Middelburg wine town

• Whether wine was ever grown in Middelburg cannot be determined with certainty. Winemaking was at least possible in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages because of the relatively warm climate. Middelburg, like many other towns in Zeeland, such as Veere, Domburg and Goes, has a vineyard street, so you might think it could be related to wine growing. Churches, abbeys and houses of worship sometimes had their own vineyards in the Middle Ages, because wine was needed for mass and the clergy could appreciate a glass of wine. The monastery located in Middelburg near the Wijngaardstraat was the Cellebroedersklooster, of which the English church is still a remnant.  

Wine trade, on the other hand, was certainly present in the Scheldt region. Powerful Flemish towns like Bruges and Ghent in the 13th and 14th centuries were cities that traded with numerous European cities, including wine trade. Wine was supplied via the Zwin, where wine was transhipped via the suburbs of Bruges, Damme and Sluis. Damme had a town crane in the 13th century and even received stacking rights on various products, including wine, for some time. The stacking right means that goods transported past a town must first be stored and offered for sale there. Because of the staple right, towns located on the coast, for example, could prosper. But the Zwin silted up in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, causing part of the overseas trade to disappear. 

While cities like Bruges and Ghent with their tens of thousands of inhabitants were large prosperous cities at the time, Middelburg and Arnemuiden were small towns with a few thousand inhabitants. But nevertheless, both towns developed into important (transit) ports of trade. Wine trade was already mentioned in Middelburg in the town charter of 1217 referring to the 12th century. In the letter, there was a punishment for selling ‘forged wine’ and it even referred to a keur, a charter with city rights, from the 12th century. 

Arnemuiden, literally the mouth of the Arne, was the connection to the Welzinge Canal and fulfilled a very important role as an outport to Middelburg and later to Antwerp. This is where the ships, from initially mainly La Rochelle and Bordeaux, arrived, carrying mainly wine and salt. Arnemuiden became the hub of western wines, so to speak. Here, wine was transhipped on countless ships for the aforementioned cities. A hand-drawn map by Jacob van Deventer from 1545 shows both the river Arne and the Havenkanaal, which was dug in Middelburg from 1532 to 1535, commissioned by Charles the Fifth in 1531. This was necessary because the Arne silted up just like the Zwin. Until then, it must have been a beautiful sight to see all those ships sailing through the meandering river Arne, or directly through the Havenkanaal. Arnemuiden's harbour was a very busy place and was even called the centre of Europe by the Italian Ludovico Guicciardini in 1567. He described that there were often four or five hundred ships at the roadstead. Wine was often one of the cargoes.