Napoleon’s middle child syndrome permanently changed the wine business prior to the French Revolution Burgundy a region known today for some of the world’s finest wines was under the control of Catholic monks with the French Revolution the land was confiscated from the church and redistributed to the farmers then came
Napoleon and Napoleon did not V with being a middle child since that meant he get no inheritance so he passed the Napoleonic Code which required that all children inherit equally regardless of birth order now this meant that the vineyard land in France would be split up more and more with each generation
Some French wine regions like Bordeaux were owned by wealthy families who decided to incorporate their wine States as businesses to avoid this inheritance issue but burgundy was owned by farmers who didn’t do this so burgundy continued to split into infantes small Vineyards leading to the rise of merchants or
Negociants Merchants buy grapes or wine across multiple Vineyards then finish making the wine and sell it under their own name which was necessary in burgundy to aggregate enough grapes to make wine from all of these tiny Vineyards Merchants are a huge part of the wine business today in burgundy and elsewhere
All Jude to Napoleon’s middle child syndrome
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Very interesting. In Russia we had something like this happened to businesses. Some of them were required to pass the ownership to their owner's heirs instead of giving them the ability to choose the owner after current one's death. This lead to bankruptcy for many enterprises.