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13 the disaster begins In summer 1866 a few grapevines in an obscure vineyard along the Rhône, in the South of France, withered and died. Others around them began to show signs of the same progression. Over the next thirty years the withering disease would spread throughout France and Europe and into North and South America, Africa, and Australia, destroying traditional wine growing and wine making everywhere it invaded. What was the nature and origin of this dreadful disease? More importantly, what could be done to stop it? Answering these questions generated enormous debate among scientists, much heat, and, at first, not much light. Just getting to the point where the cause of disease was understood and agreed upon by most involved took nearly seven years from the time those dying grapevines were first noticed. In the end it was not the scientists but the practical and resourceful people on the ground—grape growers, winemakers, landowners—who led the way in resolving the scientific controversy, thereby making possible the renaissance of wine growing, and wine itself, around the world. The story is long and complicated, so let us begin at the beginning. It is not precisely known when the la nouvelle maladie de la vigne— “the new disease of the vine”—first appeared.1 According to J.-É. Planchon , Montpellier’s famous botany professor and one of the central figures in the story, in the late 1860s “an unknown disease menaced chapter 1 Disaster Strikes “All your vines are fatally condemned to disappear, Monsieur” 14 | Disaster Strikes certain vignobles,2 on both slopes of the Bas-Rhône; at Pujault, in the Gard, there were perhaps vague glimpses of this disease in 1863” (Planchon 1874, 546).3 But by the summer of 1866 there were clear signs that something was dreadfully wrong in the vineyards of St-Martin-de-Crau, near Arles. Toward the end of July leaves on a large number of plants had lost their healthy green color and become dark red. The problem had spread from a small number of originally affected vines to those nearby, and from those to others, radiating in circles like “the gradual spreading out of a spot of oil” (Planchon 1874, 553).4 The first published report on the problem was provided a year later by M. Delorme, a veterinarian from Arles, in a letter to the president of the agricultural exposition at Aix-enProvence . Dr. Delorme notes that, after the reddening of the leaves, the disease “withers the bunches of grapes, dries them out, as well as drying out the tips of the roots” (Cazalis 1869a, 225). By the spring of 1867 all the affected vines were dead, and by end of the 1867 growing season, “vines dead or sick occupied an extent of about five hectares,5 which produced next to no crop” (quoted in Pouget 1990, 10).6 Planchon’s description cannot be bettered: “Everywhere the gradual invasion presented the same phases: after a latent period, some isolated points of attack appeared; during the course of the year, these local points enlarged themselves. . . . At the same time multiplication by new foci— advance colonies thrown to distances of several leagues around the centers developed the preceding years; in a word, the radiating aggravation of an already confirmed evil”(Planchon 1874, 553).Although la nouvelle maladie de la vigne spread rapidly enough, until 1869 its effects were confined to six departments of the lower Rhône, where grapes destined for ordinary table wine were grown in mass production vineyards. But, “apparently after an independent introduction,” the disease spread to the Médoc region near Bordeaux, one of the most important areas for producing high-quality wine in all of France (Stevenson 1980, 47). At first the growers did not realize either the seriousness of la nouvelle maladie de la vigne or its genuine novelty, attempting to see in the new disease the shape of a familiar one.“Always disposed to connect new facts to ones already known, the peasants of the Vaucluse called the disease le blanquet, or root rot” scoffs Planchon, “even though the conditions—of soil, of weather, etc.—for the latter were clearly not met by the actual situation of the new disease” (Planchon 1874, 546). As Pouget remarks,“The presence, in some cases, of rot on the dead roots led some to think for a while of the damage from pourridié (Armillaria root disease). But very quickly it was realized that the attacks of the disease could...

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