Elvira

Elvira is a white American hybrid. VIVC gives its pedigree, as the breeder or bibliography recorded it, as Taylor crossed with Martha, with a question mark, from Jacob Rommel in 1862; no DNA check is listed. J. Roy-Chevrier, writing in Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel’s Ampélographie (1901 to 1910), called it a Labrusca and Riparia hybrid and the elder brother of Noah. In the Gironde the earliest record in my library is the 1881 International Phylloxera Congress in Bordeaux, which found it among the young direct producers of the Domaine du Vallier at Langoiran. M. Piola, at Condat near Libourne, counted it among the hybrids of best promise, and in 1886 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, listed it with Noah and Triumph among the white direct producers.

The verdict turned within a few years, and Gironde experts led the warning. Roy-Chevrier records that “MM. Cazeaux-Cazalet, Daurel, Froidefond, and others in the Gironde enlightened their compatriots on its overrated value” («MM. Cazeaux-Cazalet, Daurel, Froidefond et d'autres encore dans la Gironde, éclairaient leurs compatriotes sur sa valeur surfaite») and put them on guard against adopting it. In 1891 the survey of the Société des agriculteurs de France found Elvira a variety without a future, and by 1904 Roy-Chevrier knew it mostly in the collections of schools and amateurs.

Oldest record in my library: Compte rendu général du Congrès international phylloxérique de Bordeaux, 1881