Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine

Chapter 5: Phylloxera Makes the European Grand Tour

163 The bug respected no political boundaries. Even while it was strengthening its hold in France, advance parties were breaking out into the surrounding territory. Some invasions were slow and inevitable, proceeding at the pace of the natural expansion of the bug carried by wind and rain. Other places were hit violently, the invasion fueled by the importation and planting of infected vines from France. But whatever the pace, the expansion was unstoppable. First and worst hit was Portugal, followed soon by Switzerland and Italy. Although the phylloxera established itself wherever it landed, the course of the individual invasions varied enormously. Italy was hit early, most likely by 1870,1 yet over the next thirty years the disease’s coverage remained spotty: one region might be devastated while the surrounding countryside remained healthy. Sicily was the exception. The bug conquered everywhere and moved across the island at the speed of a conflagration. Portuguese winegrowers first noticed the beginnings of a decline in their vines in Régua, an important port-growing region in the southwest of the Douro Valley, during the 1862 season. But the first official identification of the malady did not occur until 1872, when a governmental committee dug up vines in the town of Santa Marta de Penagui ão in the Régua (Morrow 1973, 238). By this time the bug was thoroughly established, with beachheads in all the important wine-growing regions. Victory did not take long, and Portugal succumbed totally. chapter 5 Phylloxera Makes the European Grand Tour 164 | Phylloxera Makes the European Grand Tour Some countries, however (Germany, for example), whether by reason of climate, terrain, or social-legal discipline, did not entirely succumb to the bug, even though it made significant inroads in scattered regions. Oceans were no protection, especially as commerce based on fast ships grew. As we shall later see in greater detail, phylloxera devastated South Africa, while Australia was infected but, through an intense counterattack, managed to limit the bug’s territorial acquisition. Chile was apparently uninfected, while just over the Andes to the east Argentina ’s vignoble rapidly fell to the invader. And in far-off California, signs of phylloxera’s presence were suspected already in 1874, and by the end of the decade infection foci had been identified in most of the important wine-growing regions. Phylloxera had truly become a global epidemic. But in July 1903 the publication in the Revue de viticulture of the first of nearly a dozen articles by Prosper Gervais reviewing the past thirty years of the phylloxera crisis, and attempting to predict the future of the worldwide wine economy, signified an important turning point.2 Gervais, vice-president of the Société des agriculteurs de France and later secretary of the Permanent International Viticultural Commission (Pinney 1989, 369), was the perfect choice for the job: he was scientifically trained, had experience in the wine-growing community, and had risen quickly through the ranks of the administrative establishment, in large part because of his encyclopedic knowledge and wide vision of the crisis.3 His summary of the state of the world of wine at that point is well worth quoting at length. The phylloxera crisis has been the point of departure for a profound upheaval in French viticulture, with repercussions radiating, advancing, into the viticulture of the entire world. The crisis is the origin of a gigantic evolution , of a veritable revolution, both agricultural and economic, affecting the vignoble’s total situation all the way from its foundations to the sources of its life and its production, modifying cultural practices and their products, the modes of life of the producers, the consumers, and commerce itself, instituting in one way or another everywhere a new order of things, destined to expand the area of culture of the vine, the extension of its production, and, inevitably, of the consumption of wine as well. (Gervais 1903–4, 89) Gervais’ main point is that not only did the phylloxera cause a crisis, but also, as was already clear only thirty years into the struggle against the bug, the entire world of wine was undergoing a revolution both agricultural and economic engendered by the success of the scientific response to the disaster.4 Although, in the main, scientists in all of the afflicted countries relied upon the knowledge gained in France, and particularly upon Phylloxera Makes the European Grand Tour | 165 the experience of the scientists...