Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine

Chapter 6: The Bug Goes South: New Venues, Same Story

184 Grapes and wine making came early to the southern hemisphere, on the heels of the colonizers. By the time of the phylloxera each of the major southern wine-producing regions—Australia, South Africa, and Argentina—had developed local industries of significance, and, in the case of South Africa, it had achieved considerable importance on the international scene.1 But when the bug arrived in each of these places in turn, abrupt change was the immediate result. As we have seen before, many of the changes phylloxera produced were the same everywhere: loss of production, disastrous effects on the local economy, anxiety and even panic among the growers, and desperate searching for solutions. Luckily for these three regions, the Europeans, and particularly the French, had preceded them into and out of this desperate state and were available to provide some help.2 But in addition to the typical effects, each region had its own peculiarities, both biophysically and culturally. We begin with Australia. australia In 1788 the first thousand Europeans arrived in Australia to set up a penal colony. With them came cuttings from Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, brought by Governor Phillip and planted at Cove Farm that same year (Walsh 1979, 1).3 Over the next two decades various attempts to set up vineyards were made by both penal officers and chapter 6 The Bug Goes South New Venues, Same Story The Bug Goes South | 185 free settlers—most of the latter from wine-growing areas in Europe, particularly Rhine-Hesse and central France—without much success. Diseases were a serious problem, particularly anthracnose, produced by a canker-causing fungus. Moreover, the soil-climate interaction, so different from anything ever seen in Europe, required serious study and experimentation before successful methods, such as irrigating vine roots during high-temperature periods to keep them cool, were developed and deployed (Walsh 1979, 1). Among the most important viticultural pioneers was Gregory Blaxland , a native of Kent who arrived in the country in 1806 and immediately began experimenting with vines on his new 450-acre Brush Farm near Eastwood, New South Wales. Blaxland realized that the vine types planted previously had been chosen haphazardly at best, and that careful observation and selection from among a great number of varieties was the only method that might improve the prospects of the Australian vignoble. He began importing vines from France and Spain and planting them out on his farm. By 1816 he had succeeded in producing a significant amount of decent wine from his selections, which he kept healthy using various techniques he had developed, especially those preventing anthracnose (Walsh 1979, 2). In 1822 Blaxland exported twentysix gallons of a light red wine to London, where it was apparently enjoyed considerably. James Busby, another important early viticulturalist, arrived in Australia in 1824 from England by way of viticultural school in France. He brought with him a large number of cuttings with which to furnish his new two-thousand-acre land grant in the Hunter Valley. Seven years later Busby returned to Europe to collect more vines; he returned with 614 different varieties collected in Montpellier, Luxembourg, and Kew Gardens. It was from this stock that most future selection and experimentation in Australia derived (Walsh 1979, 2). During the increased immigration of the 1840s and ’50s, successful vineyard expansion in New South Wales and Victoria brought viticulture into Australia’s mainstream agricultural economy. From that point onward there was no doubt about the ultimate significance of wine in Australia’s future. Phylloxera appeared in 1877 in a vineyard at Geelong, Victoria, just across the bay from Melbourne (Whiting and Buchanan 1992, 15). By 1910 outbreaks had been recorded near Sydney N.S.W. and Brisbane in Queensland, but it “was more widely spread across southern, central and northeastern areas of Victoria” (Whiting and Buchanan 1992, 15). Victoria was indeed devastated: “Australia is often regarded as fortunate 186 | The Bug Goes South in having only relatively small vineyard areas infested by phylloxera. In fact, these areas were large and important grape areas until they were infested by phylloxera” (Buchanan 1992, 15). But the devastation was in part willful, owing to official Victoria’s disinclination to accept expert advice from François de Castella (1867–1953), the Sydney-born son of an immigrant Swiss vigneron. The teenaged de Castella left Australia in 1883 in order to study natural science in...