Phylloxera question

A

Alex Bramwell

Location
Gran Canaria
Hi, I'm new and I'm from Gran Canaria. I've been researching Canarian wine as we get a lot of questions about it.

The vines in the Canary Islands are odd as they are all on their original rootstock as phylloxera never got to the islands. However, they are vulnerable to the disease.

My question is about how phylloxera happened.

The Canarian grape variety listán negro (also called listán prieto) is the ancestor of the US Mission grape. However, I've never understood how it spread through the Americas because it isn't phylloxera resistant and I don't think early settlers did any grafting.

I suspect that phylloxera broke out in the States just before it spread to Europe, rather than being an endemic disease. Otherwise, there's no way that the Misson grape would have survived.

Does anyone know anything about the subject?
 
Welcome to Wine-Pages forum.

I was in Lanzarote just 2 weeks ago and I enjoyed my tastes of Listán Negro.

Phylloxera is indigenous to north eastern America.

Mission was planted in South America and West Coast in the Mission stations.

The wild vines that grow so abundantly in N E America are the ones that managed to co-exist with phylloxera, gain resistance to its ravages and survive it growing on their roots.

It was the shipment of NE American vines to Europe that introduced Phylloxera, and the European vines had no immunity and so perished - the solution adopted was to graft European fruitbearing scions onto resistant American rootstocks.

For a vine to suffer phylloxera it has to be attacked by the phylloxera aphid, so remote plantings can be safe. The Mission stations of those olden times were very remote from NE America.

Phylloxera can spread by its flying aphids, also on vines, shoes and tools used in the vineyards and thus as more vinifera was planted in the USA and transport got faster, the malady spread.

The Canary Islands are also remote, proteced by the ocean and -- I assume - strict bio controls on import of vines. Also, vines grown on sand seem immune to phylloxera attack.

There are vineyards in France on sandy sold growing ungrafted. The South Island of New Zealand was Phylloxera free until recently and many vineyards there are ungrafted, Okanagan Valley in Britsh Columbia is sandy soil and - although there is some phylloxera there, many vineyards are ungrafted. Cyprus is supposed to be phylloxera free, and Chile, protected by the trio of Andes, Ocean and strict import bio controls, is phylloxera free.

Can I strongly recommend Christy Campbell's book 'Phylloxera - How Wine was Saved for the World' Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World: Amazon.co.uk: Christy Campbell: 9780007115365: Books for the fascinating story of Phylloxera.



According to Jancis in Wine Grapes, DNA shows that Listán Negro is not the same variety as Listán Prieto, and that it is Listán Prieto that was taken to Mexico around 1540 and became known as Mission.
 
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Phylloxera is native to the US and was imported to Europe with the large volume of horticultural material brought from the US in the 19th century.
Native US vines had evolved an immunity to the louse and their rootstock became the basis on to which European vines were grafted following the devastation caused by Phylloxera in Europe.
However the louse does not do well in sandy soils and there are very limited areas where pre-phylloxera vines still exist in Europe.
 
The sad and ironic part of the story is that part of the interest in bringing in breeding stock from N. America was related to attempts to improve resistance to the existing disease problems of powdery and downy mildew, so in attempting to address one problem a far more damaging one was introduced. It's a good example of why legislative control of plant pests is important to us all.
 
No wine production in the UK in the 19th century, but we did have vines, andwe did receive vine samples from the US. In fact the first reported incidence of Phylloxera damage outside of America was in Ireland, then again 4 years later in England. And I believe I am right in saying that the bug was first described by an Englishman. This is all from the book Peter recommends. I second the recommendation, but it is a bit vague on exactly how ground-breaking the discoveries this side of The Channel were. So not only did we invent the "Champagne method", we might have been responsible for buggering up the vast majority of wine production in Europe :)

According to DEFRA, phylloxera ‘is locally established in the UK, but is under containment’, and some of our hybrids are resistant to an extent anyway, e.g. Seyval Blanc. Regardless, most of our vines have American root stock, but more as a precautionary measure.

A couple of further points:

Just to be clear, vinifera vines in the US are very much affected by Phylloxera. It has recently been causing problems in California in recent times because the non-vinifera root stock chosen by many producers was not resistent enough.

Phylloxera finds it difficult to survive in volcanic soils, which is probably another reason why the Canaries have remained unscathed.
 
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Peter May said:
Welcome to Wine-Pages forum.

According to Jancis in Wine Grapes, DNA shows that Listán Negro is not the same variety as Listán Prieto, and that it is Listán Prieto that was taken to Mexico around 1540 and became known as Mission.
Click to expand...

Vine names here in the canary Islands are a headache as each island has its own name for each variety and wineries market their wine based on what local variety it is made from. Listán negro is the big red grape, often mixed with a bit of tintilla (a local variety with no known ancestor) to add tannin and depth. On some islands, Listán negro is called Listán prieto and I honestly don't know (I don't think anyone here does) quite what is going on. Some varieties have a different name on each island (diego /verijadiego / vijariego / bujariego). Genetic studies have helped although one found over 20 varieties of malvasia growing here.

Often I think it's the different conditions that make the wines taste different, but don't say that to the growers as they are very proud of their local varieties.
 
There is an important point here about genetic profiling. DNA analysis is performed on specific samples sent to the lab, but with less-well-known grapes the number of samples might be small, and any conclusion about variety X being the same as variety Y totally depends on the sample varieties being correctly named, and the correct naming depends on definition and identification by traditional ampelography - berry shape and colour, bunch and leaf shape etc. So however good the lab work is, the conclusions can still fail on the ampelography. And of course it is the less-well-known grapes where the ampelography is likely to be the poorest.

(Not sure it that was clear. I explained it in a few more words here: Why conclusions from grape DNA profiling can be wrong)
 
Jonathan Hesford said:
So is Mission 100% vitis vinifera?
Click to expand...
Yes.
According to 'Wine Grapes' Listan Prieto [Mission et al] is an old variety from Castilla La Mancha first described [probably] in 1513 and virtually eradicated in Spain by Phylloxera but rediscovered elsewhere in the world by DNA profiling having been taken from Spain to: 1. Mexico by priests to their Missions around 1540 2. to Chile and Argentina in the mid 16th century 3. Around the same time to the Canaries where it was misleadingly called Moscatel Negro and finally in 1629 to the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico by a Capuchin Monk and a Franciscan priest who had founded Missions at Senecu near the modern day town of San Antonio and another at Pilabo near what is now Socorro, due south of Albuquerque - thus Mission apparently became the first Vitis Vinifera grape to be cultivated in the US.

Edit: to add that in Chile as Pais [Listan Prieto] it was the most widely planted grape after Cabernet Sauvignon in 2008 and used primarily to make cheap rose. However in the last few years Frenchman Louis-Antoine Luyt with the support of the late Marcel Lapierre has been using carbonic maceration to achieve a quality wine from the old vineyards around Maule. IIRC this was the subject of an interesting Decanter article recently.
 
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