Book Review: The Botanist and the Vintner

"The Botanist and the Vintner" is a detailed examination of phylloxera, written by Christy Campbell complete with maps and dates to chronicle the spread of the devastation. The subtitle, "How Wine was Saved for the World" is a tacit, perhaps overly ambitious promise that Campbell doesn't quite manage to keep. The book begins with a scene from the Napa and Sonoma grape growing regions in 1994, where use of an infra-red film camera and computer imagery showed the spread of phylloxera. Campbell intends to contrast this high tech sleuthing to what occurred in the late 1800's as European grape vines were attacked by an unknown malady. There are three parts to this book, Denial, Anger and Acceptance. In Denial, Campbell is setting the historical stage: One of the first places where a curious phenomenon occurred was in Ireland in 1867 where Malcolm Dunn, the head gardener to the Seventh Viscount Powerscourt, noticed the grape vines in the Viscount's glass grape-house turning red-brown and drying up and falling. This reference to Ireland is to remind us that in 1840, a mere two decades ago, the blight Phythoptora infestans destroyed all the potato fields leading to the Great Potato Famine. Names mentioned in the historical setting include Pasteur, Darwin, Planchon, Laliman, Riley, and Guyot. The historical setting also pinpoints ground-zero of the phylloxera occurrence in France.
In Part II, Anger, while the battle against phylloxera was being waged, France and the Second Empire of Napoleon III was engaged in a war against Prussia and it's ally Germany. The artillery used against phylloxera in the beginning was carbon bisulphide, effective against insects as well as being a neurotoxin to humans. A decade passes as other chemical and biological controls were tried without showing any efficacy. Understanding the lifecycle of the causative agent, the aphid, Phylloxera vastatrix was in progress and investigations into using American rootstock were also underway.
In Part III, Acceptance, the phylloxera was now affecting not only France, but Spain, Portugal, Austria as well as Australia and California. It was a global plague. This is where Campbell's book fails for me because there is only one mention of Thomas Volnay Munson, the American whose work was critical in identifying varieties of rootstock that could provide resistance to phylloxera. I guess it is impossible to provide a comprehensive book about how wine was saved for the world. Perhaps Christy Campbell needs to write a sequel.