When recently I was recommended to read a book on the wine industry scurge Phylloxera (a root eating louse), I was rather scepticle to put it mildly.  How interesting a read was this going to be? Why would I want to learn about the history of this vine pest and how it was introduced to the vineyards of France?

These doubts arise from the fact that wine grapegrowing in Western Australia has proceeded in great haste over the years using vines grown on their own roots i.e. ungrafted.  Our isolation from eastern Australia has bred an air of complacency.  We don’t have the pest so why should we understand it?  Why should we read anything about it?  These were my feelings as well.

I must say that once I started this book I was fascinated as to how little I knew (zero actually!) about the imvolvement of France and America in this whole story. 

I can highly recommend this book as it traces the introduction of this debilitating pest into France from America.  It traces how it was introduced, how it spread, the methods initially used to to try to combat the pest as well as the impact it had on the French wine industry, taking it to the brink of destruction.  The fascination was that the solution rested with the country from which the pest came and the stubbornness of the top Chateau to accept that grafting onto resistant rootstock was to be the saviour.

All grapegrowers, especially those in Australia, should read this. 

The book is as above by Christy Cambell and published by Harper Perennial and its ISBN 0-00-711536-9.

Happy reading,

Vineman 

Technorati Tags: phylloxera, grafting, rootstock, France, America

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 11:36 am and is filed under Vineman, viticulture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.