Grape Sharpshooter

Deadly Pest Sours Vintners' Grapes
Washington Post, March 27, 2000

NAPA, Calif. ­ In the vineyards that shimmer for miles across this lustrous valley, grape growers are bracing for one of the toughest battles California's huge wine industry has ever waged against a pest. The enemy is the glassy-winged sharpshooter, a tiny but voracious leaf-hopping insect that is making an unwelcome new home in the state. It carries a powerful bacterial disease that slowly but surely chokes the life out of vines. It is on the loose, and no one has much of a clue yet on how it can be stopped. "People are nervous, people are frightened," said Drew Johnson, a viticulturist at Beringer Vineyards near here. "It's very hard to control where a thing like this goes, and it can do terrible damage." Signs of the coming struggle are visible along rustic two-lane Highway 29, which rolls through the fabled heart of hundreds of California's premier wineries in Napa County, about 75 miles north of San Francisco. Long strips of sticky yellow tape that trap insects are being placed along the edge of some vineyards. Grape pickers constantly check vines for evidence of trouble. Plants shipped here from around the state that could carry the pest are being tagged for inspection. And there is growing clamor to take the extreme step of banning from the region any ornamental plants that host the sharpshooter.

It is a fight California's winemakers can hardly afford to lose. The state, which has nearly 1 million acres of vineyards, is among the world's leading wine producers and the source of most of the bottles that Americans drink. Wine is also a vital part of California's economy and tourist industry, generating about $33 billion a year. And these are boom times: Consumer demand for California wines keeps rising, new vineyards are opening all over the state, and profits are strong. The little insect could change all of that. "Everyone is really mobilizing against this threat," said Joelle Gallagher, executive director of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association. "Almost our entire economy here is dependent on wine grapes." The vineyards are racing against time. The sharpshooter already is wreaking havoc in a few agricultural corners of Southern California, leaving acres of vines shriveled and useless ­ as if they had been struck by a harsh drought. Winemakers near San Diego now fear for their livelihood, saying that if the insect or the bacterial disease it spreads is not conquered in the next few years, the relatively small industry there could be wiped out. Some vineyard owners already are contemplating turning their ruined fields into golf courses.