Phylloxera, how it started

It all started in Roquemaure, France, where an American grape collector came to visit a French colleague. The French colleague lived in this village located in the southern part of the Rhône wine valley. Behind his house, he had a walled vineyard, where he had several varieties of grape plants growing. No doubt the Frenchman gave the American some plants to add to his collection for American wines. The American in turn promised to send the Frenchman some of his plants by post, so that both collections were expanded. The French collector had almost forgotten this promise when, after quite some time, a parcel from America was delivered to him. They turned out to be the promised American grape plants, and he quickly decided to add them to the European ones in his vineyard.

In the spring of 1864, however, the leaves of the plants in the French collector's vineyard began to take on a strange shape and colour. What he did not know was that the package from America had not only contained grape plants, but also a small yellow grape aphid that had not been spotted in the wild in Europe before. After a few months, all his European grape plants were dead, while the plants from America were still alive.

The dismay was only complete, however, when it turned out that the same phenomenon started to manifest itself in other parts of the southern Rhône. What was particularly annoying was that no one knew what the grape plants were now dying of. No one knew that it was the little yellow Phylloxera Vastatrix that ate at the roots of the plant causing wounds, and sprayed their saliva into these wounds so that the plant could no longer seal these wounds. This allowed fungi and infections to enter the plant, resulting in death.

People also did not yet know that this aphid could survive the winter cold in a winter egg and that five generations of lice were born in one year, that each of these generations could produce several eggs and that the last generation of grape aphid grew wings to be able to spread over a great distance. So it happened that in 1872, the first vineyards in the Charentes and Charente-Maritime were affected, which meant that in time, not enough Cognac could be produced. Around the world and especially in London, drinking Cognac became an increasingly expensive hobby and people turned to Scotch blended whisky.

Scotch whisky was not tasty

It was not at all the custom in England to drink Scotch whisky and certainly not malt whisky. Malt whisky, to the English and especially to Londoners, was a sharp, boorish and smoky drink that was certainly not as refined as brandy. Even at the beginning of the emergence of blended whisky, since 1860 it was allowed by law to mix malt whisky and grain whisky, the bad image of Scotch whisky was certainly still present.

The first Scotch blender tried to set up an agency in the British capital as early as 1862. It was Arthur Bell who, after the first shipment of whisky, got the message from his agent in London that his friends did not like the whisky. Literally, he was told by his agent, Mr Young; ‘People thought Bell's whisky was too heavy in flavour’. Through years of experimenting with blending, lagering and adjusting the alcohol content, Scotch whisky gradually began to find favour in London after all. More and more whisky blenders started setting up sales agencies in the city.

John Walker, from Kilmarnock, Scotland, opened an office in 1880. This was right at the time when Londoners increasingly had to turn to a drink other than the popular brandy due to the phylloxera outbreak. At the time, this had the choice of rum, gin and Scotch whisky and, over time, the English started drinking more and more Scotch whisky, especially as a whisky soda as a substitute for brandy soda. More and more blended whisky brands entered the market, and many fortune seekers wanted to invest in building a distillery. Between 1890 and 1900, as many as 40 new distilleries were therefore built in Scotland. This ‘Victorian whisky boom’, as this period in the Scotch whisky industry is now called, came to an abrupt end in late 1898 when one of the biggest whisky merchants of the time went bankrupt.

Resurgence from near total devastation

Meanwhile, in France and the rest of Europe, and especially in the Cognac region, scholars were fiercely searching for the cause of the massive death of the vines that produced wine and Cognac. Gradually, they figured out what the cause was, and that the solution to the problem had to be sought at the causative agent. Namely, botanists found out that the American grape plants were resistant to the phylloxera Vastatrix grape aphid. The plants were resistant not only to the phylloxera, but also to the mildew that the American plants had brought to Europe as early as 1851. European and American grape plants had been experimented on both sides of the ocean back and forth for years before the Phylloxera outbreak. Even after solving the phylloxera problem, the American plants brought two other diseases with them, namely downy mildew and black rot. Both diseases the American plants were resistant to and the European plants were not.

The difference between mildew, downy mildew and black rot on the one hand and phylloxra on the other was that the former three diseases could be controlled with pesticides. In the case of Phylloxera Vastatrix, the European root under the European grapevine had to be replaced with the American root. This was the only way to continue making good wine using the European grape plants. In fact, the wine from the American grape plants was not nearly as good. So the solution seemed to have been found, but not for Cognac producers. This is because the soils of the departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime contain a lot of lime and not every plant can handle that well. So it was necessary to look for an American root that was resistant to phylloxera but could also thrive in the calcareous soil. Fortunately, it didn't take particularly long to find an American root that proved able to cope with both problems. It was the Vitus Berlandieri.

However, there were still two ‘minor’ problems. Firstly, this American root was technically not graftable on the legally permitted grape varieties for Cognac and therefore not on the most commonly planted grape varieties of the time, the Folle Blanc and the Ugni Blanc. The second problem was; where to get as many of these roots as possible to graft on the still-living European grape plants once the first problem was solved?

Double approach

To solve the two problems as quickly as possible, an experienced botanist from Bordeaux University started working on the grafting problem, while at the same time a younger colleague went to the United States to look for a place where enough Vitus Berlandieri plants were present.

In 1887, at a wine congress in Mâcon, a vine resistant to Phylloxera and thriving on limestone soil was presented as the 41B, which could be grafted with the original Cognac grape plants. In the same year, so many Vitus Berlandieri grape plants were found in the limestone mountains of northern Texas that the roots of these were harvested right away and exported to France. Before these roots could arrive France, they had to be shipped from north Texas by boat across the Red River and Mississippi to New Orleans. There, the roots were transhipped on a steamship to the French port of La Rochelle. Arriving in France, the roots were prepared into the 41B rootstock to then be grafted under the European grape plant Ugni Blanc with which the vineyards in the Cognac region were replanted. By 1895, 12,000 hectares had been planted in the departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime and by 1900 that number had increased fivefold.

So it could happen that in the absence of Cognac, there was plenty of good whisky, and then when the whisky market collapsed, plenty of Cognac could again be produced and drunk.