Herbemont

Herbemont is a black-berried American vine. The old books gave it as a cross of the wild species aestivalis and cinerea; DNA markers recorded in the Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) point to Chasselas as one parent, the other unknown. Phylloxera was found at Floirac, near Bordeaux, on June 11, 1869, and Herbemont was among the American vines the Gironde then planted to bear wine on their own roots, the so-called direct producers. A grower at Saint-Philippe-d’Aiguille sent the 1881 International Phylloxera Congress in Bordeaux his Herbemont wines of 1878, 1879, and 1880. The congress commission found the vine at Yvrac, Vayres, Parsac, Cenon, Langoiran, and Nérigean, and in the Gironde agricultural society’s nursery in the palus of Floirac: “The Herbemonts there are very vigorous and very fruitful” («Les Herbemont y sont très vigoureux et très fructifères»).

Its place soon changed. M. Piola, whose collection at Condat near Libourne held some 200 American varieties, told the congress that Herbemont did well on clay-limestone slopes but did not ripen its fruit in alluvial soils. In 1886 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, still named it first among the red direct producers for regions outside the fine wines, which they kept for grafted vines. By 1893 their guide had moved it among the rootstocks, and the 1898 edition keeps the verdict: “fairly good affinity with the cabernets and merlot; in short, a good rootstock” («AFFINITÉ assez grande avec les cabernets et le merlot; en somme, bon porte-greffe.»). In 1922 the guide recorded young vineyards in the canton of Pellegrue of malbec, merlot, and cabernet grafted on riparia or herbemont.

Oldest record in my library: Compte rendu général du Congrès international phylloxérique de Bordeaux, 1881 (with Herbemont wines of the 1878 to 1880 vintages from Saint-Philippe-d’Aiguille)