Phylloxera - the closest thing to a dirty word that can be spoken in a vineyard.
If you are any sort of wine history enthusiast, the word Phylloxera will send shivers down your spine. Root phylloxera (it is important to emphasize root as opposed to leaf phylloxera) devastated French winemaking in the 1850s and '60s.
So, you can begin to understand the initial panic when we found an outbreak of leaf phylloxera on one of our plants, smack-dab in the middle of our rows of Moscato. Here's what some of the leaves on that single plant looked like:
.JPG)
If you turn either of those leaves over, each white spot corresponds to a small, fuzzy, wart-like "gall". (Remember crown gall?) These galls do little damage, other than make the vines ugly. However, since the thought of having any form of phylloxera around is nerve-racking, we decided to strip all of the leaves off of this vine and quickly remove them from the vineyard.
Grape phylloxera is a microscopic, aphid-like insect native to eastern North America, so it's not uncommon to come across it in Kentucky. The French wine disaster of the 19th century pioneered an entire field of root grafting in order to fight off these small pests. Since native American vines grew resistant to root phylloxera, French grapevines were grafted to North American rootstocks. This has been the best defense against the little buggers, and grafted vines are used throughout phylloxera-known regions to this day, but it hasn't been perfect. In the 1980s, California discovered that one of their most common rootstocks, AXR1, was no longer resistant to phylloxera and had to replant over 60% of the vines in Napa and Sonoma Valleys over 2 decades.
I first learned about phylloxera back in 2007 when I was regularly listening to the Napa Valley Wine Radio podcast. Nancy Hawks-Miller, the wine educator at Goosecross Cellars in Yountville, CA, at the time, was responsible for most of my wine education up until 2010 or so when I decided to start studying on my own. You can listen to the 5-year-old podcast about phylloxera here.
After spending a whole post telling you how awful phylloxera is, I just wanted to reiterate that our vineyard is in no real danger. We have root phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, and we have a close eye on any developments from their leaf phylloxera cousins.
I had no clue that a wine podcast I listened to during my first year of engineering grad school would matter to me at all later in life,
The Winemaker's Apprentice
If you are any sort of wine history enthusiast, the word Phylloxera will send shivers down your spine. Root phylloxera (it is important to emphasize root as opposed to leaf phylloxera) devastated French winemaking in the 1850s and '60s.
So, you can begin to understand the initial panic when we found an outbreak of leaf phylloxera on one of our plants, smack-dab in the middle of our rows of Moscato. Here's what some of the leaves on that single plant looked like:
.JPG)
If you turn either of those leaves over, each white spot corresponds to a small, fuzzy, wart-like "gall". (Remember crown gall?) These galls do little damage, other than make the vines ugly. However, since the thought of having any form of phylloxera around is nerve-racking, we decided to strip all of the leaves off of this vine and quickly remove them from the vineyard.
Grape phylloxera is a microscopic, aphid-like insect native to eastern North America, so it's not uncommon to come across it in Kentucky. The French wine disaster of the 19th century pioneered an entire field of root grafting in order to fight off these small pests. Since native American vines grew resistant to root phylloxera, French grapevines were grafted to North American rootstocks. This has been the best defense against the little buggers, and grafted vines are used throughout phylloxera-known regions to this day, but it hasn't been perfect. In the 1980s, California discovered that one of their most common rootstocks, AXR1, was no longer resistant to phylloxera and had to replant over 60% of the vines in Napa and Sonoma Valleys over 2 decades.
I first learned about phylloxera back in 2007 when I was regularly listening to the Napa Valley Wine Radio podcast. Nancy Hawks-Miller, the wine educator at Goosecross Cellars in Yountville, CA, at the time, was responsible for most of my wine education up until 2010 or so when I decided to start studying on my own. You can listen to the 5-year-old podcast about phylloxera here.
After spending a whole post telling you how awful phylloxera is, I just wanted to reiterate that our vineyard is in no real danger. We have root phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, and we have a close eye on any developments from their leaf phylloxera cousins.
I had no clue that a wine podcast I listened to during my first year of engineering grad school would matter to me at all later in life,
The Winemaker's Apprentice
No comments:
Post a Comment