-de-Chatillon towards the end of the war in 1918. His citation is still on display in the Drouhin offices:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Captain Maurice Drouhin, Army of France, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving as Senior Liaison Officer, 84th Infantry Brigade (Attached), 42d Division, A.E.F., during the capture of Hills 2898, 242, and the Cote-de-Chatillon, France, October 14 - 16, 1918. When communication service had been broken between the brigade commander and the two front-line battalions of his brigade, due to the enemy's terrific fire which made it impossible to maintain either Signal Corps installations or runner service, Captain Drouhin at the critical moment volunteered to make his way across a gap between the two battalions in order to carry orders to the commanding officers thereof. His services on this occasion cannot be over-estimated and were accomplished voluntarily and only at the most deadly risk to himself.
Maurice Drouhin
Maurice Drouhin’s citation
Maurice Drouhin again served his country during World War II, when he worked with the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France. Arrested and imprisoned in late 1941 but then released after six months due to a lack of evidence, Maurice continued his clandestine work despite being under constant suspicion. On June 7, 1944, the Gestapo again knocked on his door on the Rue d’Enfer in Beaune in order to arrest (or summarily execute) him. This time Maurice was prepared, with a “go-bag” under his bed. He escaped through the maze of cellar tunnels underneath his house and through a door to the Hospices de Beaune (Maurice was Vice President of the Hospices since the 1920’s), where he was successfully hidden by the nuns until Beaune was liberated in September 1944. That door in the Drouhin cellars has since been known as the Porte de la Liberté or “freedom door.”
To thank the Hospices for courageously hiding him, Maurice and his wife Pauline donated more than two hectares of vineyards in Beaune to the Hospices which would become the “Cuvée Maurice Drouhin, a blend of parcels in Avaux, Champs Pimonts, Boucherottes, and Grèves. Since 1961, the first year the cuvée was bottled, the Drouhin family has purchased the entire production at the Vente des Vins nearly every year.
So, this Veterans Day / Armistice Day, I raise a glass to Maurice Drouhin and all the winemakers who risked their lives and livelihoods for the cause of freedom.
La Porte de la Liberté