It is too often forgotten that the vinelands of Europe, and the majority
of the Australian, North and South African vineyards planted with
European vines, came within an ace of total destruction by those terrible
scourges the Oidium (first noted in 1845) and the Phylloxera (which
appeared in 1868), which devastated the viticultural world only a decade
or two apart in the middle of the last century. Both came from America,
and pious French vignerons see in Prohibition a divine visitation on a
country so hardened in iniquity as to have wantonly disseminated, if
not deliberately incubated, these frightful pestilences, in despair of
ever equalling the quality of European wines. Of the two, the latter,
because it was recurrent and seems to be endemic to the vine, was by
far the more catastrophic. Chemical means, such as sulphur-spraying,
were eventually devised for coping with the former, so that it could
be, if not eradicated, at least held in check. The Phylloxera, on the
other hand, for long defied the concerted efforts of the world’s most
skilful chemists and agriculturists, traversing Europe from Portugal
to the Crimea like a forest fire, and even passing mysteriously beyond
the seas to infest the young vineyards of other continents. The havoc
wrought was inestimable, particularly in France, where a million hectares
of vineyards, which have never since been replanted, were swept out of
existence. Indeed, when this murrain was at its zenith, there was for
some time grave doubt whether the French peasantry could ever be induced
to replant their perished vines. In the magnitude of its destructiveness
and the swiftness and universality of its contagion, the Phylloxera
can only be compared to the dreaded Pink Bol-Worm parasite of the
cotton-plant. Ultimately salvation was found in wholesale replanting
with grafted vines. The peculiarity of this pest was that it attacked
the roots, but not the foliage, of the European vines, while the roots
of the indigenous American species were as inured against its infection
as their foliage was susceptible to it. Thus by grafting picked European
vine-shoots on to suitable American vine-stocks, a hardy plant could be
evolved, both roots and foliage of which were sufficiently resistent
to the cryptogam. There are, of course, plenty of other blights and
distempers that afflict the vine in greater or less degree according to
the species concerned and the nature of the soil and climate it is grown
in. The vigneron’s life is one unceasing round of watch and ward, toil
and prayer. Not for a single week in the year can the smallest vineyard
go untended. A new and more dreadful Phylloxera might appear at any
moment, though the viticulturist is now much better equipped to resist
fresh parasitic invasions.
A word may be said in connection with the maladies peculiar to the vine
on the vexed question of the relative merits of the wines grown from
grafted and ungrafted vines. It is usually claimed that the quality
of the pre-phylloxera wines, grown from old French ungrafted vines,
was infinitely superior to anything that the best grafted vines can
ever hope to produce. This contention is not supported by the consensus
of opinion among wine-growers and wine-merchants, though some make a
reservation in favour of the old _vieilles souches_ Burgundies. The new
vines show no “yellow streak.” They have acquired none of the primitive
characteristics of native American vines, such as their foxy flavour,
except their New-World vigour. The wines they yield mature more rapidly
and are certainly, like the grafted vines themselves, shorter-lived, but
they give an equal quality with a slightly larger yield per acre. Fifty
or a hundred years hence it will be possible to pass a more definite
and dispassionate judgment on this controversy. It should, however, be
remembered that those who insistently decry all wines grown from grafted
vines are generally old gentlemen who have already reached that age when,
like the Señor d’Asumar, in “Gil Blas,” the peaches of their youth seem
infinitely larger, juicier and more luscious than any that are grown
to-day.