Note 36 — PART I.

What with one kind of assessment being adopted for wine sold wholesale and another for that disposed of by retail, with one class of dues being levied on wine for export and another on that for home consumption, and with the fact of certain duties being in some cases payable by the buyer and in others by the seller, any attempt to summarise this section of the story of the wines of Reims would be impossible. The difficulty is increased when it is remembered that in the Middle Ages Reims was divided into districts, under the separate jurisdictions of the eschevins, the archbishop, the chapter of the cathedral, the Abbeys of St. Remi and St. Nicaise, and the Priory of St. Maurice, in several of which widely varying measures were employed down to the sixteenth century, and between which there were continual squabbles as to the rights of vinage, rouage, tonnieu, &c.