3-034-719 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Vintage of Médoc: labourers in the vineyard at their meals, 1871. French agricultural workers. 'The vineyards in the Médoc district of the Gironde, near Bordeaux,...produce the vine so much esteemed as claret...The vintage is now finished; and the crowds of men, women, and children, who lately swarmed over that country, with merry songs and laughter, picking the ripe bunches of grapes from the vine-rows, and loading the ox-carts with this rich freight, to be carried to the pressing-house, are gone home for the present season, to attend to their ordinary labours. The sketch engraved [shows] them as they might have been seen, at the close of each day's work in the vintage time, assembled in the roomy and airy shed where a late dinner...was provided for them, and diverting themselves afterwards with a merry dance'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.