A devastating vine disease, flavescence dorée, threatens to wipe out Hungary’s wine industry, with 21 of 22 regions now infected
ZALASZENTGRÓT: Hungarian winemaker Viktor Keszler was forced to rip out young vines after just three harvests due to a devastating disease.
The vines, infected by flavescence dorée, should have lasted at least 25 years.
“We spray our vineyard to protect it, but it is futile,” the 45-year-old told AFP.
“The leafhoppers carrying the disease move to untreated vineyards or wild vines nearby and return infected.”
Hungary is the world’s 14th-largest wine producer and home to renowned regions like UNESCO-listed Tokaj.
Flavescence dorée is described by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine as “one of the most dangerous diseases” threatening vineyards today.
The disease is transmitted by the American grapevine leafhopper, a pest that has spread across central Europe.
Experts blame its proliferation on neglected vines, warmer winters, and the EU’s discontinuation of hazardous pesticides.
Infection, usually indicated by discoloured leaves, greatly reduces vine productivity and has no known cure.
The disease was first detected in Hungary in 2013.
Critics say most winemakers and the government did not take it seriously enough until this year.
It has now been detected in 21 of the country’s 22 wine regions.
The outbreak especially hurts smaller producers like Keszler.
He was forced to uproot half a hectare in his four-hectare vineyard this year due to the high infection rate.
Keszler and fellow winemakers united this summer to raise the alarm.
“If we don’t take this seriously, it could effectively wipe out Hungarian grape production,” warned János Frittmann of the National Council of Wine Communities.
He said the outbreak caught the industry off-guard.
“Previously winemakers were probably not alarmed enough, many did not even know the symptoms,” he told AFP.
The government allocated about 10 million euros in September to detect and protect against the disease’s spread.
Inspectors have since checked close to 8,700 hectares of vineyards and collected thousands of samples.
The agriculture ministry insisted the government responded quickly to an “escalating epidemic”.
It said existing measures had “slowed down” the disease’s spread over the past 12 years.
Some claim the government did not provide enough resources for prevention.
Plant protection specialist Gergely Gaspar said the food safety authority’s department was “understaffed and underfunded”.
He told AFP that around Monor, near Budapest, authorities did not carry out random vineyard inspections for six years.
A lack of laboratory capacity also drags on sample evaluation, he added.
Gaspar, who lost all his own vines to the disease, said a lack of scientific groundwork had “disastrous consequences”.
“Popular grape varieties in Hungary do not show textbook symptoms,” said the expert.
“My biggest gripe is that we just learned this now in the midst of the crisis.”
Researcher Elisa Angelini said Hungary’s wineries must learn to live with the disease.
“The disease is usually discovered in a new area four years after the infection on average, when it is already too late to eradicate it,” she told AFP.
Winemaker Keszler said at times he feels combating the disease is “hopeless”.
“But if the state and local municipalities become involved, then we can be successful,” he said. – AFP
