Science, Vine and Wine in Modern France, pp. 92-95 (2002)

Harry W. Paul

The Impotence of the Scientific Critique of Grafting

Although viticultural science became overwhelmingly Americanist or prografting, there still survived some criticism of reconstituting vineyards with only grafted vines. The leading critic was Lucien Daniel, whose research became a dangerous nuisance in the view of agricultural bureaucrats and university-based viticultural researchers, who generally agreed on grafting as the only national anti-phylloxera strategy.

53 Lucien Panel, La variation dans la greffe et l'heredite des caracteres acquis (Masson, 1899); letter by Jurie in RHFA, no. 29 (1900), pp. 99-109, followed by an article of Félix Sahut on the subject.

In 1899 Daniel brought out a book on variation in the scion (budwood) and the inheritance of acquired characters. Jurie brought it to the attention of readers of the RHFA in 1900.⁵³ At that time Daniel was teaching at the Lycee de Rennes; he would later move to the faculty of sciences. (The scientific dissent of Daniel from the grafting gospel is a good example of how to end a scientific career.) In Rennes, a big agricultural center, apple cider was more important than wine. Daniel's frightening botanical conclusions, irrelevant for his pays, were rejected by most of his fellow scientists. His experimental work had been done in various botanical gardens and the laboratory of plant biology run by Gaston Bonnier at Fontainebleau, standard places for doing good botanical research. The viticultural public learned of the work of Daniel, that of Charles Collin, his student, and also that of his patron and defender, Bonnier, through serious analyses in the pages of the RHFA and L'Oenophile of Bordeaux. For a while Daniel also had his niche in the agricultural bureaucracy. The Americanists decided that he had to be refuted and scientifically isolated in order to minimize the damage done by his casting doubt on the basic scientific dogma underlying grafting.

Daniel's work on grafting various haricot beans had provided one of his experimental proofs of the transfer of characters from subject to graft, an argument of considerable interest to hybridizers. In 1894 Couderc had argued that the graft could have a marked effect on the subject, which was of more interest to winegrowers desperate to find rootstocks to withstand phylloxera. Whether the rootstocks produced specific variations on the grafts, as Daniel and Jurie argued, or whether they came from another cause, as Ravaz believed, was not of much importance for the winegrower, though it was of interest for the hybridizer. The laws of Mendel and deVries hardly interested the ordinary winegrower. After twenty years of research on Italian vines Clemente Grimaldi concluded that all the wine grower needed to know was that variations constitute the exception, the key rule for the grower was that, except for a few minor modification. The grafted vine, like all other ligneous or woody plants, maintains the qualities of the varieties employed as grafts.

Daniel thought that grafting improved some plants and caused others to deteriorate. To the Americanists this was despair. To Daniel it was hope: continued experimental grafting of hybrids might lead to new varieties of grafted vines with sufficient resistance to phylloxera. In the state of the art in 1900, Daniel argued that grafting on American roots often changed and modified the qualities of the wine.

At the 1901 congress on hybridization in Lyons Couderc made the "sensational declaration" that wines from grafted vines were inferior to those from nongrafted vines. At the congress Daniel found himself in the midst of a national debate with international repercussions over whether the American plants were harming the quality of the famous crus. Daniel seemed to long for a certainty unlikely to come from science. Viala and his supporters believed that grafting was the best experimental road to follow if good choices were made in selecting partners for grafting. The anti-grafters accepted the dubious idea that the effect of grafting on vines is different from the effect on fruit trees. Winegrowers, men who had first-hand experience in the field and in making wine also divided on the issues.

The ministry of agriculture was keenly aware of the quarrels going on in the intersecting worlds of viticultural science and winegrowing. In an excess of prudence in 1903, it assigned Daniel the sensitive mission of studying the effects of grafting in the French vineyard. The Americanists thought that the fox was being sent to investigate conditions in the chicken coop. But at that time it was by no means clear what the long-term effects of grafting would be. During his first year Daniel studied the east of France and part of the Midi. He proceeded carefully — so carefully that the Revue de viticulture, a voice of the Americanist camp, carried his "first notes on the reconstitution of the French vineyard by grafting," which started to question the two basic dogmas accepted at the beginning of the reconstitution: total conservation of the resistance to phylloxera by the American and hybrid rootstocks; and the complete conservation of specific characters by the rootstock and the graft, thus assuring the unchangeability of the vines after grafting. Daniel found that his task in Montpellier was frustrated by an "act of scientific vandalism" in the Ecole de Montpellier, which had torn up all its ungrafted American vines after they had served its own research purposes. Enemies of the Americanists immediately suspected a coverup. It was at least convenient for the Ecole that the end of their experiments came just in time to prevent a scientific enemy-colleague from exploiting their data.

While Daniel pursued his study mission, the Americanists accelerated their grafting program and produced an avalanche of scientific studies to show that their plan provided the only salvation for maintaining quality wine production. The negative conclusions of these studies with their more sinister implications, aggravated by their sensational exploitation, often with political repercussions, led many in the ministry to question the wisdom of the mission. Daniel blithely continued his rigorous criticism in conjunction with vocal anti-grafting forces, even in Bordeaux and Burgundy. The RHFA continued its hostility to official agriculture, except for the Daniel mission.

Bordeaux was suspicious of the program of salvation through grafting. Bordeaux is suspicious of anything concerning its crus. The pages of L'Oenophile, one of the leading vine-wine publications, were open to Bonnier and Daniel and other doubters of the virtues of grafting. The Société d'agriculture de la Gironde, after hearing the departmental professor analyze Daniel's book La question phylloxérique, le greffage et la crise viticole, approved a favorable report on it. More alarming to the Americanists, perhaps, was the fact that Daniel established friendly relations with some self-advertised successful anti-Americanist winegrowers.

54 RHFA, no. 79 (1904), p. 151-8.

One of the best known anti-grafters was Bellot des Minières, "le roi des vignerons," who acquired Château Haut-Bailly (Léognan, Graves) in 1872 and produced some of the best Bordelais of the late nineteenth century, one of the premiers crus de France, the "Margaux of Graves," and, according to Daniel, a Rival of Château Margaux and Lafite. Bellot des Minières made a fetish out of conserving his nongrafted vinifera vines, some of which were real museum pieces, 100 to 150 years old, it was said; treated with carbon disulfide, all the vines enjoyed splendid health. To kill fungus diseases, Bellot des Minières used sulfur and ammoniocupric sulfate instead of the usual copper sulfate, on which he blamed many oenological crimes. Phylloxera did not frighten him because he believed that it was dying out in the Gironde, where the insect was now laying eggs only twice a year instead of six times. There were even rows of healthy vines that had been left without treatment for four years. This amazing news was spread by Bellot des Minières himself in a book on La question vinicole (1902), by Daniel in an article in L'Oenophile (October 1907), and by an exuberant Gouy in the RHFA.⁵⁴

55 RHFA, no. 79 (1904), p. 155.

There was worse news on wind. De Ferrand carried out an experiment in Pauillac comparing wines from grafted and nongrafted vines up to the 15 years of age in the bottle. His conclusion was that the wine from the grafted vines was inferior. A brave man who believed in his own science, de Ferrand ripped out 30 hectares of grafted vines at his Chateau de Ferrand in Saint-Emilion to return to the direct cultivation of ungrafted vinifera vines. He shared the common view that grafted vines have a poorer resistance to fungus diseases. This was a serious defection from the Americanist camp, because for twenty years de Ferrand had been one of the most resolute grafters in the Gironde. Daniel added to his case against the grafted vine the experiment of M. Ricard (Domaine de Chevalier), who had a complete collection of ungrafted French varieties and a collection of French vines grafted on many different varieties of rootstocks. Daniel pointed to obvious changes in the foliage of grafted vinifera vines, especially the cabernet sauvignon grafted on the highly touted 41B and the 1202.⁵⁵ It was beginning to look as if Daniel would soon be able to cite as many unsuccessful grafting experiments as Viala could cite successful ones. But even Viala admitted that phylloxera could be held at bay with insecticides for a considerable time if conditions were right. The cases cited by Daniel could be viewed as atypical of the general situation in the Gironde. The big question was what would be the long-term solution to the problem of how to control phylloxera?

Another question was what would become of Daniel, now playing the role of Cassandra on his mission for the ministry of agriculture — an anomalous situation, for politicians want scientists to produce cheer, not gloom. On July 25, 1908, Daniel was relieved of his mission. One of the reasons, perhaps the main one, was that Daniel went international with his bad news. The Times (London), interested in the eternal and bitter quarrels in France over the viticultural crisis and worried about the wine supply, translated one of Daniel's articles. Official science appeared on the state when Ravaz wrote a refutation of Daniel's allegations for the Times. Many viticultural and agricultural societies protested to the ministry of agriculture. The situation had become difficult, because by 1907 Daniel was granting interviews in which he explained the decline in the quality of the grands ordinaires and the crus classés as partly due to grafting and partly due to the substitution of more productive varieties of vines for the older vines, which had yielded less generous harvests of fruit but finer wine. The descent of the vine into the plain also increased production in the Midi. This led Daniel to point out the wisdom of the Portuguese in prohibiting planting less than 50 meters above sea level. The Midi was not amused.