30. Australian Wine

Chosen by:
Dr David Dunstan,
National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University

(Dr Dunstan is the donor of this book to the Rare Books Library and the author of Better Than Pommard! A History of Wine in Victoria, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1994.)

American vines : their adaptation, culture, grafting and propagation / by P. Viala and L. Ravaz ; complete translation of the second edition by Raymond Dubois and W. Percy Wilkinson ; revised by P. Viala. (Melbourne : Robt. S. Brain, Government Printer, 1901)

Grape Phylloxera was a contentious issue of world agriculture in the nineteenth century. This tiny louse attacks the roots of the European vine, Vitis Vinifera, which is the source of our table wine. Grape Phylloxera devastated Europe’s vineyards from the 1860s after having been imported unwittingly from America where it co-exists with wild vines there. The survival of the wine industry was only made possible by the scientific discovery that by grafting varieties of the European vine on to certain varieties of American vine rootstock a Phylloxera-resistant and grape-bearing European vine could be produced. Phylloxera was first discovered in Australia in Geelong district vineyards in 1877.

Victoria’s political leaders and wine magnates who had expected to benefit exhibited a grisly fascination with the devastation that had befallen Europe. But they showed no interest in reconstitution. When Phylloxera was discovered in Victorian vineyards it was considered that the pest might be quarantined. But then pressure mounted for a widespread program of eradication accompanied by the use of expensive pesticides, supported by the vignerons of other districts, such as those of the Upper Yarra Valley and the Rutherglen district; also, the other wine producing colonies of NSW and SA. The drastic step of uprooting and destroying all vines in the Geelong district was taken. By the end of 1881 over 500 acres of vines had been destroyed and nearly £9,000 paid in compensation. The same pattern was followed at Camden in NSW and, even more dramatically, with Bendigo district vineyards in 1894. By this stage reconstitution in France was an established fact. Notwithstanding the expensive and controversial destruction of its second largest vineyard area Victorian authorities resisted a new policy direction.

As late as 1899, when the analytical chemist, Percy Wilkinson, and the French immigrant winemaker, Joseph Gassies, issued a privately printed abridged translation of Viala and Ravaz’s French text American Vines, they were criticised in official and wine-growing circles for presenting views opposed to those of the Department of Agriculture. The venture was supported financially by the progressive wine magnate, Hans Irvine, who himself maintained a nursery of American vines at his Great Western property in Western Victoria in anticipation of the scourge. In May, 1899, Phylloxera was discovered in Rutherglen district vineyards. Victoria’s greatest vine area and the hope of its export industry had fallen. This provoked a change in Government policy. One sign of this was the appointment, on the recommendation of the French Minister for Agriculture, of a viticultural expert, Raymond Dubois, as principal of the Rutherglen Viticultural College. Another was the issuing under the Government Printer imprint in 1901 of a translation of the complete second edition of Viala and Ravaz’ by now standard work. But it was to be some years before the challenge of reconstitution was to be properly taken on by agencies of government or a now economically depressed and afflicted industry.