Editor:

David McIntyre's otherwise highly informative article on Virginia's Kluge Estate ("Rolland's Mark on Virginia," March 2007) repeats the popular but improbable theory that Thomas Jefferson's failure to grow European vines at Monticello was "due more to phylloxera ravaging ungrafted rootstock than to any unsuitability of Virginia's soil and climate to vinifera grapes."
In fact, with seven major replantings documented at Monticello through

1807, it appears that Jefferson's vines didn't live long enough to get phylloxera, which took decades to destroy the vineyards of France from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and later in Napa Valley. The more likely cause of Jefferson's apparent lack of winemaking success was rot caused by the area's notorious summer heat and humidity, which tourists to Washington, D.C. and parts South can readily attest to. As recently as 2003, even with the advent of effective anti-rot sprays, wet, humid weather decimated Monticello's 2003 crop of Sangiovese planted in the same vineyard where Jefferson's earlier experiments with this popular Italian variety also met with resounding failure.

s/ Ben Giliberti
Washington, D.C.

Dave McIntyre replies: "We will probably never know to what extent phylloxera contributed to the failure of Jefferson's and other early attempts to grow vinifera in the Eastern U.S. But blaming the humidity is a pretext for continued failure. As for 2003, that year featured near-record rainfall, capped by a tropical storm in mid-September, the height of harvest. Hardly typical Virginia humidity."


Editor:

It was interesting to read "Sales Up, Up, Up for Pinot, Rosé and Screwcaps" (News This Month, May). There is a huge campaign from the manufacturers and larger supermarkets and wholesalers for wineries to use screwcaps. Problem is, the "carbon footprint" of screwcaps is huge. The energy and waste involved is significant. At least cork is 100% renewable, and a cork tree benefits from being ring-barked--the bark re-grows and does no harm to the tree. The manufacture of cork probably requires less than 10% of the energy needed to manufacture a screwcap.

The manufacturers claim that the caps are recycled, but they never are. At least cork when it disintegrates turns to dust. So in fact, the wine industry itself is contributing in a big way to global warming by using screwcaps.

Problem is, we've been all caught up in the hysteria of cork taint. Screwcaps are not without issues also--and probably more so than cork. Not very responsible, are we?

s/ Renos Ross, M.D.
iWineGlobal
Sydney, Australia