Pierce's Disease Hurts Texas Wine

Filed in archive on February 11, 2007

California wine makers are concerned, and it looks like they have every right to be once you read about Pierce's Disease. Yikes! Yes, grapes are a crop before they become our fabulous glass of Merlot or tangy Chardonnay.

From Wine under siege:

Texas' burgeoning wine industry is looking to researchers in Fredericksburg to develop controls for a grapevine disease that has troubled wine producers throughout the South.

The malady is Pierce's Disease, a scourge spread by insects that abound in the Hill Country. The bacterium, which chokes off the water-conducting capabilities of a vine, is expanding into cooler areas and affects the European-variety grapes that growers would most like to raise.

The disease is considered one of the biggest problems facing California's massive wine industry and has limited the booming growth of wine-making in Texas. It will undergo closer examination after a research lab is built in Fredericksburg to replace an aging lab that has been conducting studies for two years.

[...] Since 1999, California officials report, about $210 million has been raised by government and private interests to control the disease.

Texas has received a slice of the federal Pierce's Disease funding since 2000 because of the glassy-winged sharpshooter. Investigators felt Texas would be a good laboratory for studying the makeup of the insect, its natural enemies and other factors that would lead to effective management.

Beth Stone-Smith, director of the glassy-winged sharpshooter program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in California, said work in Texas has been useful, but studies toward a cure are "in the infancy stage."

In Texas, the wine grape industry has boomed since the early 1970s. Texas is the nation's fifth-largest wine producing state, but it tops the list in production growth.

The Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association said the state has 3,700 acres of commercial vineyards and 129 commercial wineries, or 60 percent more wineries than two years ago.

The economic impact of the industry in Texas has reached $800 million, said Texas Wine Marketing Research Institute Director Tim Dodd.