A wee tale of two wee insects

A wee tale of two wee insects
Alex Kraaijeveld

Sometimes, preferably over a dram or two, it can be fun to speculate about historical events and the effect they may have had on completely unrelated issues. As I’m a biologist in real life, doing research on insects, I thought it might be fun to look at two insect species in particular and the effect they (may) have had on whisky history.

Here’s the first of these two insect species: grape phylloxera. The picture on the left shows a handful of these critters feeding on the root of a grape vine, but for clarity, I’ve also included a drawing of a female with some of her eggs. In real life, this bug is yellowish brown or greenish brown and less than one millimeter long. But small as it is, this tiny insect has played a big role in whisky history. Phylloxeras are primitive aphids, related to the greenflies and blackflies that can be pests on so many crops and other plants around the world. Grape phylloxera feeds especially on the roots, but also on the leaves, of the grapevine which causes serious damage to the plant. In the 1860s, grape phylloxera made its way from America to France. French grapevine varieties, unlike the American ones, had no resistance whatsoever against the insect and very quickly it caused the almost complete destruction of the French vineyards. One of the results of that was a drying up of the import of brandy into England. The result of that again was a vacuum that helped blended whisky break out of Scotland into the English market; the world followed soon after.

What is certain is that distilled alcohol was a medicine before it was drunk ‘for fun’ and for the second insect in this wee tale, we have to go back a further 500 years or so. From the second half of the 13^th century onwards, Europe suffered a series of outbreaks of the Black Death. The waves of this plague killed millions of people and was caused by a bacterium, which was transferred from rats to humans by fleas (I am aware of the alternative theory that the Black Deach was actually caused by an ebola-like virus, but this theory is pretty controversial, so I stick to the generally accepted story for now). Among the many medicines that physicians gave to people (none of which worked as they had no knowledge of the real cause of the plague), were some that were based on distilled alcohol. Forbes, and other historians on the history of distilled alcohol, mention one theory of how and why distilled alcohol was transformed from a medicinal drug into a recreational drug. People who survived the Black Death and had taken alcohol-based medicines had found that the medicines made them feel nice and warm (even if it had nothing to do with their survival). So, the theory says, people started to drink alcohol-based medicines to get that warm and cosy feeling again. Whether this is really what happened will be very hard or impossible to prove, but the fact is that I have not come across a contemporary reference to people drinking distilled alcohol for anything other than medicinal reasons before the first big wave of the Black Death which started in 1347.

So, two historical events and the role that insects played in it. From a whisky perspective, they were freak events. Would whisky have the same standing in the world without grape phylloxera having ravaged the French vineyards more than a century ago? Maybe, maybe not .... Would people have started drinking alcoholic spirits without fleas spreading the Black Death? Again, there’s no way to know for sure. But the next time you savour a warming dram, think what influence these two wee insects may have had and that without them you might not be savouring that dram .....

© 2005 Alex Kraaijeveld