Pierce's Disease is the Mother of Invention

You've never heard of Pierce's Disease, have you? I hadn't either, at least not until last year. No, I haven't been inflicted with it and you haven't either. And, it's not related in any way to COVID.

Pierce's Disease infects grapes, not people. And, it infects primarily grapes in California. In particular, it seems to like hot summers and mild winters and loves to be around inland waterways like rivers and even smaller creeks. It's caused by a bacterium that is spread by an insect known as a sharpshooter (no, I don't know what a sharpshooter is, but I have learned over time that sharpshooters transmit this particular bacterium). 

The obvious answer would seem to be to use an insecticide. There are two problems with this. One is that so many wineries are now striving to be certified as organic meaning that, among many other things, they don't use insecticides. The second is that of known insecticides, in order to kill these sharpshooters, they must come into direct contact with the little critters and, even if they do, they kill them very slowly.

What does this disease do? It scorches the leaves of the grapevine and dehydrates the grape itself. This causes the grapes to fall and the grapevines to die. While not as prevalent or widespread, where it does afflict the vines, it seems to be as damaging as phylloxera (the disease that ruined much of the European wine industry in the mid-19th century although most American rootstock has been found to be phylloxera-resistant).

Perhaps the top wine research institution today is the University of California at Davis. When wineries or winemakers have a question or a problem, their first, and often last, stop is UC-Davis. For 20 years, the scientists, one in particular whose name I could likely Google, but then again you could as well, have been working on developing or breeding Pierce's Disease-resistant grapes. Just last year, they released five of them.

What the scientists apparently have done is to breed warm weather loving vitis vinfiera grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon with grapes from the species vitis arizonica, Not historically used as a wine grape, vitis arizonica was found to have a dominant gene that is resistant to Pierce's Disease. So, by breeding with Cabernet Sauvignon, Durif (Petite Syrah), and Sauvignon Blanc primarily, they have produced new grapes that may carry many of the growing and taste characteristics of those popular grapes and others, but at the same time, live to see harvest and beyond in the heavily Pierce-afflicted areas.

You can't find the wines being made from the grapes yet, or at least I have not heard of them being sold commercially, but when you do, they will have names like Camminare Noir and Ambulo Blanc. And, no, I have no idea what you should pair them with when you do find them.