Grapegate

October 14, 2016

Someone is stealing the great grapes of Burgundy, according to the Burgundy wine bureau (BIVB). As reported in Decanter, there have now been four separate reports of thefts of grapes across the region. A possible motive underlying the crimes: the 2016 harvest, which has been so devastating (severe frost and hailstorms) that some vintners have 50% to 90% fewer grapes than in typical years.

Chile is missing something most other wine countries have. Is it:

A. The legal ability for wineries to sell directly to consumers

B. A system of geographic appellations

C. Phylloxera

D. Taxes on wine

C.

Chile is the only major wine country in the world where no phylloxera exists. A lethal insect, phylloxera devastated most of the world’s vineyards in the 19th century, after which vines were necessarily grafted onto resistant rootstock. But most of the vines in Chile today remain ungrafted. Phylloxera’s curious absence is not fully understood.

“To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.”

—Clifton Fadiman
American author and television personality (1904 – 1999)

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