The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (12 page)

Archeologist Patrick McGovern has analyzed ancient pottery fragments around the world and found evidence of wine making dating back six thousand years in the Middle East. A UCLA team uncovered a complete wine production facility in Armenia from the same period. McGovern also detected possible grape residue in pottery fragments from 7000 BC in China. The only people who did not develop a strong wine-making tradition with their local grapes were Native Americans—or if they did, they've hidden the evidence very well. South American Indians in particular made alcohol from corn, agave, honey, cactus fruit, seedpods, and bark, but they rarely, if ever, threw grapes into the mix.

Over time, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans became the world's most sophisticated vintners. Many early scientific advances slipped into oblivion during the Middle Ages, but wine-making technology survived, thanks to the efforts of monks and the deep associations between wine and religion. By the 1500s, vineyards were beginning to transition from church enterprises to private operations, often run by nobility. During the next few centuries, the British managed to forget they were at war with France often enough to purchase enormous quantities of their enemies' fine wines. Clearly, a robust European wine market was already in place as colonists were arriving in the New World.

By that time, a tradition of distilling wine into brandy had emerged as well. Spanish and Italian writings from the thirteenth century show that wine was being boiled into some kind of strong spirit. The Dutch gave it the name
brandewijn,
or “burnt wine,” which was shortened to “brandy.” Dutch traders set up stills in ports where wine was made, particularly if the wine was mediocre and would be more profitable in the form of brandy. One such place was France's Cognac region. The white wines made in the area were not terrible; they were just bland. The Dutch hoped to reduce shipping costs by distilling them into a high-proof spirit that would later be mixed with water as a substitute for wine. Sometimes, in the confusion and chaos of a busy port, those spirits would sit in a barrel longer than intended. The result? Rich, complex, aged Cognac. It later became clear that even vineyard waste could be fermented: crushed skins, stems, and seeds all went back into the fermentation tank to make a high-proof spirit like grappa.

While grape brandies and eaux-de-vie were coming into their own around Europe, Spanish and Portuguese winemakers noticed that the British had a taste for sweet wines fortified with brandy. Adding extra alcohol to wine was an easy way to stop the fermentation process—yeast can't live in a higher-proof solution—but it also helps a different kind of yeast to survive. In the Jerez region in southern Spain, white wine was traditionally aged in casks that were only partially full. A particular strain of
S. cerevisiae
yeast colonized the casks and formed a thick skin over the wine. The Spanish call it
flor
; scientists call it velum. Unlike other strains of yeast, the
flor
actually prefers a higher alcohol content of around 15 percent, so winemakers would fortify the wine to keep the yeast alive.

These wines—which the British called sherry, possibly a corruption of Jerez—are said to be biologically aged because the yeast changes the flavor over time. Adding to sherry's complexity is the use of the solera system for aging. The barrels are stacked four high, with finished sherry coming only from the bottom barrel. It is refilled by sherry from a barrel above it, which is then refilled from the barrel above that, and so on. New wine is only added to the top barrel. Some soleras have been in continual operation for over two hundred years, giving the finished product extraordinary depth and flavor.

Other regions developed their own fortified wines. Portuguese winemakers added brandy to half-fermented wine to stop the yeast from eating all the sugar. After a few years in tanks or barrels, the raisiny-sweet result is port. Madeira, also from Portugal, is made in a similar manner, usually with white wine grapes, and then exposed to air and subjected to the kinds of temperature extremes that early barrels would have encountered on long ocean voyages. This deliberate abuse gives it its oxidized, dried fruit flavor and means that it ages well and remains drinkable for up to a year after it's been opened. Italy's Marsala is similarly fortified and aged—and so it goes, in wine-making regions around the world.

Another centuries-old European tradition—that of flavoring wine with herbs and fruit—led to the invention of vermouths and aperitif wines, also called aromatized or fortified wines. They might have originally been intended as medicine—a wine infused with wormwood, quinine, gentian, or coca leaves would have represented an attempt to treat intestinal worms, malaria, indigestion, or listlessness, respectively—but by the late nineteenth century they had become respectable drinks in their own right. Vermouth is made with white wine (red vermouth is not made with red wine, but white wine sweetened and colored with caramel) and fortified slightly with brandy or eau-de-vie, bringing the alcohol content to about 16 percent.

With such a remarkable and diverse wine-making tradition, it must have been difficult for Europeans to set sail for a continent that might or might not have been suitable for grape growing. Early vineyards failed, which is why the Founding Fathers imported their
wine or drank homemade brews made from grains, corn, apples, and molasses. Thomas Jefferson in particular spent lavishly on French wine and tried to find a native American grapevine suitable for wine making for his garden at Monticello. Neither the native nor the European varieties he planted ever produced a drop of decent wine.

What went wrong? The native varieties simply weren't suited for wine making—but more about that in a minute. The failure of the European vines was the real mystery. What Jefferson didn't know—and what no one knew until later in the nineteenth century—was that sturdy American grapevines were resistant to attacks by a tiny, aphidlike pest called phylloxera (
Daktulosphaira vitifoliae
) that was also native to America. European grapes had no such resistance, which explained why imported vines planted in American soil withered.

Before anyone realized this, however, Americans had sent a gift of native grapevines to France. Unfortunately, those vines were infested with phylloxera. They went right to work attacking the vineyards. This tiny American pest went on to devastate the French wine industry in the nineteenth century.

At first, no one knew what was killing the vines. In fact, it took decades to simply understand the creature, much less find a way to kill it. Its life cycle was unlike anything scientists had ever seen. First, a generation of female phylloxera are born that never mate, never go on a single date, but are capable of giving birth anyway. The next generation is the same way, and the next, so that one generation of females is born after another. When, once a year, a batch of males finally emerge, they exist only to mate and die. The poor creatures are not even given a digestive tract; the males will not enjoy a single meal in their short, sex-filled lives. Once their job is complete, the females continue without them for several more generations. Their habitat changes, too: during one stage of their life cycle they induce the leaves to form galls—protective plant growths that hide the creatures—and during another stage they vanish underground to attack the roots.

By the time the phylloxera was finally understood, France's wine industry was nearly obliterated. Salvation came from the very plant that had caused the problem in the first place: the resilient American grapevine. Grafting fine old European vines to the rough-and-tumble American rootstock allowed the winemakers to replant and bring their industry back, although they worried that the flavor would suffer. Most wine connoisseurs would agree that French wines have done quite well in spite of the setback, but they still seek out “pre-phylloxera wines,” made from those pockets of European vines that managed to survive on their own roots. Chile, for instance, produces pre-phylloxera wine because Spanish missionaries brought the grapes there, but the phylloxera never arrived.

Because wine was in short supply during the outbreak, absinthe became the drink of choice in cafes. Rumors of its toxicity are greatly exaggerated: while it is flavored with wormwood (
Artemisia absinthium
), it was never the plant itself that drove drinkers crazy. It was the extremely high alcohol content. Absinthe was bottled at about 70 percent ABV, almost twice as high as brandy. Whatever the reason for its perceived social ills, the winemakers were all too happy to join the French temperance movement in advocating for a type of prohibition that would ban absinthe but protect wine, which was seen as a healthy and moral drink.

Although the French wine industry recovered, American farmers were still trying to figure out how to make good wine from native American grapes. The difficulty had to do with the genetics of the grape itself. While the European
V. vinifera
enjoyed almost ten thousand years of selection by humans, who chose larger, tastier fruit and favored hermaphrodite vines over dioecious vines, very little human selection seems to have taken place in North America. Instead, the birds did it. They selectively picked blue-skinned varieties, an unattractive color for wine, because they could see them better—and they chose small fruit over large because they could eat it in one bite.

So even though
V. riparia,
one of the most widespread native American species, is remarkably cold-hardy and resists pests and disease, that small, blue fruit did not impress winemakers as much as it impressed the birds. After three hundred years of experimentation, American botanists are only just now figuring out how to turn native grapes into wine. University of Minnesota researchers have crossed
V. riparia
with European vines to produce new varieties, like Frontenac and Marquette, that yield surprisingly good wines, even in that cold northern climate. They are sturdy, robust and quite drinkable wines with just a hint of the wild herbaceousness that makes them uniquely American.