Global Ampelographical Schools by the Late 19th Century

This material is prepared based on the original historical research from the section "Histoire de l'ampélographie" ("History of Ampelography") authored by Ch. Tallavignes, published in the first volume of the classic "Ampélographie" edited by P. Viala and V. Vermorel (Macon, 1901–1910).

The German-Austrian Alliance: The Systems of the Goethe Brothers and Oberlin's Manifesto

The second half of the 19th century was marked in Germany and Austria-Hungary by a transition from private regional descriptions to large-scale coordination of research. The central figures of this era were the brothers Hermann and Rudolf Goethe. Speaking at the Vienna Viticultural Congress in 1873, Hermann Goethe became the driving force behind the creation of the International Ampelographical Commission. The Goethe brothers diligently published the acts of this commission in specialized annuals, and between 1876 and 1878, they issued a magnificent collaborative "Atlas" of the finest grape varieties of Germany and Austria, containing 30 high-precision colored chromolithographs. In 1878, Hermann published his "Ampelographical Dictionary," which became the most comprehensive catalogue in Europe at the time, where the author proposed an original classification of vines based on the geometry of the angles of leaf vein branching.

In parallel, a burst of activity was developing in Alsace under Christian Oberlin, who established the famous Beblenheim collection in 1886, numbering 380 grape varieties. Oberlin emerged as a radical proponent of the theory of the "natural degeneration and decrepitude" of the European common vine, Vitis vinifera. In 1881, he published a manifesto asserting that centuries of vegetative cutting propagation had completely exhausted the vital forces of European vines, leaving them defenseless against diseases. In Oberlin's view, phylloxera was merely a secondary parasite feeding at the expense of an already sickly, worn-out plant. Based on this, Oberlin called for saving viticulture through deep sexual hybridization of noble Riesling with wild American vine species.

The Italian Ampelographical Campaign: Castagnola's Decree and 67 Sub-Commissions

In Italy, a genuine state revolution in science occurred after the reunification of the country. On June 21, 1872, the Minister of Agriculture, Castagnola, issued an official royal decree for the establishment of a Unified State Ampelography of Italy. To implement this colossal project, two central commissions were organized: under the presidency of Louis Oudart for the North and de Blasiis for the South. The scale of the Italian campaign was unprecedented: the government provided large subsidies, and 67 regional sub-commissions were established on the ground, uniting more than 1,000 researchers. From 1876 to 1887, the central committee issued 22 volumes of specialized bulletins.

The most valuable practical result of this reform was the publication of an outstanding regional atlas of the Alessandria province, prepared by Demaria and Leardi in 1875. The central figure of the Italian school remained Count Giuseppe di Rovasenda, who published his epochal "Essay on a Universal Ampelography" in 1877, which became the most complete glossary of vine names of its era. Rovasenda gathered a remarkable collection of 3,669 live vines on his Bicocca estate, which, near his passing in 1900, was fully transferred to the School of Viticulture in Alba to safeguard it from the phylloxera crisis.

The Experience of Switzerland and Portugal: The Great Triumph of Cincinnato da Costa

In Switzerland, the accumulation of ampelographical data proceeded through the Publications of the Economic Society of Bern. The leading researchers of the conservative period were Kerler and Lullin de Châteauvieux. The second half of the century was marked by the publication of J.-M. Kohler's classic manual (1859) and deep morphological studies by Marc Micheli and Maurice de la Pierre, who recorded the varietal characteristics of the vines of Geneva and Valais during international assemblies. The Swiss phase concluded with the issuance in 1891 of the "Ampelography of Switzerland," created by Kraft in collaboration with Bosshard.

In Portugal, a major scientific explosion occurred in 1866 when a special law completely destroyed the century-long monopoly grip of the famous Company of the Alto-Douro, established by the Marquis of Pombal. The vine returned to the free market, and the pioneer of its study was the Viscount de Villa-Maior, who published his "Manual of Practical Viticulture" in 1875 and the luxurious trilingual atlas "The Illustrated Douro." The culmination and fitting crown of all 19th-century European science was the monumental work by Professor Cincinnato da Costa, "The Winemaking Portugal" (Le Portugal vinicole), published in French and Portuguese specifically for the Paris World Exhibition of 1900. This foundational folio, containing flawless botanical descriptions and magnificent colored plates, became the primary material monument of the era.

The Dawn of Science in Russia: From Koeppen's Catalogues to Vasily Tairov's Messenger

The Russian Empire and the regions of the Caucasus, considered by many scientists to be the natural cradle of European vines, long remained a blank space on the global ampelographical map. The first serious investigation was undertaken in 1832 by Academician Peter Koeppen, who published a foundational treatise on the wine trade and vine culture. Koeppen was the first to systematize and describe 196 indigenous and introduced grape varieties, distributing them by region: 1 variety of the Don, 40 varieties of Kizlyar, 45 varieties of Astrakhan, 69 vines of Crimea, and 27 European imports.

In 1846, Doctor Friedrich Kolenati presented a landmark study to the Imperial Society of Naturalists in Moscow titled "An Essay on the Systematic Distribution of the Native Vines of Georgia." Kolenati detailed 48 authentic Georgian grape varieties, assigning them Latin botanical names. He constructed his classification on the pubescence of the leaves, the color of the veins, and the morphology of the berries. Later, Count Odart and Victor Pulliat gathered data on Caucasian and Persian vines (such as the legendary Chaoush variety) through reports from Hartwiss, the director of the Nikita Imperial Garden, and French diplomats, cultivating these specimens in their European collections. The true flourishing of domestic science at the turn of the century was linked to the name of Vasily Tairov. The journal "Westnick Vinodelia" (The Wine Messenger), which he founded in Odessa in 1892, became the primary scientific organ of the empire, within whose pages the ampelographer Bazarow published detailed varietal profiles of the famous Magaratch collection.

The Phylloxera Collapse and the Saving Roots of America

In US viticulture, science followed two parallel paths: for two centuries, colonists unsuccessfully attempted to acclimatize European vines, but the bushes invariably perished (as seen in the failures of Swiss communities on the Ohio River between 1790 and 1801). This forced American researchers — such as John Adlum, who described the Catawba variety in 1823, and William Prince — to shift their focus to the study of wild native species. Profound contributions to the systematics of New World wild grapes were made by Engelmann (1874) and Thomas Munson, who developed the first scientific classification of the wild grape species of North America in 1890.

European collectors, fascinated by descriptions of American vines, began importing them en masse to the Old World for protection against oidium, ignoring the stern warning delivered by Lakanal, the president of the University of Louisiana, to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1835. Along with American vines like Isabella and Clinton, a terrifying underground pest was introduced to Europe — phylloxera (Phylloxera vastatrix). The first spots of root destruction were noticed between 1863 and 1865 in Bordeaux and on the Rhone, and in 1868, Jean-Éttienne Planchon, Gaston Bazille, and Félix Sahut discovered the insect itself. This catastrophe cost more than 10 billion francs and pushed European viticulture to the brink of extinction. Salvation came from an idea put forward by Léo Laliman and Gaston Bazille in 1868–1869: grafting delicate European grape varieties onto the resistant rootstocks of wild American species. After moving past an infatuation with direct producers, global ampelography permanently reduced the American vine to the role of an invisible but life-saving rootstock (Riparia, Rupestris, Solonis), thus concluding the grand, century-long history of rebuilding the world's vineyards.