Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Map of France
- Introduction
- Part I Reinventing the Vine for Quality Wine Production
- 1 Death and Resurrection in the Phylloxeric Vineyard
- 2 Scientific Programs for the Spread of the Grafted Vine
- 3 Direct-Production Hybrids: Quality Wines?
- 4 The Fall of the Hybrid Empire and the Vinifera Victory
- Part II Laying the Foundations of Oenology
- Part III Oenology in Champagne, Burgundy and Languedoc
- Part IV Oenology in Bordeaux
- Conclusion: Mopping-up Operations or Contemporary Oenology as Normal Science
- Select Bibliography
- Index
3 - Direct-Production Hybrids: Quality Wines?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Map of France
- Introduction
- Part I Reinventing the Vine for Quality Wine Production
- 1 Death and Resurrection in the Phylloxeric Vineyard
- 2 Scientific Programs for the Spread of the Grafted Vine
- 3 Direct-Production Hybrids: Quality Wines?
- 4 The Fall of the Hybrid Empire and the Vinifera Victory
- Part II Laying the Foundations of Oenology
- Part III Oenology in Champagne, Burgundy and Languedoc
- Part IV Oenology in Bordeaux
- Conclusion: Mopping-up Operations or Contemporary Oenology as Normal Science
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Hybridists Take on the Grafters and Big Science
From the viewpoint of winegrowers, the science of the Montpellier professors was not very useful because it failed to provide vital, precise, detailed information. Because Montpellier's professorial science had committed itself to giving practical advice to growers on the reconstitution of vineyards, the complaint is not so absurd as it might appear to later historians. Growers were eager to obtain reliable information about Franco- American hybrids (both grafted vines and direct producers) and new rootstocks that were superior to pure American roots in difficult chalky soils as well as new direct-production hybrids. These direct producers were becoming more and more popular with small as well as big producers because of their reputation for resistance to the devastating black rot disease that was seriously lowering grape production in the late 1880s. Many producers found that the traditional sources of information (viticultural congresses and societies, journals and newspapers, and even occupants of departmental chairs of agriculture) all failed to provide the complex knowledge required by French viticulture.
In the program he proclaimed in the first issue (1898) of the RHFA (Revue des hybrides franco-américains), Paul Gouy condemned the spokesmen of official science as poor purveyors of new scientific information. Most of the departmental chairs of agriculture and their institutions, either hostile to or suspicious of the new vines, were not inclined to advise growers to plant them, even on an experimental basis.
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- Information
- Science, Vine and Wine in Modern France , pp. 65 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996