Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
grow millions of vines of a very different kind from the ones that had made Constantia famous throughout the wine-drinking world; for in 1886 it was established that phylloxera had started its depredations in the Cape vineyards.
For long, the most significant disease in Cape vineyards was anthracnose, a fungal infection. Powdery mildew, Oidium tuckeri, was an import from northern America into Europe that did much damage there in the 1850s before sulfur was established as a satisfactory preventive treatment, but there seems to have been little alarm about it in the Cape, and when oidium started having noticeable effects in the greening vineyards of late 1859 it was not immediately identified. The disease spread fast, but once a local shortage of sulfur was resolved, the problem was eased, with only a few harvests significantly affected. Things would not be so easy with the next plague.
Also imported from North America into Europe, the small vineroot-feeding aphid relative now scientifically known as Daktulosphaira vitifoliae announced its effects there as early as 1863, and within three decades had started spreading a swath of destruction around the winegrowing world. Phylloxera vastatrix (the devastator) it was initially called, and many desperate treatments were tried as the vignerons of France watched their vineyards die—even after it had become increasingly clear that the only viable response was to grow the wine grapevine on rootstocks of American origin: evolution had ensured that these were immune.
There was some moderate watchfulness at the Cape at the time, but little real preparedness to deal with phylloxera by the time it became clear that the pest had already arrived. It was the French consul in Cape Town who—presumably having seen ravaged vines back home—in early 1886 alerted the authorities to signs of it in a vineyard in Mowbray, not far from the earliest Cape vineyards. It was revealed that the vineyard was indeed affected by phylloxera and, moreover, had been showing progressive deterioration for four years. The government immediately sent scientific inspectors to look at as many vineyards as possible. Through 1886 more farms were discovered to be affected, and then the pest reached the more outlying areas, until most were affected. Constantia was among the last, in 1898 (strangely, since it is within ten kilometers of Mowbray). The insect continued its remorseless progress despite government programs to combat the spread. Unlike in Australia, for example, the winged form of the pest appeared here, and there was no escape from its depredations. During the 1890s at least a quarter of the Cape’s vines were destroyed—while expensive chemical and other antidotes were also tried in vain. European experience showed that replanting on American rootstocks was vital and unavoidable; this proceeded, with a number of “American vine plantations” established through the wine lands to produce rootstocks, and research was undertaken to learn the best methods of grafting, as well as rootstock affinity.
Right through the 1890s there were insufficient supplies of rootstocks, however, and replanting was not as rapid as is sometimes supposed. Mr. C. Mayer, a German viticulturist at Groot Constantia, estimated in a 1900 “Retrospect on Phylloxera” that just fewer than two million grafted vines had been planted (out of a Cape total of more than 87 million), and “now at least one million grafted vines are being annually planted.” Many destroyed vineyards remained unreplaced, and there was, in fact, a useful turn toward the planting of fruit trees in areas where this was possible. The vineyards of Cape Town (other than those at Constantia), including the one where phylloxera had first been found, were swallowed by the encroaching suburbs; particularly during the early twentieth century, as many farmers as could do so turned to farming ostriches and alfalfa (lucerne) to feed them. Oudtshoorn in the Eastern Cape had five million vines in 1875; in 1909 it apparently produced no wine at all. Today virtually the whole of the Cape vineyard is planted on American rootstock; only the occasional vineyard in sandy soil successfully chances its luck.
Much hardship was caused to wine farmers by phylloxera, despite some governmental compensation. Altogether, in the decades following the near-total collapse of the export market and widespread damage to the vineyards, Cape viticulture was perhaps at its lowest ebb yet—though things were to get worse as the century turned and brought imperialist war in South Africa, followed by depression. Looking at contemporary accounts of wine-lands problems, the wonder is that the industry survived. Not only that: bizarrely, production increased during the difficult years. In 1860, when one would have thought that wine farmers would have already turned to something else if they could, or at least have ceased planting, there were 55 million vines planted; in 1875 there were nearly 70 million. The league table for that year shows Paarl ahead as usual with some 21 million vines, followed by Stellenbosch with 16 million. Then come some areas that had not featured before in this story, and had become viable through improved communications within the colony, particularly the railway lines—and it is presumably these new plantings by hopeful pioneers that account for the overall increase: Oudtshoorn, Robertson, and Worcester each had more than 5 million vines; the Cape, Malmesbury (Swartland), Tulbagh, and Riversdale about half of that number.
Although reliable statistics from this time are hard to come by, a government report notes that in 1882–1883 wine production was nearly 40,000 leaguers, up from 25,000 in 1860. Brandy production had proportionately grown even more, to more than 11,000 leaguers, reflecting the one pale gleam on the winemakers’ horizon: the possibility of exports to the hard men and no doubt equally hard women in Kimberley, where the diamond rush had begun in 1866. In 1888, about 4,905 leaguers of spirits were sent to Kimberley, something like half of the total production. From the late 1880s the goldfields of the Transvaal also offered the prospect of some profit to those toiling in the vineyards of the Western Cape. Dr. Hahn, in a report of 1882, was emphatic that, taking into account local costs and quality and the price of wine in Europe, “the idea of exporting Cape wine to Europe at present must be altogether abandoned”; the diamond fields, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State were much more likely prospects, with drinkers perhaps rather less discriminating than those in England—or indeed, than the English in the Cape Colony, where much more wine was imported than exported at the time and certainly not enough of the local product was drunk to please the farmers and merchants.
Less than ever was there doubt in the minds of the authorities (and of drinkers!) that the quality of Cape wine was also very low. In 1887 yet another report to a concerned Parliament stressed, “The production of wine is still increasing but . . . there is no demand for the increased production. The price for wine has therefore gone down considerably, especially of the inferior kinds, of which some are almost unsalable, as they are unfit even for making spirits.” In 1885, after Baron Carl von Babo was appointed as government viticulturist, his first report, which included scathing views of winemaking techniques, recommended the founding of the model farm and viticultural school at Groot Constantia.
In fact, the viticultural school there never seems to have amounted to much, in the face of the pressing need for the farm to produce wine in commercial quantities to satisfy the Treasury as well as enough American rootstocks to satisfy phylloxera-ridden farmers. This is a great pity, as there were signs that a deal of good might have been achieved. Viticulturally, for example, apart from planting with better varieties, there were useful trials of different trellising and vine-spacing practices, and successful experimental treatments for pests like the snoutbeetle (a pernicious weevil). In the cellar, among other investigations, inoculated yeasts were tried and observed. And the benefits of the “attemporator” or “cooling worm”—basically a coil of pipe carrying cool water through the fermenting must—did in fact reach far beyond Constantia. But a later viticultural expert, Raymond Dubois, pointed out the inadequacies of even Groot Constantia as a model. Australia, he said, has “better buildings, more advanced and fitted with modern machinery and time and labour-saving implements,” while “there is not one cellar in the whole of the Colony fit to guarantee good wine.” Unfortunately, his 1905 report indicates little continued progress in experimental work or establishing a teaching institution. The straitened financial state of the colony, suffering a severe depression after the wars between Britain and the Boer republics, was blamed.
So severe was the effect of the “prevailing depression” on the wine industry that various commissions were appointed to look into the condition of the wine districts. A 1905 inquiry “established beyond a doubt that the Wine and Brandy Industry is at present in an alarming state of depression.” A lengthier 1909 commission report gives a useful overview of the state of the industry.