Albert Seibel (1844–1936) was a French

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and

viticulturist Viticulture (from the Latin word for '' vine'') or winegrowing (wine growing) is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of '' Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine ...

who made hybrid crosses of European

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus '' Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years a ...

s (''

Vitis vinifera ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, is a species of flowering plant, native to the Mediterranean region, Central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern Iran. There are cur ...

'') with native North American grapes. His crosses are known as Seibel grapes.

Biography

Seibel was born in

Aubenas Aubenas (; oc, Aubenàs) is a commune in the southern part of the Ardèche department in Southern France. It is the seat of several government offices. The mountainous and rugged countryside is popular for vacation homes. The river Ardèche fl ...

in the Ardeche in 1844. In 1895, he founded a school to teach grafting methods. He died in 1936.

Breeding programme

In the 1860s the

Phylloxera plague The Great French Wine Blight was a severe blight of the mid-19th century that destroyed many of the vineyards in France and laid waste to the wine industry. It was caused by an aphid that originated in North America and was carried across the Atl ...

cut European wine production by more than two-thirds. As the pest originated in the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

, crossing American stock with European ''

'' varieties was one of the promising attempts to contain the disaster. The vines produced by this hybridization did not necessarily produce better wines, but did produce vine stock that could better survive Phylloxera attacks. Seibel and his company produced over 16,000 new hybrids, with nearly 500 varieties that were then grown commercially. He often used as a female parent the hybrid Jaeger 70, a cross between ''

Vitis lincecumii ''Vitis'' (grapevine) is a genus of 79 accepted species of vining plants in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. The genus is made up of species predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere. It is economically important as the source of grapes, ...

'' and ''

Vitis rupestris ''Vitis rupestris'' is a species of grape native to the United States that is known by many common names including July, Coon, sand, sugar, beach, bush, currant, ingar, rock, and mountain grape. It is used for breeding several French-American ...

'' produced by

Hermann Jaeger Hermann Jaeger (March 23, 1844 – c. May 17, 1895) was a Swiss-American viticulturist, honored as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his part in saving the French wine industry from the phylloxera root louse pest. Early life Hermann Ja ...

. Some of the most famous Seibel grapes are Aurore (Seibel 5279), Chancellor (Seibel 7053), Chelois (Seibel 10878), De Chaunac (Seibel 9549). His grapes were widely planted in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

.Pacheco, Aristides de Oliveira (1995) ''Iniciação à enologia'' Ed. SENAC, São Paulo, Brazil
; However, other than in countries such as Canada and the United States, Seibel grapes have fallen from favour in recent years due partly to restrictions in European law.

References

External links

Seibel, Albert Definition in the Wine Dictionary at Epicurious.com
accessed 4 October 2007;

Biography

Breeding programme

See also

References

External links

Further reading