Ep. 802 SOS Special | Everybody Needs A Bit Of Scienza

This episode is brought to you by the Italy International Academy, the toughest Italian wine program. One thousand candidates have produced two hundred and sixty two Italian wine ambassadors to date. Next courses in Hong Kong Russia, New York, and verona. Thank you, make the cut. Apply now at viniti international dot com. Welcome to our special SOS, everybody needs a bit of Shanza installment. This is a shout out to all the wine geeks out there. We need some feedback on the professor's new book, the English version of jumbo shrimp guide to the origins evolution and the future of the grapevine. The Italian wine podcast is part of the mama jumbo shrimp brand and mama jumbo shrimp is all about breaking down difficult concepts into small bite sized pieces. The issue here is that the new book is well a bit difficult to chew at this point. So we want to invite wine lovers out there to give us their input and advice to make the final product more reader friendly. So have added wine lovers. Don't be shy. Send your comments to info at italian wine podcast dot com. Now on to the show. Hello, everyone. My name's TV Kim, and this is another episode a reading episode, if you will, of everybody needs a bit of Shinsa. And this is Richard Halff. Did I see that correctly? Yes. Yeah. I think if, yeah, sooner or later I'll get it. You're getting better. Yes. So Richard, as you know, has been translating the book from Professor Shenza, and today he will delight us or make us fall asleep with another reading, another excerpt from the book. Go ahead, Richard. Yeah. Okay. So this is chapter ten of the book, which is called in search of the perfect vine a dream come true. It's quite a long chapter. So do do nudge me if you feel you've heard enough. Okay. In the decades between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, agricultural research expanded significantly both numerically and institutionally in various European countries. This included the establishment of innovative laboratories and agricultural colleges, inspired by Mendelism, biometrics, and mutationism. The new genetic understanding became important for hybridization both from a scientific and productivity point of view. Different empirical laws of agriculture are used in physiology and genetics to orient to orient oneself in the context of basic scientific investigation. Using knowledge or explanatory metaphors often borrowed from field work such as crossing, variety and selection. Those who work in the field have different expectations. Depending on their background interests and point of view. The technicians of the experimental stations and agricultural schools, more directly involved in its practical application, approached hybridization, not merely as a scientific problem, but above all as a practical mechanism for the creation of new plant varieties with improved productivity. More detached observers regard hybridization primarily as a scientific problem. And only as an afterthought that they consider the economic perspective. The unexpected arrival of the so called American plagues and the devastating impact on the European agricultural economy give fresh impetus to plant genetic research bridging the gap between empirical geneticists and scholars of academic genetics creating an alliance that would lead to the solution of the Philoxera problem in a relatively short period of time with the creation of hundreds of hybrids. The agrarian crisis of this period also led to a radical shift in public intervention in agriculture. This was particularly apparent in the education sector with the creation of the first schools of Viticulture and Denology in the eighteen seventies. The transition from autonomous Viticulture to a culture of exchange and commercialization was also realized which made the birth of modern Viticulture possible. The collaboration between the academic world and agricultural organizations, public administration, and large landowners in order to promote the dissemination of agricultural knowledge that flowed from the experimentation centers to farmers resulting in the creation of provincial agricultural institutes, which would play a fundamental role, especially in Northern Italy, in the anti phylloxera movement and in the transfer of agricultural innovations more generally, including the use of mineral fertilizers and education. Genetics innovation has always been received with great caution by European Viticulture Just remember the passionate debates conducted in France and Italy on grafting and hybrids between the eighteenth and nineteenth century. When the arrival of phylloxera in Europe, numerous researchers, especially French and German, the so called Americanists tried to combine resistance to aphid with other so called American diseases. The first vines brought from America were some natural hybrids which produced grapes with a distinctly foxy taste not appreciated by the European consumer. In Mediterranean countries with strong cultural roots, these vines were considered a sort of unfair competition because they gave colder and less suitable areas of Europe a competitive advantage that was difficult to overcome toward the end of the nineteen thirties with Germany on the wave of its eugenic theories, which advocated the creation of the perfect man an area of research in the agricultural field developed through genetic improvement techniques. These were the first practical applications of Darwin and Mendo's theories in the Viticulture field. The arrival of American diseases was a formidable accelerator of research and the Moonenberg Institute near Berlin led by Bauer and Housefield set itself the ambitious goal of creating the ideal vine. That Phoenix vine that from the very first appearance of Philoxera in Europe represented the dream and the torment of hybridizers of all countries. Unlike France, which followed the classical path, of the search for resistance through interspecific crossing Germany for ideological reasons prohibited the use of vines with American blood and crossing with European vines. A ban falsely disguised as a health campaign. In fact, Germany had developed a selection project through successive cycles of self fertilization of VITis Vrineifera with the aim of favouring the emergence of individuals in which the characteristics of resistance were the result of genetic segregation processes. By sowing about ten million rising seats, eight plants that tolerated mildew were created. The communication was given to the scientific world during the International Congress of Grape Genetics in Lisbon in nineteen thirty eight. The destruction brought by the war prevented these results from being disseminated and evaluated. Less well known is that the use of the genetic improvement programs of Bauer and Whosefield of vines from the German colonies in Azerbaijan and Georgia, which since the early nineteenth century had settled in Transcaucasia giving rise to a flourishing Viticulture, and which had enriched the botanical collections of Frederick William, the force, San Swauci, in potsdam since eighteen forty. Among the vines bought by the young German, George, and Amplographer, There were some plants that showed a good tolerance to Downy mildew and Powder mildew and which were then used by the researchers to introduce resistance in German varieties. The results of these researches represent for the first time at the International Viticulture Congress in Paris in nineteen thirty seven and raised lively disputes on the part of French researchers who recruited to the Germans the possibility of obtaining disease resistant vines through crossing only European vines and subsequent self fertilization. The first results of this new cycle of crossings that sees Italy an advantage over other countries are represented by the ten vines obtained by the University of Udene in collaboration with VIVi, VCR, and some fruhling entrepreneurs registered in the national register of varieties authorized for cultivation. It can be considered the goal of the ideal vine achieved. For reasons, we must unfortunately note that the goal of the Perfect vine has not yet been reached. Okay. Oh, that sounds good. That's chapter ten. Is that correct? That that was slightly, a British version. I did I did, skip some passages which which were a bit heavy on the history and the details. So You mean heavier? Yeah. Yeah. So how many chapters are there? There are thirteen chapters in total. Right. And I think as I mentioned in a a previous podcast, it's quite a short book about about seventy pages, but it's it's intense and and dense. So for seventy pages, it's So we'll put a lot of illustration. I think that's gonna be one one of the ways in which we're gonna make some of these topics more accessible. Digestible. Yeah. Digestible. Yeah. Illustrations. We've got as you know, a a great team of graphic artists here, so I'm sure they can come up with something that is gonna help. I I all I'm also toying with the idea of maybe doing both in Italian and in English for the first time. I don't know. What do you what do you think? Yeah. I I think that's a good idea. I mean, obviously, the original text is in Italian. So So there's no reason why why we why we couldn't do that. Yeah. Give a give a a back to back translation, if you like. We think there's going one way in Italian going the other. Yeah. Well, think about that. And and for the audience, for the listeners out there, if you think that's a good idea please let us know. If you think it's a crappy idea, let us know. That's why we are here. This is an outreach series episode trying to figure out how to improve the next book from professor Atilio Shenza to make it more accessible, to make it more comprehensible and approachable. There you go. That is all for now. It's a wrap, for everybody needs a bit of Shenza, the reading edition episode, if you will, with Richard Hoff until next time. So don't forget to follow us on of course social media. Thank you so much for your support. And so we have a small ask. Please subscribe And if you'd like to of course make a donation even better, and mama jumbo shrimp is, the YouTube channel, which we call it all the videos from the on the road additions, is now alive, has been alive for about I would say about eight months. I think we're going to our eight months. So have a look at that. It's called mama jumbo shrimp. You can also find us on TikTok and Pinterest. Okay. There you go. And of course, wherever you get your pots, for Italian wine podcast. That's it for now. Signing off here, Stevie Kim with Richard Hoffman. Oh, thank you, Stevie. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcast. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, HimalIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, and publication costs. Until next time. Hi, guys. I'm Joy Livingston, and I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. We are the only wine podcast that has been doing a daily show since the pandemic began. This is a labor of love and we are committed to bringing you free content every day. Of course, this takes time and effort not to mention the cost of equipment, production, and editing. We would be grateful for your donations, suggestions, requests, and ideas. For more information on how to get in touch, go to Italian wine podcast dot com.