On the State of Viticulture in the Adige Valley

Austrian Monarchy.

From the Adige Valley. The stranger who travels for the first time from harsher regions into our pleasant valleys marvels at the lavishness of nature, which weaves vine upon vine across the mountain slopes and ripens golden grapes in abundance by autumn; and once he learns that the land is largely in the hands of the peasants, that the husbandman who performs the arduous labor also reaps its fruit, and that almost every cottage rising from the vineyard houses its owner, he imagines himself in not only the most blessed, but also the richest of lands, and doffs his hat to the peasant who is a master in his own right. Yet the lot of the wealthy winegrowers is far from simple, and conditions are unfortunately worsening rather than improving. Things are no longer as they once were, and when the proprietor in these parts draws up his accounts at the close of the year and has lived without squandering, is the majority of them truly satisfied? We believe the causes lie in the continual expansion of acreage devoted to viticulture, in its costly cultivation, in excessive land fragmentation, in exorbitant property prices, and in the manner of marketing the product—above all, however, in the fact that the price of poor wine bears no proportion to that of excellent wine. Without delving back to the initial land cadastres, we need only consider the past 30 to 40 years to believe—even if we cannot prove it through statistical records—that in the district captaincies of Bozen and Meran at least a quarter, if not a third, more wine is produced now than then, owing to the cultivation undertaken in the interim. The sales radius has remained unchanged: it is confined to our own district, North Tyrol, and Vorarlberg, the latter of which is furthermore partly supplied with its own wines, while in the Lower Inn Valley and Puster Valley Austrian and Styrian wines are sometimes consumed, and Italian or at least Welschtirol wines are partly sold both here and across the rest of Tyrol. The population of Tyrol has not increased substantially, and any greater thirst is quenched by the numerous newly established breweries. Yet viticulture itself has grown costlier at a far higher rate. Litter, indirectly required for field manuring, has risen in price owing to the drainage of the marshes in the Adige Valley to such an extent that a Tagmahd of marsh, which 30 to 40 years ago sold for 60 to 150 or 200 florins, is presently paid at 300 to 500, even 800 florins. The timber indispensably required for the vine trellis (bergeln) system is, given the widespread exploitation and outright devastation of the forests, at least three times as expensive as before, and often almost impossible to procure. Meadows necessary for maintaining livestock cost twice as much, taxes have been raised, provisions are far dearer, and the wages for farmhands and day laborers have increased enormously on account of the luxury that has crept into this class as well. A capable farmhand demands, in addition, at least two measures of wine daily, however poor, and his four to five meals, of which midday dinner at a large farmer's table would be a veritable banquet for a more frugal North German or Italian. Yet amidst this disproportionate rise in operating costs, the price of wine—that is, the return—has remained almost identical over the past 30 to 40 years. By contrast, the price of the land itself, especially around Bozen, has climbed along with cultivation expenses, to which our wretched currency conditions in recent years have contributed considerably, so that in certain districts such as Dorf and Fagen near Bozen, the Graber, which is 164 square fathoms, commands a value of 800 to 1,000 florins. Anyone familiar with the situation must smile when it is claimed that vineyards, at their current market value, yield more than 4 percent return to the owner who farms them himself, or more than 2½ percent to the estate owner who has them worked by laborers. To this must be added, particularly in the district of Kaltern, that is in the whole Überetsch, the severe parceling of estates, with the result that often after a single bad year the indebted owner must surrender his land to his creditor, whereupon another year's returns are consumed by the transfer tax. Into what a burden of debt the inheriting son then enters, often taking on departing siblings as none too merciful mortgagees, and how difficult it becomes for him to keep up the farm, can easily be understood. That excessive fragmentation of property is exceedingly harmful to cultivation itself, as it dissipates energies, is known to every agronomist.

When the proprietor finally carries the harvest, happily spared from hail and pests, into the cellar, hardship only truly begins for many, and especially for the poorer ones. Whoever does not possess an estate in an exceptional location, whoever does not sell wine by the glass himself, or whoever does not produce enough to supply an innkeeper or carter as a steady client, depends on the few wine merchants who will indeed buy his goods, but only at low prices; he is even frequently forced, having received cash advances from them throughout the year and lacking the vessels to store the wine in bountiful vintages, to sell off his harvest for next to nothing. The wine merchant, on the other hand, whose profit is likewise not so brilliant, generally requires enormous capital on which he must pay interest if he does not own it outright, since he realizes revenue only after a year; he faces steep cellar expenses and often heavy losses from buyers, as every innkeeper receives wine on credit simply because supply is overly abundant. To this is added a custom perhaps unique of its kind: the buyer, and not the seller, determines the price, since for German Tyrol wine is traded almost everywhere according to the Saint James tariff that is yet to be established.

Another, and perhaps the most significant shortcoming, is the lack of proportion between the prices of superior and inferior wine. It is an unavoidable consequence that, if producing 4 Yhren of inferior wine per Graber yields a better return than producing one Yhre of excellent or two Yhren of good wine, all care is directed solely toward producing as much as possible; yet this cannot be achieved except by artificially stimulating all natural forces through excessive manuring, trellis training, flooding, etc., whereby the product inevitably deteriorates because nature is driven beyond her limits. Nor can any care be devoted to the vinification itself. People deny our Tyrolean wines any bouquet, asserting that they can never rival the noble varieties of foreign wines. We consider this entirely incorrect and believe the main cause lies solely in the method of preparation. The saddest outcome, however, is that common wines, owing precisely to their method of production and preparation, scarcely keep for more than a year without turning to vinegar or spoiling in some other way; the entire yield must therefore be consumed annually because it cannot be stored, and is consequently parted with at any price instead of retaining stocks for future lean years.

That under such conditions the prosperity of the once-affluent Adige Valley must decline is evident. Yet it is easier to recognize the causes of this decline than to devise remedies for it. An individual is powerless; it could only be achieved through united strength and the dissemination of practical ideas, and to provide the impulse for this is the duty of the agricultural society, which unfortunately enjoys very little participation. (Conclusion follows.)