Muscadet - an 1895 snapshot

[Don Rice]

"231 hectares have completely disappeared from the vineyard in 1895." - A. ANDOUARD

Just imagine the Nantais vignerons' sense of impending doom as phylloxera advanced through the muscadet vineyards during the 1880s and 1890s. Chemical intervention wasn't working. Grafting of American rootstocks wasn't yet fully up to speed. (Even Lysol didn't work! - see pic) Every remedy meant added expense. Vineyards just disappeared.

Here's an 1895 map showing phylloxera infestation in red. Click each image to enlarge.
(From Annales de la Societe Academique de Nantes et du Departement de la Loire-Inferieure, premiere semestre 1895. pp 215-226.)

            

 

[SFJoe]

Maisdon and Clisson have succumbed!

 

[Don Rice]

originally posted by SFJoe:
Maisdon and Clisson have succumbed!

Oh dear.
What will happen next on...(cue theme music) The Time Tunnel. Stay tuned.

 

[Unknown]

am i alone in feeling that this is just a little too much like the scene before kunta kinte got his foot chopped off?

fb.

 

[Don Rice]

I can hardly look at the map, actually. It's a visceral thing.

 

[Unknown]

Will they be looking at a similar map of natural wine movement infestation, decades or centuries from now?

 

[Levi Dalton]

Everybody hates natural wines except for the ones that they drink all the time.

 

[Ian Fitzsimmons]

Naturally.