Phillipe,
That was me, not Les, confusing cuttings and rootstock. All's well, though,
excellent wines are now coming from lots of places.
Gary (a bit north of Houston, and glad of it).
Philippe Le Zuikomane <zuikomane@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If I may, Les, it's *rootstocks*, not *cuttings*. You're confusing the pedestal
and the statue. Just as Ellis Island was Made In America whereas the Statue of
Liberty was Made In France, so are the roots of our hybridized vines MIA
whereas their grapes are MIF. If you want to MIF your French friends, you want
to make sure your facts are not MIA. ;-)
In other words, North American rootstocks, originally native to the Midwest and
Canada, were exported to countries where European vines were being sucked dry
by an aphid native to America, because they had natural resistance to their
American parasites. Texan Munson was a key provider of such rootstocks in the
1870s under the program initiated after the discovery made by Frenchman
Planchon, working to undo the tremendous damage caused by his fellow-countryman
Borty, who had used vine cuttings from the US in his Provencal vineyards in
1862... (There are also mentions of contemporaneous shipments of the similar
louse-infected vines to Britain.)
That was not the first time American cuttings had brought disease to European
vineyards. Powdery or downy mildew came to us in the 1850s, and Briton Berkeley
identified American grapevines as the vectors. The phylloxera outbreak of the
1860s and later affected Europe, Australia, and finally California, where many
European vines were being grown successfully. (Hungarian Harazsthy, following
in the footsteps of Frenchman Vignes -- the aptly named founder of the modern
Californian wine industry -- had introduced 300 grape varieties to California
from over 160 great vineyards in the 1850s and 60s.)
One major blight befell American vintners after 1918, caused by a vicious form
of brain rot spread by members of the Temperance Movement, armed with axes and
ballots. To this day, it is not fully eradicated and you can't buy wine in a
grocery store on a Sunday morning in Houston. A similar catastrophe occurred in
Finland, where drinking binges remain a major public health problem -- as they
do in America...
-- Phil (planning to have dinner tonight at Le Cep -- French for vine stock --
in Munson's state.)
On 14:55, ll.clark@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>And as I recall, there was an earlier blight that they were saved
>>from by cuttings from Texas vineyards.
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