Back in the mists of time, I remember being taught that all wine-producing
grapevines (Vitis vinifera) are
grafted onto American rootstocks, to protect them against the splendidly named Phylloxera vastatrix. Phylloxera is a louse with a complex
life-cycle which includes feeding off the roots of vines. The damaged roots allow in other diseases
which can lead to the death of the plant.
Phylloxera is native to North America and arrived in Europe
in the second half of the 19th century. Over the following decades vine disease and
death became endemic across Europe’s vineyards, causing concern, bordering on
panic, that winemaking could be wiped out by an unknown enemy. Once the culprit had been identified the search
for a solution began.
The answer lay back in North America, where native vines
such as Vitis rupestris had evolved
in the presence of Phylloxera and had developed a thick enough “skin” on their
roots to resist the attentions of the pest.
All was not plain sailing, though, as these native American vines
differed from European varieties, producing wines with what we politely call
“foxy” flavours.
The eventual solution was to develop hybrids of these
natives and to use only their rootstocks, allowing growers to graft their
familiar Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay and indeed any Vitis Vinifera variety
onto them.
Without the sturdier, hybrid rootstocks based on the native
American vines, I gathered, not a single vine of the European Vitis vinifera would be left standing.
Grand tastings of ancient and rare wines sometimes trumpet
“pre-phylloxera” vintages of claret, Port or Madeira – providing a fleeting
glimpse of wine as it used to taste before the technique of grafting changed it
forever. For most of us, it’s a taste we
can experience only vicariously by reading tasting notes of the lucky few who
have tried them.
But then I began to come across to exceptions to the
American rootstocks model, such as the ungrafted vines found in Colares,
Portugal. There, the incredibly sandy
soil is a barrier that the Phylloxera louse has never been able to cross,
avoiding the need to graft the vines onto protective rootstocks. Bollinger Champagne also famously has its
tiny walled vineyards of ungrafted vines in Äy, producing its “Vieilles Vignes
Françaises” cuvée. There are also
vineyards in Chile where ungrafted vines flourish, because natural barriers
(the Pacific Ocean, the Andes, snow and ice to the south and arid desert to the
north) as well as strict quarantine on imported vine stocks have kept the
country Phylloxera-free.
Once you start looking, it seems, there are ungrafted Vitis vinifera vines almost everywhere,
from Australia and Argentina to China and Crete.
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| Henry Marionnet's Touraine winery |
Recently in Touraine in the Loire Valley, I was intrigued to
discover a producer, Henry Marionnet, who has 6 hectares of ungrafted vines,
including Sauvignon Blanc and Gamay, as part of his 62 hectare Domaine de la
Charmoise estate. M Marionnet is not
blind to the risks he is taking and is fully aware that Phylloxera is as
prevalent in his vineyard as it is anywhere else. Currently, however, the fungal-based diseases
eutypa and esca are more pressing concerns for winemakers in the Loire, where
they are currently responsible for vine dieback and death on a worrying
scale. While Henry Marionnet has no
plans to increase the proportion of ungrafted vines on his estate, thus far disaster
has not struck and he has succeeded in making delicious wines from his
ungrafted vines, sold under the label Viniféra.
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| Henry Marionnet |
While I have grown used to stumbling across ungrafted vines
at almost every turn nowadays, it is unusual for a winemaker to make a wine
purely from such vines. My inner wine geek rejoiced as I was treated to a
tasting of two wines – made from the same variety and from the same vineyard
and vinified in exactly the same way, but one from ungrafted Sauvignon Blanc
and the other grafted onto a rootstock
in the usual way. While the grafted wine
made perfectly textbook Touraine Sauvignon, with plenty of herbal, blackcurrant
leaf flavours, the ungrafted wine was a revelation. It had greater intensity, more pronounced
fruit and with a broader range of flavours – a more substantial wine in every
way.
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| Marionnet Sauvignon Blanc Viniféra |
The same experiment with M Marrionet’s Touraine Gamay
provided a different illustration of the role of rootstocks. The ungrafted wine had more structure, but
also more elegance and delicacy than the grafted one.
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| Marionnet's Cot from ungrafted vines |
Henry Marionnet’s Viniféra wines are not widely available in
the UK, but you can find his Gamay Viniféra at Caves de Pyrène of Guildford for
£15.97 a bottle or at Exel Wines for £90.09 for six bottles. His Provignage, made from ungrafted vines of
the very rare Romorantin grape is available through The Wine Society for £42 a
bottle.
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Provignage, made from Romorantin grapes
|
Heny Marionnet’s wines were a fine illustration that the
world of wine is not static and will always contain more complexity and
contradictions that you will ever find in a text book. The wine world, as with real life as a whole,
is often messier and more interesting than the theory. Those working at the margins are often the
people who propel the world of wine forward into other, more interesting places,
enriching it for us all. Even if
sometimes they make us despair of ever being certain of anything ever again.
Maybe not everything you think you know about wine is wrong
– but it seems there is always something new to learn. Sadly, I hear we are now supposed to refer to
Dactulosphaira vitifoliae instead of
good old Phylloxera vastatrix. Is nothing sacred?
