Grape-munching moth exposes Napa Valley's dirty little secret
Source: Agencies |
March 29, 2010, Monday
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ONE of the dirty secrets of the United States' wine industry is out.
A voracious grape-eating moth has found its way directly from Europe to the heart of California's Napa Valley, the land of three-figure cabernet, and the region's fast and loose play with federal agriculture quarantine laws is getting new scrutiny from investigators and researchers.
Vine cuttings from France's premier vineyards, have been smuggled into the US for years, hoping to replicate success. Vintners say it helped build a handful of exceptional vineyards in the 1980s when US plant choices were limited and import testing took seven years.
But as California clamps a quarantine across the heart of the Napa Valley and farmers ready their pesticides, a new Napa reality is setting in - that lax attitudes invite costly invasions of new pests that can threaten the country's most expensive and economically productive farmland.
"There are people who continue to spin their tales of smuggled plant material. People like a story with a glass of wine, and what that tends to do is legitimize behavior that not only threatens the industry, it's illegal," said Greg Clark, deputy agricultural commissioner for Napa County. "Knock it off."
A handful of California's best vintners today admit to having used "suitcase cloning" to avoid yearslong waits in quarantine for their vines.
Even if it's not directly responsible for the coming wave of vineyard spraying over most of the Napa Valley, it has reminded growers that one person's miscalculation can affect them all.
"The question is 'Who brought it in?'" asks Jim Lincoln, who manages 160 hectares of grapes.
Theories are swirling around Napa: smuggled grape cuttings; imported vineyard machinery mislabeled to avoid scrutiny, as is suspected in Chile's similar outbreak, or, even more sinister, a deliberate introduction to gain an edge in a region where 0.4 hectare of fruit can sell for US$15,000 and more.
Agricultural officials say that had the European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) innocently evaded inspectors on a container ship, the grape eater would have been first trapped near a port. Instead the pest that has proliferated across European vineyards appeared last September in the heart of the region where fine cabernet can fetch hundreds of dollars a bottle.
Steep fines and improved US nursery stock since the 1980s now discourage smuggling, but authorities believe it still exists.
Entomologists say the life cycle of the moth, native to Italy but found across eastern Europe and the Middle East, makes it difficult for it to survive on cuttings, so the smuggling theory might not hold up, despite the talk.
Investigators with the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service say they may never know for certain how the moth traveled to wine country.
A voracious grape-eating moth has found its way directly from Europe to the heart of California's Napa Valley, the land of three-figure cabernet, and the region's fast and loose play with federal agriculture quarantine laws is getting new scrutiny from investigators and researchers.
Vine cuttings from France's premier vineyards, have been smuggled into the US for years, hoping to replicate success. Vintners say it helped build a handful of exceptional vineyards in the 1980s when US plant choices were limited and import testing took seven years.
But as California clamps a quarantine across the heart of the Napa Valley and farmers ready their pesticides, a new Napa reality is setting in - that lax attitudes invite costly invasions of new pests that can threaten the country's most expensive and economically productive farmland.
"There are people who continue to spin their tales of smuggled plant material. People like a story with a glass of wine, and what that tends to do is legitimize behavior that not only threatens the industry, it's illegal," said Greg Clark, deputy agricultural commissioner for Napa County. "Knock it off."
A handful of California's best vintners today admit to having used "suitcase cloning" to avoid yearslong waits in quarantine for their vines.
Even if it's not directly responsible for the coming wave of vineyard spraying over most of the Napa Valley, it has reminded growers that one person's miscalculation can affect them all.
"The question is 'Who brought it in?'" asks Jim Lincoln, who manages 160 hectares of grapes.
Theories are swirling around Napa: smuggled grape cuttings; imported vineyard machinery mislabeled to avoid scrutiny, as is suspected in Chile's similar outbreak, or, even more sinister, a deliberate introduction to gain an edge in a region where 0.4 hectare of fruit can sell for US$15,000 and more.
Agricultural officials say that had the European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) innocently evaded inspectors on a container ship, the grape eater would have been first trapped near a port. Instead the pest that has proliferated across European vineyards appeared last September in the heart of the region where fine cabernet can fetch hundreds of dollars a bottle.
Steep fines and improved US nursery stock since the 1980s now discourage smuggling, but authorities believe it still exists.
Entomologists say the life cycle of the moth, native to Italy but found across eastern Europe and the Middle East, makes it difficult for it to survive on cuttings, so the smuggling theory might not hold up, despite the talk.
Investigators with the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service say they may never know for certain how the moth traveled to wine country.
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