Ep. 913 Vine & Prejudice Chapter 9 I Everybody Needs A Bit Of Scienza
Vine & Prejudice
Episode Summary
Content Analysis Key Themes and Main Ideas 1. The catastrophic impact of the ""American plague"" (phylloxera) on European viticulture. 2. The radical shift and expansion of agricultural research, particularly in genetics, in response to the crisis. 3. The critical collaboration between academic scholars, experimental stations, public administrators, and farmers in seeking solutions. 4. The development and implementation of key viticultural innovations such as grafting and artificial hybridization. 5. The historical resistance, skepticism, and ""denialism"" within European viticulture towards scientifically proven solutions like grafting and new hybrid varieties. 6. The ongoing challenges of developing high-quality, phylloxera-resistant hybrids and the cultural/economic debates surrounding their acceptance. Summary This chapter from Professoria Tioshenza's ""Mama Jumbo Shrimp Guide to Vine and Prejudice,"" narrated by Richard Huff, explores ""The American Plague"" – the devastating phylloxera epidemic that struck European vineyards in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It details how this crisis significantly boosted agricultural research and genetic studies, leading to the establishment of viticulture and enology schools and fostering unprecedented collaboration between scientists, agriculturalists, and public administrators. The primary solutions involved grafting European vines onto resistant American rootstock and developing new hybrid varieties. However, the text highlights persistent skepticism and resistance from traditional viticulturists, who questioned the quality of wines from grafted or hybrid vines. Despite these challenges and the initial ""modest quality"" of early direct producer hybrids, research continued, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, to develop better resistant varieties, often creating cultural and economic tension in more traditional Mediterranean wine regions. Takeaways * The phylloxera epidemic served as a major catalyst for scientific and agricultural innovation in European viticulture. * The crisis spurred the development of viticulture and enology education and promoted information sharing among growers. * Grafting European Vitis vinifera onto resistant American rootstock became the widely accepted, though initially controversial, solution. * Significant historical resistance existed against new scientific findings and hybrid varieties, some even dismissed as ""deniers."
About This Episode
The transcript discusses the history and success of the American plague, which was discovered in the decades before twentieth century and has since become a popular scientific problem. The transcript also discusses the creation of new hybrids by genetic engineering, such as the use of mineral fertilizers and transfer of agricultural knowledge to new hybrids. The transcript also mentions the use of new vines with improved characteristics and tolerance to cold winters, and the success of the Italian wine podcast.
Transcript
Welcome to Professoria Tioshenza's newest book translated and narrated by Richard Huff. This latest publication is part of the mama jumbo shrimp series. Entitled, mama jumbo shrimp Guide to Vine and Prejudice, fake science and the search for the perfect grape. This is a great way to get a sneak peek at the book before it hits the shelves, so listen in and let the geeky knowledge seep into your ears because we all need a little bit of shinsa. Chapter. The American plague. Crisis, and resolution. In the decades between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, agricultural research expanded significantly in various European countries. Spurred on by menderism, biometrics, and diverse inspired mutationism. This included the establishment of innovative laboratories and agricultural colleges. Breakthroughs in the field of genetics were increasingly important for the development of new hybrids, which had both a scientific and commercial significance, various empirical laws of agriculture, are used in physiology and genetics to orientate 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 points of view. The technicians of the experimental stations and agricultural schools more directly involved in its practical application approach to hybridization, not merely as a scientific problem. But above all as a practical mechanism for creating new plant varieties with improved productivity, more detached observers regarded hybridization, primarily as a scientific problem and only as an afterthought, did they consider the economic perspective, the unexpected arrival of the so called American plague, and the devastating impact on the European agricultural economy give fresh impetus to genetic research bridging the gap between the source on the one hand and the academic scholars of genetics on the others forming an alliance that would lead to the creation of hundreds of hybrids and the development of a solution to the philosopher outbreak in a relatively short period of time. The Agarian crisis of this period also led to a radical shift in public intervention in agriculture more generally. This was particularly apparent in the education sector with the creation of the first Viticulture and inology schools in the eighteen seventies. Also during this period, a transition from autonomous Viticulture practices to a culture of information sharing and commercialization was realized, making the birth of modern Viticulture possible. The collaboration between the academic and agricultural worlds, working alongside public administrators and large landowners to promote the dissemination of agricultural knowledge that flowed from the experimentation centers to farmers resulted in the creation of provincial Catere and Bolante, the agriculture. These centers would play a fundamental role, especially in Northern Italy, in the anti phylloxera movement and in the transfer of agricultural knowledge and innovation more generally including the use of mineral fertilizers and relevant training. Genetics innovation has always been met 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 centuries. In fact, at the beginning of the twentieth century, The basis of post for luxury reconstruction was shaken by the theories of Daniel, an anti Americanist of Clear LaMarian inspiration on the functional capacities of grafting and gautier on the coalescence of the plasmas. In other words, by the possibility that with the process of grafting, the characteristics of two individual plants were combined Amber Louis, their individual identity. It took an international congress in Andrews in nineteen o seven, and all the authority of Professor Louis Ravalas at the International Heart cultural Congress of nineteen thirty in London to reject the thesis of Daniel and Gautier and many others who today we would call deniers on the specific variations produced by grafting which according to their hypothesis would have led to the creation of true asexual hybrids. The numerous scientific anecdotes relating to the tests conducted to prove one or the other theory gives an indication of the strength of opposition with the arrival of philosopher in Europe numerous researchers, especially French and German, the so called Americanists, tried to combine resistance to the aphid and other so called American diseases present in the variation of the North American germ plasma with the good wine quality of the European vine. Hoping to find the so called ideal vine and so called hybrids, producers, directs, which could be planted without the rootstock and which were resistant to disease. The first vines brought from America were some natural hybrids such as isabella, Noah, Elevra, York Madira, the so called hybrids of the ancient catalogs, which produced grapes with a distinctly foxy taste not appreciated by the European consumer. An intense program of artificial hybridization then began which led to the creation of new direct producer hybrids. Unfortunately, despite the rivers of Inc and eloquence that were poured, the first resistant hybrids that were produced in France and Italy the so called direct producer hybrids often resulted in wines of modest quality. Despite this, the research did not stop and in various transalpine and Eastern European research centers. Including in Hungary and the Czech Republic, they continued using the recurrent crossing technique and produced new resistant vines with improved, analogical characteristics together with a certain tolerance to cold winters, which were cultivated with some success in the nineteen sixties, especially in German speaking countries in the wake of the ecological movements and political pressure from the greens. In Mediterranean countries, with stronger cultural roots. These new vines were labeled a form of unfair competition because they gave the colder and less suitable areas of Europe. A certain competitive advantage that was difficult to overcome. 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