Father Grégoire had long been known for his uprightness and for daring to expose absurd and excessive acts, whether at court or during the French Revolution.
In the eleventh century, as Benedictine Order monks increasingly violated the spirit of their rules, some monks came to marshland near Dijon in eastern France, Burgundy, where they founded a new monastery and lived quieter, simpler lives devoted to labor, prayer, and reading.
Burgundy was still an undeveloped inland region at the time, far less convenient for trade than port cities. But the Cistercian Order monks were industrious and capable. Once they had achieved self-sufficiency, they began selling wool, grain, salt, and other goods.
Wine was praised as flowing red gold. Before the fourteenth century, it had always been monopolized by Italian merchants. The Byzantine Empire charged Venice only a four-percent tax, while imposing a ten-percent tariff on its own merchants. Yet even that could not compare with the privileged monastic wines. Not only were they tax-exempt, they also collected tithes. The monks quickly became very wealthy.
The Bordeaux region also enjoyed the privilege of tax-free homemade wine. Bourgeois originally referred to people living in the Bordeaux region, before later coming to mean "middle class." By the fifteenth century, they too had begun selling wine. But Bordeaux classified wine by estate, whereas Burgundy classified it by vineyard. Pomona still remembered taking a hot-air balloon over Burgundy and spotting an abandoned Quidditch Pitch from the air.
The Cistercian Order were experts in winemaking during the Middle Ages, as well as experts in viticulture. The grand cru vineyards in places such as Côte de Nuits had originally belonged to the Church and the nobility. After the French Revolution broke out, Church property was confiscated, and those grand cru vineyards were among the first to be seized.