The Baltic wine trade 1563–1657

Abstract

Abstract Wine is one of the easiest commodities to study in the Sound Toll Registers (STR). Firstly, it was the subject of a particular transit duty called the ‘thirtieth’, the origin of which is not well known,1 secondly, it was mentioned in the ‘shiff thold’ columns, which also give us the port of registry of each ship; finally, it occurs under ‘lastpenge’, of which one portion was specifically reserved for wine. The ease with which one may study the Baltic wine trade is illustrated by the edition of STR by N. Bang,2 known as the Sound Toll Tables (STT), though her work is notoriously unsystematic. In this paper, we shall first take a general view of the trade in the years 1563–1657 according to STT, then examine more closely four years, 1583, 1588, 1597 and 1600, investigated in STR, and end by estimating the real significance of the trade. The chronological limits select themselves: 1563 is the first year in STT of an unbroken series which mentions wines under the headings Hjemsted (home port) and Afg...