Population In 1384 Roquemaure was the chef-lieu of one of the 13 vigueries in the sénéchaussée of Beaucaire and Nîmes. It was the site of a royal castle and a large collegiate church with 10 priests. In spite of this, the village itself was very small with only 5 hearths. Within the Roquemaure viguerie Lirac had 3 hearths, Tavel 5, Saint-Geniès-de-Comolas 13 and Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres 30. Bagnols-sur-Cèze was the chef-lieu of a neighbouring viguerie and had 115 hearths. Four centuries later in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, Roquemaure had 929 hearths and was similar in size to Bagnol which had 1085. Wine Winemaking was probably introduced into Rhône valley by Greek colonists around 600 BC. Archaeological excavations carried out at La Ramière suggests that wine, or possibly olive oil, was being produced at the site in the second half of the 1st century AD. The earliest written mention of viticulture in Roquemaure is by Gervase of Tilbury in his Otia Imperialia which was completed around 1214. An English translation of the Latin text is: In the Rhône stands the castle of Roquemaure. They judge that the castle itself belongs to the empire, which has rights over the river, while its estate belongs to the kingdom of France, which owns the land-rights. On the estate of this castle there are vines which the people call brumestae, producing good fat grapes. These vines flower and produce clusters of grapes as ordinary vines do, but then they cheat their husbandman's expectation: for when it comes to the feast of St John the Baptist [24 June], all the fruit vanishes, and nothing which might have grown into fruit is found on them. The earliest mention of wine being exported from Roquemaure is in the accounts of the papal court in Avignon of Innocent VI. In 1357 they record the purchase of 20 barrels from "Guillelmo Malrepacis", a local merchant. The port on the Rhône allowed wine produced in Roquemaure and the surrounding villages to be easily exported. In 1735 more than 8,000 barrels a year were being shipped from the port. The current law for the Côtes du Rhône Appellation d'origine contrôlée dates only from 1937, but there is a long history of attempts to regulate the quality of the wine from the region. In 1737 the Conseil d'Etat issued a royal decree on the production of wine in Roquemaure. It specified