the bug? Once the crackpot proposals had been eliminated, the various investigative and defense committees in the front lines of the struggle soon divided up into three camps: the sulfuristes , the immersionistes and the américanistes . Sulfur compounds had been rewarded with only partial success, and the applications had to be frequently repeated, always attended by the danger of killing the vine by ill-calculated overdose. Immersing vineyards in water staved off total crop failure, but the process was complicated, expensive and practicable only in flat areas near rivers or lakes. The American solution was the last choice, and by far the most controversial.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, American and French wine growers had shown a lively interest in each other’s native plants, and it was in all innocence that a certain number of American vines had been imported into France and planted for trials. They thrived, but within a couple of years the native Vitis vinifera growing nearby developed ugly leaf blisters and began to slowly perish. By 1869, investigators had made the obvious connection: it was these American vines that had brought a new kind of pest with them from the New World. At the same time, though, a capital characteristic of the imported vines was staring everyone in the face: they were immune to the aphid themselves. How this immunity had originated was unknown, but there it was, an inescapable hard fact. Investigators could only assume that over thousands or millions of years of natural selection and adaptation, the vines had developed protective mechanisms that permitted them to remain healthy under the bug’s attack, while Europe’s Vitis vinifera , virgin and defense-less, was easy prey.
Upon the discovery that the culprit was U.S. vines, the first panicky reaction was to embargo any further imports, but the ban was clearly pointless: the damage had already been done; the plague was there, and it was inching unstoppably through the land. It did not take long for a second thought, more logical this one, to replace the first: since the American vines were immune to phylloxera, why not try making wine with them? While the Beaujolais was enjoying its final two years of good harvests, winegrowers in the devastated Midi—or, rather, those who were wealthy enough to afford the expense—had already been replanting their ruined vineyards with strangely named vines from the New World: Jaquez, Cynthiana, Senasqua, Concord, Clinton, Cunningham, Scuppernong. Less fortunate vignerons simply gave up winemaking and turned to raising cattle or growing wheat or rye. The poorest of them suffered a fate similar to that of U.S. Okies. Ruined, their meager savings exhausted, they were reduced to becoming day laborers or moving on, elsewhere in France or in emigration to South America or Australia, where their descendants would be making wines a century or so later that would come into direct competition with those of the land they left behind.
When, in 1874, a specially convened wine congress sampled the first “American” wines produced from the newly planted southern fields, the verdict was unanimous: the stuff was revolting. From that big tasting came a disobliging but conveniently vague quip that went on to become one of oenology’s more popular idioms, one that is still in use today. “Pissat de renard,” someone said, by way of characterizing the wine: fox piss. But ever since, the sharp, indefinable aroma and taste of wines made from native American vines have been branded with the adjective “foxy” ( goût foxé in French).
Clearly, then, the U.S. vines would not do as replacements for the cherished European Vitis vinifera. With that failed enterprise behind them, winegrowers turned to hybrids, crossing American and French stock in search of the holy grail, the “direct,” a single vine that would combine American phylloxera-resistance with the wine quality of Vitis vinifera. That ideal never
Since the mid-nineteenth century, American and French wine growers had shown a lively interest in each other’s native plants, and it was in all innocence that a certain number of American vines had been imported into France and planted for trials. They thrived, but within a couple of years the native Vitis vinifera growing nearby developed ugly leaf blisters and began to slowly perish. By 1869, investigators had made the obvious connection: it was these American vines that had brought a new kind of pest with them from the New World. At the same time, though, a capital characteristic of the imported vines was staring everyone in the face: they were immune to the aphid themselves. How this immunity had originated was unknown, but there it was, an inescapable hard fact. Investigators could only assume that over thousands or millions of years of natural selection and adaptation, the vines had developed protective mechanisms that permitted them to remain healthy under the bug’s attack, while Europe’s Vitis vinifera , virgin and defense-less, was easy prey.
Upon the discovery that the culprit was U.S. vines, the first panicky reaction was to embargo any further imports, but the ban was clearly pointless: the damage had already been done; the plague was there, and it was inching unstoppably through the land. It did not take long for a second thought, more logical this one, to replace the first: since the American vines were immune to phylloxera, why not try making wine with them? While the Beaujolais was enjoying its final two years of good harvests, winegrowers in the devastated Midi—or, rather, those who were wealthy enough to afford the expense—had already been replanting their ruined vineyards with strangely named vines from the New World: Jaquez, Cynthiana, Senasqua, Concord, Clinton, Cunningham, Scuppernong. Less fortunate vignerons simply gave up winemaking and turned to raising cattle or growing wheat or rye. The poorest of them suffered a fate similar to that of U.S. Okies. Ruined, their meager savings exhausted, they were reduced to becoming day laborers or moving on, elsewhere in France or in emigration to South America or Australia, where their descendants would be making wines a century or so later that would come into direct competition with those of the land they left behind.
When, in 1874, a specially convened wine congress sampled the first “American” wines produced from the newly planted southern fields, the verdict was unanimous: the stuff was revolting. From that big tasting came a disobliging but conveniently vague quip that went on to become one of oenology’s more popular idioms, one that is still in use today. “Pissat de renard,” someone said, by way of characterizing the wine: fox piss. But ever since, the sharp, indefinable aroma and taste of wines made from native American vines have been branded with the adjective “foxy” ( goût foxé in French).
Clearly, then, the U.S. vines would not do as replacements for the cherished European Vitis vinifera. With that failed enterprise behind them, winegrowers turned to hybrids, crossing American and French stock in search of the holy grail, the “direct,” a single vine that would combine American phylloxera-resistance with the wine quality of Vitis vinifera. That ideal never
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