THE “OED” OF WINE GRAPES: FIRST EDITION OF VIALA AND VERMOREL’S AMPELOGRAPHIE, WITH 500 BEAUTIFUL CHROMOLITHOGRAPHS

VIALA, Pierre and VERMOREL, Victor. Traite General de Viticulture: Ampélographie. Paris: Masson et Cie, 1901-1910. Seven volumes. Folio (10 by 15 inches), loose signatures, uncut and unopened, with publisher’s printed wrappers laid in. Each volume housed in custom burgundy cloth clamshell box.

First edition in seven volumes of the definitive work on grape vines by Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel, leaders in the newly emerging scientific field of ampelography, with 500 chromolithographed plates of grapes, 70 engraved plates, and 840 engraved illustrations in the text.

Renowned French viticulturalist Pierre Viala was instrumental in halting a vine infestation that by 1880 had devastated over two million acres of vineyards in France alone. His investigations into the insect phylloxera led him to the United States where he found several species of resistant varieties, shipped them overseas and grafted them to French vines, thus playing “an important role in the reconstitution of French vineyards” (Stafleu & Cowan 16:082). Victor Vermorel is perhaps best known for his invention of a device that applied copper sulphate sprays to vineyards in France. An exceptionally ambitious undertaking, begun in 1883 and not completed until 1910, Viala’s “Ampelographie” enlisted contributions from agriculturalists and viticulturists from around the world with the aim of cataloguing and describing every variety of wine grape. Still considered the most comprehensive encyclopedia of viticulture published, well-known winemakers have recently remarked that many of the varieties shown in the chromolithographs have disappeared; this is now the only record we have of many extinct varieties of grapes. The first volume contains a basic treatise of grapes, their biology, and history of their culture. The subsequent volumes offer detailed monographs on hundreds of different varieties of grapes under cultivation around the world. The last volume is a dictionary of grape varieties (Dictionnaire Ampelographique) listing thousands of named varieties and where they are found, along with an extensive bibliography. The 500 chromolithographed plates were produced by F. Chempenois, Paris, the firm that produced much of Alphonse Mucha’s finest work, after the superb drawings of A. Dreyder and J. Troncy. Text in French. With 500 plates: without plate 20 (Gougenot) in Vol. V, while plate 31 (Rastignier) in the same volume is present in duplicate. (Such plate anomalies are commonly found in this massive set.).

Text fine, plates completely clean and unworn. An increasingly scarce work.