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In what is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post [[Black Death]] population explosion of the late Middle Ages combined with the relative lack of free land made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued long into the 18th Century although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the [[New World]].{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}}.
Métayage was used early in the [[Middle Ages]] in northern France and the [[Rhineland]]s, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished utilizing slave labor.[http://www.ggday.co.kr/board/ggday_info_03/3 .] The hyperinflation that followed the influx of Incan-American gold made Métayage preferable to cash tenancy and wage labour for both parties. Called ''complant'', a laborer (in French ''[[prendeur]]'', in Italian ''mezzadro'') would offer to plant and tend to an uncultivated parcel of land belonging to a land owner (in French ''[[bailleur]]'', in Italian ''concedente''). The ''prendeur'' would have ownership of the vines and the ''bailleur'' would receive anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the vines' production in exchange for the use of his soil.<ref>Hugh Johnson, ''Vintage: The Story of Wine'' pg 116. Simon and Schuster 1989</ref> This system was used extensively in planting the Champagne region.<ref>[http://www.maisons-champagne.com/traduction/english/bonal_gb/pages/01/01-02_gb.htm Excerpts from R. Dion’s “ Histoire de la Vigne et du Vin en France“]</ref> ''Bailleur'' was also used as the name for the proprietor under métayage. The contract still exists today in Switzerland.<ref>[http://www.agrivalais.ch/fr/agriculteurs/metayagevigne.pdf agrivalais.ch: "Contrat de métayage dans la vigne"]</ref>
In the eighteenth century c. 75% of leased lands in western, southern and central France were sharecropped. North of the Loire it was only common in [[Lorraine]].<ref>Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, T J Byres, page 18</ref>
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