A magnificent text from Jean Elie in 1901, reflecting on the relevance of intercropping in vineyards amidst a wine sales slump

Food for thought in this period of crisis for Bordeaux wines. Might the solution lie in a return to polyculture? Thank you Michel Elie for sharing this text with us. --- VITICULTURAL TALK Intercropping in vineyards. Can intercropping in vineyards yield profits everywhere? This is a question put to me by several winegrowers. My answer is no. In the vineyards of grands crus where wine prices are high, in those planted on poor or uneven ground, on slopes, intercropping would yield only losses; but in all other soils where the vine does not yield an average of at least 60 hectolitres per hectare, there is every reason to thin the rows in order to introduce intercrops. To demonstrate the advantages of these crops, one must take one hectare of vines as a basis. The cultivation and maintenance of this hectare of vines cost around 600 fr. per year, and if its yield is only 60 hectolitres and the price of wine only 15 fr. per hectolitre—which nevertheless amounts to 900 fr.—this hectare of vines cannot yield a profit, for the 300 fr. are absorbed by harvesting, vinification, wine care, and all the other attendant costs until it rests in the buyer's cellars. If one were to grub up half the rows in this hectare of vines, that is to say one row in two, one would naturally incur only half the costs, namely 300 fr. instead of 600, and the vines, thus liberated by the removal of their neighbours, would yield almost as much wine; whilst the intercrops, well understood and well managed, would cover a good part of the vineyard's cultivation expenses. Such mixed crops were once practised on every estate in our region, and it was through these crops that our forefathers earned a living, despite having also endured crises of every description: vine diseases, price collapses, and a slump in the sales of their wines. Their vines were planted with inter-row spacings wide enough to allow all manner of intercrops, which were farmed on a sharecropping basis by the vignerons of the major proprietors, and the proceeds from these crops, which were net profit for them, covered the vigneron’s fixed fee, that is to say the cost of cultivating the vine. We shall inevitably have to return to this system of mixed cropping; it may well prove the salvation of estate owners; it is therefore fitting to study it closely, and we shall return to the subject. LE VIGNERON DE CÔTES ET DE PALUS. In Blayais, this 24th November 1901