During the Napoleonic era Napoleon made a change to the inheritance laws which decreed that a persons estate would automatically be divided evenly among his heirs. What this meant was that if a wine grower had a vineyard that was 200 acres and he had four children all four children would get equal shares of the land and it would now become four fifty acre vineyards. If you follow this process down a few generations you can probably predict what the end result was. The end result was many very small vineyards. When you run a very small vineyard site it is very hard to afford the equipment necessary to run your own winery not to mention the resources necessary to market your product. The problems that arose due to Napoleons inheritance laws gave birth to the negotiant system. Negotiants were business people who had access to wine making facilities and had the resources to bottle and market wine. The negotiants would buy grapes or in some instances finished wines from the small vineyards and produce the wines under the negotiants own label. A couple of negotiants that most people have heard of are Joseph Droughin and Louis Jadot.
