François Baco

François Baco

François Baco (born May 11, 1865 in Peyrehorade , † March 17, 1947 in Labatut ) was a French teacher and vine grower. Some of his most successful breeds still bear his name today.

In Lesperon , Villeneuve de Marsan , Dax , Labatut, Soustans , Morceux and later in Bélus in the Landes , Baco first gave school lessons. Through Duffour-Bazin he got involved in the fight against phylloxera , which had threatened the local vineyards since 1880. With Lucien Daniel he learned the professional grafting of European noble vines on American rootstock .

With the occurrence of the fungal disease black rot of the vine in 1896, he began to breed fungus-resistant hybrid vines . He fertilized over 1200 inflorescences according to a system and finally planted over 50,000 seeds on the estate of his friend Jules Darrignan, Grand Boué in Labatut. In several years of controls, Baco selected approx. 7000 plants from the more than 50,000 seedlings, of which hardly more than 10 varieties were marketed from 1912 onwards.

The most important breeds

• The grape variety Baco Blanc (also called Baco 22A) was created in 1898 from a cross between the grape varieties Folle Blanche x Noah . Until the beginning of the 1970s it was the main component of the Armagnac brandy and was then replaced by the Ugni Blanc grape variety through the general EU ban on hybrid vines . It has been severely cleared since then and was only officially approved until the end of 2010. After 24,427 hectares of vineyards were raised in the survey in 1958, according to the last survey by ONIVINS in 2007 there were only 827 hectares that were planted with Baco Blanc in southwest France.

Due to the sensitivity to the golden yellow yellowing (French: Flavescence dorée), their share also decreased sharply. François initially marketed the grape variety under the name Maurice Baco, in memory of his son who died at the age of 17.

• Baco Noir (also called Baco 1) was created in 1902 from a cross of the white Folle Blanche x Vitis riparia . It was temporarily cultivated in different wine-growing regions of France. The area under vines was 11,749 hectares in 1958. In 1951, Baco Noir was introduced in the USA, where it is used in many cooler wine-growing regions (New York (→ Viticulture in New York , 240 hectares of vineyards with Baco Noir), Michigan (→ Viticulture in Michigan ) , Mississippi (→ Viticulture in Mississippi ), Wisconsin (→ Viticulture in Wisconsin ), New Hampshire (→ Viticulture in New Hampshire ) and Pennsylvania (→ Viticulture in Pennsylvania )) is still of great importance today. The grape variety has also been in use in Canada since 1955 .

Other varieties were named La Céline (Baco 12-12), L'Estellat (Baco 30-12), Olivar (Baco 30-15), Douriou (Baco 37-16), Chasselas Baco (Baco 7A), Tôtmur (Baco 2-16), Le Rescapé (Baco 9-11) or Le Cazalet (Baco 58-15).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cépages et vignobles de France, Tome 1 - les vignes américaines, Pierre Galet, page 514
2. ↑ LES CEPAGES BLANCS DANS LE VIGNOBLE (PDF) ( Memento from March 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), statistics on white grape varieties per Greater Region, Part 1, publication of the OFFICE NATIONAL INTERPROFESSIONNEL DES FRUITS, DES LEGUMES, DES VINS ET DE L'HORTICULTURE - ONIVINS for short, as of 2008
3. ↑ LES CEPAGES BLANCS DANS LE VIGNOBLE (PDF) ( Memento from March 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), statistics on white grape varieties per greater region, part 2, publication of the OFFICE NATIONAL INTERPROFESSIONNEL DES FRUITS, DES LEGUMES, DES VINS ET DE L'HORTICULTURE - ONIVINS for short, as of 2008

Web links

• François Baco on the website of the Center culturel du Pays d'Orthe (in French)

literature

• Pierre Galet : Cépages et vignobles de France, Tome 1 - les vignes américaines . 2nd Edition. 1988, ISBN 2-902771-03-7 .
• Jancis Robinson : The Oxford Wine Lexicon, 3rd revised edition . 1st edition. Gräfe and Unzer Verlag, Munich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8338-0691-9 .