Laliman Léopold

The French horticultural expert Léopold Laliman (1817-1897) was supposed to be the first to recognise, in connection with the phylloxera catastrophe in France in 1869, that many American vines were immune to phylloxera. He was thus a pioneer of grafting. However, when he later claimed the 300,000 francs suspended as a prize for a solution to the problem from the Commission for the Control of Phylloxera convened by the Ministry of Agriculture, he was turned down. Laliman and the botanist Maxime Cornu (1843-1904) presented the chemist (and later phylloxera commissioner) Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) with wines from the American hybrids Clinton, Cunningham, Delaware, Herbemont, Isabella and Jacquez (by the way, with the synonym Long Laliman) for analysis and tasting. At that time, among many others, there was the idea of solving the phylloxera problem by partially using American vines for wine production. Pasteur passed on his findings to Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1800-1884), then head of the commission. Only the wine from the Clinton supposedly did not have any obtrusive or unpleasant foxtone.

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Laliman Léopold

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