The role of the Church in the yield & merchandising of vino declined with the Reformation, especially in northerly Europe, but this did not convulse the vino world half as practically as the uncovering of the usefulness of corks about a century later. For the premier time since the Roman empire, vino might today be stored & aged in bottles. Throughout the Middle Ages vino had been kept in casks which had presented a dual handicap: first, too long kept in forrest might rob a vino of all its fruit; second, once the cask was opened the vino inevitably deteriorated unless beery within a couple of days. The bottle, with its smaller capacity, solved the former trouble by providing a neutral, non-porous material which allowed vino to ancient in a another subtler path & removed the latter trouble by providing varnished containers of a controllable sized for a single sessions drinking.
However, the bobber & glas revolution was not an instant success; bottles were then so bulbous they would only stand upright which meant the corks eventually dried out & as a consequence let in air. But, by the mid 18th century, longer, flat-sided bottles were designed which would lie down, their corks kept wet by meet with the wine. As a result vino making today took on a new dimension. It became worthwhile for a winemaker to attempt & excel, wines from fastidious plots of country might be compared for their qualities, & the most thrilling might be restricted & separated from the more mundane plot wines. As a result todays fine names of Bordeaux, Burgundy & the Rhine premier started to be noticed.
In the earlier 19th century, Europe seemed one big vineyard. In Italy 80% of folks were bringing in their living from vino & in France there were vast plantings rolling southwards from Paris. Also the vine had moved abroad thanks to explorers, colonists & missionaries. It went to Latin America with the Spaniards, South Africa with French Huguenots, & to Australia with the British. Could something cease this tide of vino expansion?
Well, yes & it came in the shape of an aphid phoned phylloxera, that fed on & destroyed vine roots. It came from America in the 1860s, & by the earlier 20th century, had destroyed all Europes vineyards & most of the remain of the worlds as well. The solution was to graft the defenseless European vine, vitis vinifera, onto the phylloxera-resistant American rootstock, vitis riparia, naturally a really costly effort. The most immediate outcome in Europe was that only the best sites were replanted & the absolute region below vines shrank drastically as a result. Elsewhere the havoc wrought was corresponding & vineyard acreage is only today enlarging to ancient original sites destroyed over a century ago.
The 20th century brought additional alter as skill & applied science revolutionised viticulture & vino making. But in spite of the chemic formulae & computerised wineries, the grape retains its magic & allure that attracts vino fanciers from all over the world.
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