3-034-720 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Vintage of Médoc: evening dance of vineyard labourers, 1871. '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, diverting themselves...with a merry dance. It is questionable, indeed, whether those will join in the dance of the evening who have been dancing all day upon the grapes in the pressing-troughs, to the music of the same violins, stamping with all their might on the luscious pulpy mass, their bare feet and legs stained with the purple juice, and fatigued enough, we dare say, before they have done. Neither dancing nor drinking would seem a great temptation, after nine or ten hours of such employment. These servants of Bacchus should be soberly inclined'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.