Home | Best Seller | FAQ | Contact Us
Browse
Art & Photography
Biographies & Autobiography
Body,Mind & Health
Business & Economics
Children's Book
Computers & Internet
Cooking
Crafts,Hobbies & Gardening
Entertainment
Family & Parenting
History
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Detective
Nonfiction
Professional & Technology
Reference
Religion
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports & Outdoors
Travel & Geography
   Book Info

enlarge picture

The Botanist and the Vintner : How Wine Was Saved for the World  
Author: Christy Campbell
ISBN: 156512460X
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review


In the mid-1860s, after countless centuries of bearing the fruit that would become wine, French grapevines began to wither and die in ever increasing numbers and no one knew why. It started in southeastern France, in the Rhone Valley, as Christy Campbell tells the tale in his masterful The Botanist and the Vintner. Within 30 years the inexorable rolling disaster that was the phylloxera infestation had reached into every nook and cranny of France's wine making regions, destroying nearly all. Everywhere the wine grape grew--England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, and even Australia--phylloxera appeared and took no prisoners. Except for American grape vines. The little bug didn't seem to have much taste for the skunky wines of native American grapes.

Christy Campbell, British journalist and, if The Botanist and the Vintner is any example, master storyteller, waltzes the reader into the middle of a fascinating tale of discovery and combat and never stops dancing. The book reads like a detective novel, a page-turner you can't put down. And it's about a bug, phylloxera, a root-sucking aphid that absolutely wiped clean the grand vineyards of France and thrived in defiance of both peasant remedy and all that "modern" science could bring to bear.

The modern science of the time, mind you, included debating Darwin's new theory of evolution. So it's really at the beginning of discovery and scientific technique. Despite a French government prize of 300,000 gold francs for a remedy, it took 30 years and more to pinpoint the reason for the vineyard die-off, and a practical way of defeating the organism. Grafting onto American rootstock – a rootstock that was the initial cause of the disaster – won the day though not the reward.

Campbell both begins and ends his tale in California's Napa Valley, where phylloxera once again raised its nasty little head toward the end of the 20th century, about 100 years after the struggle in France. It cost millions of dollars to bring the bug to bear. But this time part of the solution turned in a transgenic direction which is, of course, a threat with a completely different vintage. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
In 1864, France's wine industry was in mid-boom and on the verge of facing a modern crisis: an ecological disaster brought on by global trade. Samples of American grapevines carried Phylloxera vastatrix, a tiny aphid to which they were resistant, to France, whose vineyards were devastated by it. In this detailed, well-researched book, British journalist Campbell weaves the social and ecological strands of the upheaval together: its nearly unnoticeable beginnings, when vines in a single vineyard in the south of France began losing leaves in midsummer; the devastation of millions of acres of vineyards and with them the livelihood of small farmers; the search for the cause, full of mistakes and dead ends; the search for the cure, equally flub-filled and as often driven by superstition as empiricism; and, finally, the transatlantic solution. Even the taste of French wine was in danger, because the sturdy American vines produced appalling wine. Portraits of the researchers who carried the day, colorful quotes and occasional cliffhangers produce a story lively enough for amateur wine lovers and armchair historians. It's also a good summary for wine makers and enologists, with a clear discussion of the elaborate life cycle of the aphid, a fascinating look at the pride and prejudice that drove French wine makers and brief coverage of the Phylloxera crisis in California during the 1990s. Illus. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Cognoscenti of the vine come in many varieties: snobs of taste, down-to-earth growers, agronomists. Add politicians, and the vintage cast is poised for drama when a crisis arrives, as one did for the French wine industry in the late 1860s. Writing in a clipped, mordant style, Campbell relays the history of devastation and recovery. The prime character among dozens is Jules-Emile Planchon, a botanist who identified the killer of grape vines: an aphid given the menacing scientific name of Phylloxera vestatrix (dry-leaf devastator). Various commissions were established and proposed palliatives, which were usually futile except for one that patriotic politicians could ill abide: grafting American vines onto French root stock. Repudiating Paris' prohibition of American imports, "in the fields of France peasants were voting with their grafting knives." In recounting the aphid's depredations as it crept across France's wine regions over four decades, Campbell's commentary turns sardonic, sympathetic, or bemused as he covers the myriad local and national reactions to the long-running crisis. Connoisseurs of good writing and good wine will love this book. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
In the mid-1860s, grapevines in southeastern France inexplicably began to wither and die. French botanist Jules-Émile Planchon was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. The aphids would be named Phylloxera vastatrix—“the dry leaf devastator.”Where they had come from was a mystery.

Soon the noblest vineyards in Europe and California came under biological siege. No one could slow phylloxera’s maddening, destructive pace. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy, and increasingly bizarre suggestions flooded in. Planchon believed he had the answer and set out to convince the skeptical wine-making and scientific establishments. Aided by the American entomologist Charles Valentine Riley and a decade of research into the strange life history of the insect, Planchon at long last proved that the remedy rested within the vines themselves.

The Botanist and the Vintner is an astonishing account of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster. And even now, the story continues as new strains of phylloxera attack vineyards in France, California, and New Zealand.




The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the mid-1860s, grapevines in southeastern France inexplicably began to wither and die. French botanist Jules-Émile Planchon was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. The aphids would be named Phylloxera vastatrix - "the dry leaf devastator."Where they had come from was a mystery.

Soon the noblest vineyards in Europe and California came under biological siege. No one could slow phylloxera's maddening, destructive pace. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy, and increasingly bizarre suggestions flooded in. Planchon believed he had the answer and set out to convince the skeptical wine-making and scientific establishments. Aided by the American entomologist Charles Valentine Riley and a decade of research into the strange life history of the insect, Planchon at long last proved that the remedy rested within the vines themselves.

The Botanist and the Vintner is an astonishing account of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster. And even now, the story continues as new strains of phylloxera attack vineyards in France, California, and New Zealand.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In 1864, France's wine industry was in mid-boom and on the verge of facing a modern crisis: an ecological disaster brought on by global trade. Samples of American grapevines carried Phylloxera vastatrix, a tiny aphid to which they were resistant, to France, whose vineyards were devastated by it. In this detailed, well-researched book, British journalist Campbell weaves the social and ecological strands of the upheaval together: its nearly unnoticeable beginnings, when vines in a single vineyard in the south of France began losing leaves in midsummer; the devastation of millions of acres of vineyards and with them the livelihood of small farmers; the search for the cause, full of mistakes and dead ends; the search for the cure, equally flub-filled and as often driven by superstition as empiricism; and, finally, the transatlantic solution. Even the taste of French wine was in danger, because the sturdy American vines produced appalling wine. Portraits of the researchers who carried the day, colorful quotes and occasional cliffhangers produce a story lively enough for amateur wine lovers and armchair historians. It's also a good summary for wine makers and enologists, with a clear discussion of the elaborate life cycle of the aphid, a fascinating look at the pride and prejudice that drove French wine makers and brief coverage of the Phylloxera crisis in California during the 1990s. Illus. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Gripping account of a 19th-century plague that nearly wiped out the world's wine production. It's a tale straight out of Hollywood, a 1950s horror film complete with a stealthy yet hideous alien invader and a stubbornly ignorant public. From these elements, British journalist Campbell (Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, 2004, etc.) spins a vinous tale to make the blood run cold. About 150 years ago, a microscopic marauder hitched a ride on a botanic cutting and landed in southern France, where it promptly began to make a meal out of the plentiful grape vines. The villain was the Phylloxera vastatrix, a tiny yellow aphid that feasted on the centuries-old plants; unlike the hardy roots in the insect's native US, France's vines had no resistance to the bright little parasite. Phylloxera was thus able to make its merry way from vineyard to vineyard, root to root, until it had dined on all the plants of France, devastation in its wake. Campbell follows the insect and the mighty men who bent their energies to discover the source of their ruin. The scientists who struggled to understand Phylloxera's genesis and habits, the northern bourgeois vintners who smugly blamed the devastation on southern overproduction and soil exhaustion (until their own vineyards were also decimated), and the unlikely salvation from the very source of the plague-the author makes it all into an elegant little thriller. His prose is a delight, elegantly economical and always clear, whether he's discussing the curiously complex life cycle of the hungry aphid, cataloguing the crackpot theories that arose to combat it, or bringing to life the professional rivalries that threatened toallow all of Europe to succumb to Phylloxera before a remedy was finally discovered. Being fully aware of the happy ending brings no diminishment of anxiety as the reader watches the insect march inexorably across the globe in this unlikely, thoroughly enjoyable cliffhanger.

     



Home | Private Policy | Contact Us
@copyright 2001-2005 ReadingBee.com