A rare, complete, and well-presented set of the world’s first national wine atlas.

Containing numerous maps of the different wine regions, including some folding, with accompanying descriptions in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Illustrated with woodcuts and photographs depicting chateaux, vineyards, the wine making process, and rural scenes.

L’Atlas de la France Vinicole covers the main wine producing regions of France in six volumes, presented loose as issued in portfolios.
Vol.1 : Les vins de Bordeaux, 1941
Vol.2 : Les vins de Bourgogne, 1942
Vol.3 : Les vins des côtes du Rhône, 1943
Vol.4 : Les vins de Champagne, 1944
Vol.5 : Les vins des coteaux de la Loire. 1ère Partie : Touraine et Centre, 1946
Vol.6 : Les eaux-de-vie de France. Le cognac, 947

The text in each volume is introduced by the President of CNOA (Comité National des Appellations d’Origine), an organisational collaboration between the French government and vineyard owners to stimulate economic growth after the Great Depression. Highlighted in colour are AOCs (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), indicating different areas of legislation in each local region.

The CNAO praised Larmat’s maps as early as 1939 for their meticulous scientific clarity, although their publication was disrupted by the outbreak of the second world war – wine was rationed, and land was diversified for war efforts. Nevertheless, the premier cru of Burgundy was created in 1943, and Larmat continued to publish his successful maps until the Cognac volume in 1947. Plans for expansion and two further volumes were never realised, which would have included wines of: the Loire, Armagnac and Calvados, Alsace, and sweet fortified wines.

The atlas was updated in subsequent editions in 1949 and 1953. Region-wide comparative wine maps continued to prove rare, particularly ones lavishly printed to such a degree of accuracy. Larmat’s atlas remained unmatched in detail until the late twentieth century.

Louis Larmat was a French cartographer, who made his debut publication in 1924 in Provence. Little is known about Larmat other than his status as an ‘editeur Parisien’, a publisher in Paris with two separate business addresses. Although he authored no other wine map himself, Larmat did publish wine maps by three other cartographers later in his career.