The Economist reviews a new book about the devastation to Europe’s wine makers caused by a tiny American invader:
These varieties are a reminder of the battle against phylloxera, a small, root-munching aphid that did incalculable damage to the wine business in the last 35 years of the 19th century. What George Gale, a philosophy professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, calls “the worst of all known invasive species disasters” swept across the viticultural landscape like a biblical plague. It destroyed vineyards from Rioja to Rheingau, Stellenbosch to Sicily. With good reason, Jules-Emile Planchon, the French botanist who helped to subdue the insect, dubbed it Phylloxera vastatrix.
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In Europe, Gale’s research is no less assiduous. His coverage of the war between the largely Parisian scientific establishment, which believed that phylloxera was the effect, rather than the cause, of the devastation, and the so-called Américainistes of Montpellier and Bordeaux, who believed the opposite, is commendably detailed. The squabbling between the two sides stretched on into the 1880s, delaying the search for a solution.
Various remedies were proposed: flooding, planting on sandy soils and the use of carbon disulphide (a flammable, toxic chemical that was costly as well as tricky to apply). Growers then tried planting lower-quality American grapes, including Clinton and Noah, before switching, finally, to grafted vines combining phylloxera-resistant American rootstocks with European scions. This is still the practice in most of the world’s vineyards today.
