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).
Count Odart: The Polytechnician, Landowner, and Rural Man
The figure of Count Odart (1778–1866) occupies a unique, legendary place in the history of grape variety research. Possessing a brilliant education and being a graduate of the celebrated Parisian École Polytechnique, Odart intentionally limited his life's horizon to the boundaries of his beautiful ancestral estate of La Dorée in Touraine. Here, he transformed into a quintessential "rural man" who visited daily, with a lover's insatiable joy and the keen intuition of a true naturalist, the live grape collection he had patiently gathered from all corners of the world.
Years of field experience and deep analysis of agricultural literature culminated in the publication of a modest "Essay on Ampelography" (Essai d'ampélographie) in 1841. This initial publication served as a sort of trial balloon. The true scientific triumph came with the foundational edition of 1845, which the author rightly deemed the first canonical version of his book, and in 1849 he secured his success with the expanded "Universal Ampelography" (Ampélographie universelle). Odart's book was enthusiastically acclaimed by the viticultural community of France and remained for many decades the standard manual (breviary) for both academic botanists and practitioners.
Count Odart’s character was marked by an immense pride in his ancient noble lineage, his education, and his scientific achievements — the pages of his books are laden with detailed genealogical records tracing his family back to the beginning of the 12th century. He took any criticism from office-bound scholars with exceedingly bad grace. When the celebrated Academician Chevreul indicated certain scientific gaps in his work in an official report, Odart sharply retorted that only a rural man living on the land could complete such a complex practical treatise, not a Parisian chemist breathing the dust of libraries. He consciously cultivated the image of a simple "vignerons writing for vignerons" to connect more easily with practical growers, who historically viewed intellectual theories with suspicion.
The Defense of Grape Variety Fixity in Odart's Prolegomena
The most original and highly valued part of the "Universal Ampelography" was its introductory theoretical chapters, which the author titled "Prolegomena" (Prolégomènes). Shielding himself behind the authority of the agronomist Puvis and the Italian researcher Gallesio, Count Odart addressed the fundamental question of the mutability and stability of grape varieties. He emerged as an uncompromising defender of the theory that varietal traits remain fixed when the vine is propagated vegetatively.
In his Prolegomena, Odart fully shared and expanded the views of Don Simón de Rojas Clemente, entering into direct contradiction with the errors of Dussieux, Bosc, and Lenoir that had taken root in France. Citing the authoritative conclusions of Doctor Bretonneau, Odart experimentally demonstrated that while the influence of soil type, exposure, and climate on grape properties certainly exists, these modifications are restricted within very narrow limits. A terroir can alter a vine's productivity or the flavor nuances of its juice, but external factors are powerless to erase or mutate botanical characteristics that have remained stable for centuries.
In parallel, Odart set about refuting the theory of the "progressive degeneration and aging of clones," which dated back to Duhamel. In the mid-19th century, the chief champion of this concept was the agronomist Puvis, who asserted that any propagation of a vine via cuttings, layering, or grafting leads to a gradual fading of vital forces and the eventual extinction of the variety. Puvis and his adherents from Knight's British school urged viticulturists to completely discard old vines and continuously sow grapes from seeds (pépins) to give birth to "young and vigorous" variations. Count Odart dismantled these claims step by step, proving that the vegetative division of a vine is biologically immortal, and that declining yields are tied exclusively to soil exhaustion or negligent cultivation.
Attitude Toward Selection and First Vine Hybridization Experiments
While refuting the myths surrounding the degeneration of cuttings, Odart was by no means a systematic enemy of generative (seed) propagation. However, he expressed deep skepticism regarding mass seed sowing, calling it an "insane labor." Citing Clemente, the Count pointed out that barely one seedling in a thousand demonstrates any superiority over ancient grape varieties whose high status has been consecrated by centuries of experience. Nevertheless, Odart offered breeders a unique method that he believed to be original: sowing seeds harvested from a vine that had been grafted onto a stock of a completely different variety. He sincerely believed that the mutual influence of the rootstock and scion ("the blending of saps") was capable of genetically modifying the offspring.
From the perspective of modern science, Odart's views on the confluence of saps were erroneous, and the author should have paid attention to true sexual hybridization (artificial crossing). All the more so because during this exact period in France, a modest but brilliant viticulturist, Louis Bouschet de Bernard, was already actively moving along this path. Beginning in 1828, Bouschet de Bernard conducted the first controlled crosses in history between the ancient French coloring variety Teinturier and the highly productive grapes of southern France. By 1840 — before Odart had even published his ampelographical works — Bouschet's vineyards boasted the world's first completely uniform artificial hybrid plot of 1,100 vines, laying the foundation for the creation of the celebrated Alicante Bouschet family.
Classification of Grape Varieties by Odart: The Five-Epoch System
In the applied section of his work, Count Odart resolutely refused to establish a rigid, purely botanical classification system. He delivered a brilliant critique of the systematization projects proposed by Clemente, Frege, von Gok, Metzger, von Vest, Burger, and Acerbi, calling them far too complicated for the common grower. Instead, Odart put forward a practical geographical plan dividing the selection by regions of cultivation, supplementing it with an internal grouping of vines by natural families.
For practical convenience, Odart introduced a revolutionary classification system based on the precise ripening periods of the fruit. In a special appendix to his book, he divided all known grape varieties into five consecutive sections (ripening epochs), separated by an interval of exactly ten days. This method proved so accurate and convenient that it was later adopted and turned into an international standard by the prominent late 19th-century ampelographer Victor Pulliat. Odart openly acknowledged that his synonymy was partially borrowed from Clemente's Spanish treatise, and that his botanical descriptions were intentionally kept succinct so as not to weary practitioners with dry science. Possessing a phenomenal visual memory, the Count could unerringly recognize hundreds of vines simply by their general appearance (facies).
Chevreul's Academic Contribution: The Hierarchy of Vine Traits
The publication of Odart's "Universal Ampelography" drew the celebrated French chemist and Academician Michel Eugène Chevreul into the field of grape study. Leaving his laboratory experiments for a time, Chevreul prepared a monumental analytical report (donat) for the Royal Central Agricultural Society of France exceeding 100 printed pages (1846). In this study, relying on the authority of the great botanical school of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, the scientist attempted for the first time in history to establish a strict scientific hierarchy of vine traits and define the precise position of the cultivated grape (Vitis vinifera) in the system of natural sciences.
Chevreul proposed a clear system for classifying plants, introducing the following academic categories:
- Species (Espèce): Comprises all individual vine plants originating from the same father and mother, resembling them as closely as possible.
- Simple Variety (Variété): Includes vine bushes showing minor external differences that do not perpetuate themselves, or do so only under rare, non-identical circumstances.
- Race (Race): A group of plants within which a pronounced complex of anatomical differences is propagated by seed in a nearly constant manner.
- Sub-species (Sous-espèce): The highest varietal category, whose highly pronounced characteristic differences are constants in all circumstances where the individuals composing the species can live.
With deep scientific caution, Chevreul acknowledged that the contemporary state of botany did not yet permit fitting the highly variable cultivated grape of Linnaeus into the rigid frames of this classification; he therefore proposed temporarily marking the species Vitis vinifera with the Greek letter Omega (ω) to symbolize the uncertainty of our knowledge. At the same time, Chevreul experimentally validated the conclusions of Clemente and Odart regarding the fixity of traits under vegetative division (cuttings), though he noted that an individual separated from the parent stock inevitably undergoes temporary external modifications under the direct influence of the outside world.
The Terroir Studies of Professor Bouchardat: Experiments in Wild Degeneration
During this same exceptionally active decade (1840–1850), the name of the outstanding scientist and professor Apollinaire Bouchardat came to prominence in France. The author of the history chapter, Ch. Tallavignes, quite rightly places Bouchardat as a grape researcher significantly higher than Count Odart. Bouchardat accomplished a genuine revolution in the methodology of the science: he was the first to understand that studying grapes in artificial ampelographical collections (where plants are uprooted from their native soil and climate) is profoundly flawed. He conducted his research directly within the long-established vineyards of France, where the vines naturally manifested their normal varietal qualities.
In 1749, Bouchardat presented a memorandum to the National Agricultural Society that summarized his unique 25-year experiments on the "wild degeneration" of the vine. The scientist painstakingly observed what occurs to noble, cultivated grape varieties when they are completely abandoned without cultivation in the wild. Bouchardat experimentally established the strict boundaries of these modifications, recording three consecutive stages of regression:
- First Stage (Temporary): A sharp alteration in the flavor of the juice, the volume of the clusters, and a shift in the precise ripening periods (when such modified vines are returned to good cultivation, these initial alterations quickly fade).
- Second Stage (Persistent): A progressive shrinking of the berry size, which becomes persistent enough for experienced vignerons to regard it as sufficient to constitute permanent sub-varieties.
- Third Stage (Deep): A catastrophic drop in useful production volume, which remains highly noticeable even after twenty-five years of subsequent excellent cultivation and repeated, thorough rejuvenation of the vine.
At the same time, Bouchardat rigidly limited the extent of this wild regression, proving that even under the most severe neglect, a very great resemblance always exists between the modified individual and the primitive individual, and they must always be included within the same group. He firmly denied that a country's varieties, when transported to another region, lose their distinctive characters to take on those of the region's native vines. Bouchardat left science excellent monographs on the Pinot family (Pineaux), the Tresseaux, and the Verreaux vines. The invasion of the destructive fungal disease — oidium — in 1845 forced the scientist to suspend his theoretical studies and shift his entire focus to identifying grape varieties capable of resisting biological crises.