Phylloxera : How Wine Was Saved for the World

About this book

A historical investigation into the mysterious bug that wiped out the vineyards of first France and then Europe in the 1860s -- and how one young botanist who had served an apprenticeship at Kew Gardens eventually saved wine for the world. Bordeaux inexplicably began to wither and die. Panic seized France and Jules-Emile Planchon a botanist from Montpellier was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand he discovered the roots of a dying vine covered in microscopic yellow insects. The tiny aphid would be named Phylloxera vastatrix -- the dry leaf devastator. Where it had come from was utterly mysterious but it advanced with the speed of an invading army. As the noblest vineyards of France came under biological siege the worlds greatest wine industry tottered on the brink of ruin. The grand owners fought the aphid with expensive insecticide while peasant vignerons simply abandoned their ruined plots in despair. Within a few years the plague had spread across Europe from Portugal to the Crimea. the parasite had accidentally been imported from America. He believed that only the introduction of American vines which appeared to have developed a resistance to the aphid could save Frances vineyards. His opponents maintained that this would merely assist the spread of the disease. Meanwhile encouraged by the French governments offer of a prize of 300 000 gold francs for a remedy increasingly bizarre suggestions flooded in and many wine-growing regions came close to revolution as whole local economies were obliterated. Eventually Planchon and his supporters won the day and phylloxera-resistant American vines were grafted onto European root-stock. Despite some setbacks -- the first fruits of transplanted American vines were universally pronounced undrinkable -- by 1914 all vines cultivated in France were hybrid Americans. of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster.