Getting to the Roots of the Great French Wine Blight

In this 19th century agricultural disaster, a tiny insect destroyed two-thirds of all European wine grape vineyards over the course of 40 years, changing the wine industry forever. Anney and Lauren explore the science and history of grape phylloxera and the Great French Wine Blight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb. And today
we have an episode for you about the great French
wine light. Yeah. Yes, and this is an episode we
have been talking about this topic since the very first

(00:29):
episode we ever did, oh yeah, on sparkling wine, which
you can see. Also give us forgiveness because it was
our first episode, but we were still learning, still learning
how to do this, but yeah, yeah, we did. We
chose sparkling wine as our kind of introductory celebratory we're
in over our heads already topic. Um yeah, and and um,

(00:53):
but we've but we've brought it up in numerous other episodes. Yes, uh,
like we brought it up in a Rose episode, various
other wine episodes. I think we brought it up in
our Absent episode. Uh, and then some beer episodes as well,
because essentially, like when the wine industry was suffering, people

(01:13):
were turning in all of these different wait, they were
pivoting like, oh, well we could go to beer then
do Yeah, there's no wine, so therefore what else can
we drink? Literally anything? Okay, let's go. Yeah. Yes, I
think we might have even mentioned it in our whiskey
and bourbon episodes, certainly in our cocktail episodes. I think
there's a few cocktails that were inspired by the fact that, like,

(01:37):
folks in New Orleans specifically couldn't get ahold of French
wine at the same rates that they were used to.
So yes, So basically what we're saying is this whole
thing had a huge impact on the beverage industry, and
we have mentioned it quite a lot because of that. Yeah, yeah,

(01:58):
and so right, we just wanted to do a full
episode on what exactly went down during all of that,
because it's a it's a fun is the wrong word?
It's a good story, it's Yeah, that would be very
very much like struggling with the right terminology for it.

(02:18):
It's entertaining, But that sounds so crass because yeah, like
like a lot of people lost their livelihood, is extremely
destructive for everyone involved in the wine industry at the
time in France certainly, and it was really scary for
a number of people in other places. So wou um

(02:42):
not not woo, but but but but an important story
to tell indeed, and I think this brings us to
our question. I would say it does, Okay, the Great
French wine Plight. What was it? Well? Uh, the French

(03:03):
wine blight or wine plague, as it's sometimes called, is
an event that spanned the mid to late eighteen hundreds
and destroyed just a lot of France's vineyards, causing these
quakes and schisms in the local and global wine industry
that have had lasting effects to today. Uh. Francis wine

(03:25):
industry at the time was the largest in the world,
and that changed over the course of a decade. Um.
Just a really confusing and wild and disruptive event. Um.
It's the agricultural equivalent of like if Taiwan suddenly flipped
from being the biggest producer to the biggest consumer of
microchips in a decade, or if Hollywood to shut down

(03:50):
over the span of ten years, and like the rest
of the world had to fill in the demand for
TV and film creation. Yeah. Yeah, it was huge, was huge, yeah, um.
And for as big as it was, the cause of
this blight was a number of microscopic and near microscopic

(04:11):
organisms um. Starting with a tiny insect a relative of
aphids commonly called grape filux era um or if I
la sera I've heard it pronounced, a number of different ways.
We're just going to muddle through it. Yeah, but these
pests uh eat and burrow in grape vine roots and leaves,

(04:32):
and though especially when they attack the roots, this can
lead to malnourishment in the plant. An infestation of the
insects most often kills via secondary infection. UM that the
wounds that the bugs make open the plant up too
harmful bacteria and fungi um. The leaves and vines will
then wither and die, and you'll pull up a rotted

(04:54):
root and you might not even see any insects on
there because at that point they've moved on to a
health you plant. It makes me sad, sad and kind
of itchy, like yeah yeah, h yeah, um. Okay, So
that that insect um we little like like yellowish green

(05:17):
kind of thing. And they're pretty weird, by which I
mean they have a complex life cycle that can include
life above and below ground. They can reproduce sexually and
a sexually. They can be either crawlers or flyers or
like gliders. Really they can't really like flap their wings,
they don't have the power for it. But at any rate, um,
there's a lot going on with them and they're really adaptable,

(05:39):
which is part of the problem, um for us. Anyway,
it's pretty great for them. Um. Okay. So if they
live below ground, um, they feed and lay eggs in
a vine's roots. If they live above ground, they feed
and or lay eggs not necessarily both, um in the
plant's bark and leaves. I say not necessarily both because
the sexual variety of this creature doesn't have a digestive system.

(06:05):
It's only there to mate and lay eggs. There's no
feeding at that point, like I like I said, heckn
strange anyway. Um, so okay, they kind of like nest
in the tissue of the plant, which will cause the
formation of a scabby little plant node called a gall um.

(06:27):
And when there's too many of them infesting one plant,
they can either a burrow or crawl or glide to
a new plant. And furthermore, these changes in their life
cycle uh can be prompted by prompted and determined by
stuff like population density and the season. So like it's winter,

(06:48):
they might go below ground. If it's summer, they might
go above ground. If there's too many of them, they
might decide to have wings and go fly to a
new plant. It's very adaptable, very problematic, and European wine
grapes are just super susceptible to this pest um the

(07:10):
past can feed on its large roots, which is a
large problem. Um. Some American species are only a little susceptible,
like the bugs will only feed on smaller root offshoots
or on leaves but not really cause deadly damage. And
other American species are resistant to damage from the pests
as they can patch up their wounds and thus prevent

(07:32):
that secondary infection from happening. And the only real solution,
um if you're working with a susceptible plant is to
graft your vines onto resistant root stocks and or prevent
infection with isolation and like well timed insecticides, because these

(07:54):
bugs grow to maturity fast and they can produce hundreds
of eggs each um, and multiple generations can happen within
a single season, So if you find an infestation in
vulnerable vines, it's too late. If you can see them,
it is too late, and they will kill your vines

(08:16):
within a few years. Terrifying it is, it is, and
they don't really have any natural predators like ah, gnarly,
very gnarly. Uh. Well, what about the nutrition. Um, I
haven't read anything about people eating this wine blight or

(08:41):
these insects. In fact, it led to people consuming less
of a thing rather than more. So yeah, don't don't
eat blight. Again, I feel like there's some super villain
that's separate. But for yes, I would say generally as
a general rule, okay, yeah, if you're if you're not

(09:03):
a character in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, don't don't eat,
don't eat any form of blight. Probably, I think that's
safe to say. I think that's good. All right, we've
covered grasses now, great, perfect. We do have some numbers
for you a couple yeah, okay, So to give you

(09:25):
an understanding of this scale here, over the course of
forty years from eighteen sixty to philox sira and those
secondary bacterial and fungal infections destroyed two thirds of all
European wine grape vineyards throughout Europe. Yeah yeah, and we're

(09:47):
going to get into some more numbers in the history bit.
But as a bit of a teaser. Today, the French
wine industry turns out about forty billion bottles of wine
per year, and it's speculated that a majority of that
wine comes from American rootstocks because of the French wine light.

(10:10):
All right, yeah, yeah, it is. It is a It
is a wild story, and we are going to get
into the history of that as soon as we get
back from a quick break for a word from our sponsors,

(10:35):
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Thank you. So lately
we have been speaking about americanized Google results that we
get topics. Well, I got a bunch of articles that
I'm sure would not go over well in France about
this topic about how such and such American state saved

(10:59):
the wine industy tree, the French wine industry particularly, and
in this case, Missouri and Texas were the big ones,
the big states in question, not that they're necessarily wrong.
More on that in a second, but I was when
I was reading news, I was like, You're like, those
are those are bold statements from American publications. Okay, yes, yes, yes, uh.

(11:28):
Extremely briefly and again, we have talked about this in
past episodes, but we'll do a little recap here. The
ancient Romans introduced wine grapes to France, and colonists in
North America tried to do the same thing here in
the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, as, and they tried to
introduce these European grape vines to North America. UM. A

(11:50):
sixteen nineteen decree out of Virginia required every male household
in the state plant ten European vines for wine making purposes.
So it was kind of a big deal. UM. Thomas Jefferson,
that guy dedicated two thousand acres of land to European
wine grape cultivation and hired an Italian bit of culturists

(12:10):
to run it. But the land produced no American wine
while Jefferson was alive. Yeah, and it typically takes a
decade or two to really get a vineyard producing a
quality or an amount even of of grapes that are

(12:31):
can be used to make any amount of wine. UM.
Also um uh, I wanted to put in here that
like four as diverse as European wines are, and they
certainly are. We talked about it all the time and
could certainly talk about it way more. UM. The species

(12:53):
that they are all from UM Venus winifera is like
low Kia monoculture. UM. That has really been um specialized,
which is great, but it's been specialized in a relatively
narrow way that has made it as we have talked

(13:13):
about with other monocultures and clonal plants in the past,
um susceptible to disease. Um. We almost ran a classic
about bananas this week, and I was like, that's too
many clonal monocultures, too many, too many. Yeah, but yes,

(13:34):
so that with with that in mind, uh back to
back to wine, yes, okay, So in North America, this
difficulty of growing these European of these European vines was
essentially like how it went at first, UM, many of
these European grapes didn't make it in the US. They

(13:56):
were victim to disease or parasites. So call this started
experimenting with local grapes and from this they were able
to make wine. But the consensus was it just wasn't
the same quality as the wine Europe produced, and perhaps
specifically the wine France produced. UM. So, American grape growers

(14:19):
grafted European grapes onto American roots in order to provide
some protection from local diseases and parasites while still making
those prized European style wines. Okay, m m m okay.
But back to France. By the nineteenth century, France had

(14:41):
already solidified itself as one of the top dogs of
the wine industry. They had many of the most respected vineyards,
They had many of the most respected wines and grapes.
It was a huge part of their industry and culture,
and they had a reputation for it. They were one
of the world's largest wine producers and a into some sources.

(15:01):
Wine sales accounted for fifteen percent of France's federal tax
revenue at the time. That's a pretty big, pretty big.
But in the mid eighteen hundreds, the Great French Wine
Blight changed the industry forever. Okay, so here's what happened. Um.

(15:25):
As the French wine industry and the global wine industry
at large continued to grow during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
France really wanted to maintain their dominance um So to
that end, they imported American grape vines. The US had
been importing French grape vines for a while at the time,
so they were basically like, we want to be able

(15:46):
to offer whatever America is doing, even if we think
it's less quality. We want to be able to do
it too, So they brought in these vines. The development
of steam powered engines made transportation faster than ever and
a lot of experimentation was going on in the wine worlds.
They were able to transport these vines in a way
they hadn't been able to before. So Frances bringing in

(16:08):
these new grape vines, they have the technology to do it.
They're experimenting. They didn't notice that the imported US vines
came with a parasitic insects. And by the eighteen sixties
people started documenting a quote mysterious disease that was decimating
whole vineyards and killing grape vines. And it would start

(16:31):
with just like a vine or two turning yellow and drooping,
but then spread so quickly. Within two years of that
diseased vines would have spread and died at the roots.
So it just like you said, Lauren at the top,
like by the time you realize you had a problem,
it was too late. Yeah, wine production in France plummeted.

(16:52):
Almost half of frances At vineyards would go on to
be destroyed. And according to Christie Campbell in her two
thousand and four word file Xera, How Wine was Saved
the World quote, by eighteen eighty four, two point five
million acres of France's vineyards had been destroyed and one
point five million acres were in the grip of the parasite. Yeah,

(17:15):
it's so wild like the first the first reports were
from like eighteen sixty four to eighteen sixty six. UM
kind of down in southern France in the realm, and
and it was out of control A couple of years later, Yes,
by eighteen sixty eight, scientists were sent in to investigate,

(17:36):
and they discovered the small insects on healthy plants that
killed off the vines by eating at the roots. Here's
an excerpt from one of the scientists at the time.
Loops were trained with care upon the roots of uprooted vines,
but there was no rot, no trace of cryptogams. But suddenly,
under the magnifying lens of the instrument appeared in insect,

(17:57):
a plant flouse of yellowish color, tight on the wood,
sucking the sap. One looked more attentively. It is not one,
it is not ten, but hundreds thousands of the lights
that one perceived, all in various stages of development. They
are everywhere, and they were um. This blight spread up

(18:19):
from Provence through Bordeaux by eighteen sixty nine and infected
a sixty of Bordeaus grapes. Yeah. Um. And obviously people
were panicked about this UM and at first there was
a lot of finger pointing and argument. The perceived superior

(18:39):
wine industry of northern France claimed that it was really
the fault of the subpar in their opinion, Southern French vines.
It was all on them. Oh yeah, and uh so.
Part of the issue was that although this three dude
commission um that was sent out to investigate all this
was like really sure that it was this microscopic insect

(19:02):
that was at fault A, none of those dudes were entomologists,
so the entomology community was all like, aphids, aren't that destructive?
What are you talking about? You don't know from aphids? Um,
And then be the wider scientific community at the time

(19:24):
was kind of like, Okay, we understand from you know,
common knowledge from the theory of humors that we all
accept um, and you know from common knowledge of the
balance of humors that only when beings are imbalanced and
weak do they get sick, and therefore there must be

(19:45):
something weakening the vines and allowing this pest, which was
clearly previously present but unharmful to do damage and and
it's not it's it's it's not that no one. I mean,
you know, like like they were right on the verge.
They were right on the verge of of scientific discovery

(20:06):
along the lines of pasture and and other people working
in the field figuring out what microbes were and how
they affect a lot of stuff, and how disease works,
and how it's not passed by harmful vapors in the air, um,
but by living beings that can you know, uh, cause

(20:27):
cause infection. Yeah. But but we weren't quite there yet,
and so there was a whole lot. There's just a
whole lot I've I've read about it as being like
like watching the protagonists in a horror movie, like argue
about which way to run while the killers sneaking up
behind them, Like are like Injurassic Barchio or you're looking

(20:51):
at the one raptor. Yeah, but then there's seven behind yeah,
exactly raptors. Exactly like raptors. However, uh, speaking of being
on the edge and entomology, the bugs were eventually identified
as Filoxera, which were an import from America. However, they

(21:17):
weren't really a problem in the United States because they
mostly just stuck to the leaves of grape vines in
the United States, leaves that didn't exist a lot of
French vines. And this whole thing was discovered thanks to
the help of an American entomologist at a Missouri in
seventy and that's part of our Missouri is like we
saved the French industry. Also, Missouri root stocks were used

(21:42):
in in in a lot of this. We'll get into
that more later, but this is one of their first claims.
Um After more time passed, experts surmised that these parasitic
aped like bugs preferred American grape vine leaves and French
grape vine roots, which, of course the roots that that

(22:04):
was much more damaging for the plant if they went
for that. Uh. French winemakers tried all kinds of things
to deal with this. They tried flooding vineyards, moving locations,
but none of their solutions were ideal. Yeah, they named
this this species of vine eating uh file extera uh

(22:26):
P vasterix um the Devastator's giving me chills. Yes, And
by this point the French government was desperate for a solution,
and they offered a roar to anyone who could come

(22:46):
up with a working insecticide UH, the reward being a
thirty thousand francs um. They received all kinds of suggestions,
including goat and human urine separately, and the toxic chemical
carbon disulfide that was subsidized by one rail company to
make up for the lost wine revenue UH and sometimes
was voted on by winemakers in certain places on whether

(23:09):
they thought they should use it or not. Yeah, there
is a little bit of a separation there between um
uh this solution and other solutions. And part of the
insistence on a pesticide as a solution came from this
prior blight, a fungal blight being cured with with chemicals
in the eighteen fifties. So historians think there was a

(23:29):
notion that like chemistry would win again even though it
was extremely expensive, and like that stuff will explode, So
it's not ideal. No, it is not ideal uh. And yeah,
when nothing came of these the solutions that the French
government solicited by the nineties, winemakers in France pivoted to

(23:54):
the ardrius and long process of creating hybrid vines that
could resist these parasite but could still produce high quality
and delicious wine vines that were easily grown in French soil.
French winemakers pursued a couple of methods, like creating full
blown hybrids and also grafting French fines onto American roots,

(24:15):
these roots being from places like Missouri and Texas. Though
they didn't find success in this method at first, and
seven hundred thousand grafted grape vines died. Who yeah and yeah.
Effects of this were huge and multitudinous and lasting. Uh.

(24:38):
To this day, the acreage of vines in France is
only about a third of what it was at its peak.
In the middle of all of this in eighteen seventy four,
UM like during the eighteen eighties, France flipped from being
the biggest wine exporter in the world to being the
biggest importer, creating this huge market for wines produced elsewhere.

(25:02):
UM Like Spain's land use for vineyards increased from the
eighteen sixties to the eighteen eighties. UM it created a
boom and then a bust in winemaking in French controlled
North Africa, UM and uh. Though you could argue that
some of these changes would have happened anyway due to
the pressures of machination UH and the Industrial Revolution UM.

(25:24):
French for idols and individual vines were separated and road
and traillisted and refined UM. Some regions drastically changed what
they grew and and pretty much everywhere changed how they
grew it. UM. A number of ridles were given up forever.
Yeah yeah. And France was not the only place affected

(25:47):
by filoxera UM. And this was not the only time.
Every taboc at all. Oh no no. It did cause
a lot of damage to California's vineyards in eighteen seventy
four and then again in the nineteen eighties when it
calls California's wine industry about one billion dollars in damage UM.
Other parts of Europe, as well as South Africa, New

(26:09):
Zealand and Australia dealt with file xerra as well. In nine,
the European Union adopted France's ban on hybrid wines, which
were viewed as the realm of cheap wine production outside
of Europe. However, this specifically excludes American roots, because if
it didn't, most French wines would be banned because of

(26:32):
this whole thing. Interestingly, though, some French grape vines survived
this blight. Uh, and the reason is unknown, and these
wines are highly sought after, like really expensive. Yeah, we
still don't know how to get rid of file xerra
entirely are why some roots seem resistant to it? So

(26:53):
research is ongoing. H and speaking of in twenty new
research seek the genome of the filex eera in question,
along with other related ones, and some in the wine
business are trying to locate the exact American rootstocks used
in grafting French grape vines during the grape wine blight.

(27:13):
It's really interesting. Um, it's one of those things that
I personally find very enjoyable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but
it just had this huge impact. Oh, like I knew
it did. We've been talking about it since the very beginning,
but yeah no, but when you really read about it,

(27:34):
it's it's so stark, and it happened so fast. I mean,
I know that like four decades isn't like so so
so fast, but um, it's pretty fast. It's pretty quick
to completely change in industry that had been growing for
a couple of thousand years, and that we talked about
it in episodes like Absent like you had a huge

(27:55):
impact and the fact that we still are kind of like,
that's wild to me. Yeah, really weird, gross little bugs.
Really the descriptions of them are like, I mean, they're gnarly,
but they're pretty. I'm glad they wrote these very description. Yeah.

(28:18):
I'm usually pretty into insects, but like, swarming insects really
bother me on like emotional levels. Yeah, like, oh man, tiny,
tiny lots of insects are not my not my friends. Yeah.
I was complaining to you recently about how I went
from two fruit flies like fourt one day and that

(28:38):
was too much for me, right, Yeah, no, I don't
want it, don't like it if it's already too late
by the time I see a swarm. Oh well, well,
I guess that's what we have to say about this
from now. I guess it is um. We We do

(29:00):
have some listener mail for you, though, and we are
going to get into that as soon as we get
back from one more quick break for a word from
our sponsors, and we're back thick you sponsor, Yes, thank you,
and we're back with swarm. No no, no, indeed no,

(29:30):
it's the right reaction. Megan wrote, I wanted to share
a memory of summer days at my grandmother's house, where
she often had a big pot of ham and veggies
on the stove. It never made sense to me why
she cooked this in the summer, since they didn't have
a c and she would let it cook for a while.
But I see now it was to enjoy the fresh

(29:51):
green beans. I also hated the smell and texture of
the mushy green beans that ruined everything else in my
opinion at the time. As an adult, I often make
this dish to remember my grandmother and it always makes
me feel so comforted. Oh yeah, I mean we say
it all the time. That's the power of dishes, where

(30:13):
you can connect to people over time through these memories. Um. Yeah,
it's just very sweet. And I don't know. Yeah, I
still haven't procured a hamhock. So we can help. We
can make this happen, Lauren, we can, Okay, okay do this, yes, um.

(30:36):
Michael wrote, I've been a long time listener, but first
time writer. I wanted to thank you for saving my
butt with your own Geary episode. You spoke about having
Musubi and on Geary while waiting around while you were
here in Hawaii, and later you talked about Yucky on
a geary. At the time I was listening to the episode,
I was busy trying to create Spanish Asian fusion handheld

(30:57):
tapas type dishes for an event for a it to
raise funds for a nonprofit organization. The night was to
be a Latin dance night, starting with cocktails and our
Spanish Asian tapas and then going into a night of dancing.
I had several dishes already, including a Chinese white bowl
bun with crispy skin, roast pork belly done with a

(31:17):
dry sherry in Spanish spices instead of shao jing rice
wine and Chinese spices, cooked in the Chinese technique with
an adobo glaze and alesham pickled tomato onion garnish, as
well as a tie green curry and panada. But I
needed something from local Hawaii Asian influenced food culture that

(31:38):
married well with Spanish cuisine. When you mentioned yakioa garri,
the inspiration hit me. Why not make an on geary
with Paea ingredients and then use the yuckie technique to
replicate the crispy rice bottom from a paiea pan It
would be a Spanish Japanese fusion made with sticky Japanese
rice cooked in saffron, chicken bone broth, and shrimp headstock

(32:00):
stuffed into the center of the on gary mold would
be chicken, carizo, shrimp muscles, peteep peas, roasted red peppers, onion,
and garlic prepared in advance and then seared on a
hot griddle just before serving Annie and Lauren. It was
an absolute hit and I owe it to you. Well
once again, thank you for inspiring me and all the
people out there you have touched over the years. Our

(32:21):
event was a successful one and I'm looking forward to
more inspiration from you in the future. That sounds amazing.
All of that sounds so hecken delicious, Oh my goodness.
And pictures were involved, listeners and the pictures like I wanted,

(32:44):
all Yeah, that's an amazing idea. Yeah, and also, thank
you very much for showing us out. But it sounds
like you did a lot of the lifting. I mean, yeah, yeah,
we we we gave you, we gave you a little

(33:05):
a little seedlit and and and you're the one who
made it grow, yes, And it sounds like it grew
into something that is amazing and delicious, so lovely. Yeah,
Oh my goodness, that's wonderful. I still have a lot
of I have a lot of honegary to make, so
it's possible I could try to. I don't think I

(33:27):
could replicate it exactly, but I could try to do
something close. Yeah, you're you're like, you're like some trees
oh and shrimp broth away from making a really decent
go of it. Okay, I will accept a really decent go. Honestly,
I'm happy to accept that. Uh well, okay, thank you

(33:53):
so much for writing to us. As always, um, if
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(34:15):
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
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and we hope that lots more good things are coming
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