Editing Grape Prejudice on Wikipedia

Yesterday I spent the afternoon editing Wikipedia entries about hybrid grapes because they were either factually wrong, omitted important and relevant information, or pushed prejudiced perspectives… and sometimes did all of this.

Sometimes the edits were small but important. In the entry on Hybrid Grape, a contributor thought it important to mention that they “exhibit a mix of traits” from their various parentages (this is true and relevant), and that hybrids with Vitis labrusca in their parentage “have a strong ‘candied’ or ‘wild strawberry’ aroma.” While I applaud this description (which isn’t the negative description I’ve found in other labrusca mentions), I changed this entry to read “can have a strong ‘candied’ or ‘wild strawberry’ aroma depending on many factors.”

Labruscana have come a long way since the original 50/50 crosses (200 years ago), and Concord (with its 75% labrusca parentage) is very different from, say, Marquette, which has labrusca in its parentage but is the result of many, many crosses including quite a few species. The similarities of flavor between Concord and Marquette are extremely minimal, and they do not share a “candied” aroma, despite both having labrusca in their parentage. Additionally, I’ve had labruscana that were picked and made in a way that none of these “characteristic” aromas were present. But it’s true that labruscana “can” have those flavors, depending on many factors.

Of course that begs the question of why even mention these things if you have to qualify them so extensively? Would it be relevant to say that “grapes with Vitis vinifera parentage can have aromas of cat piss and tar, depending on many factors”? This is factually true, but… does it matter to understanding vinifera? Or does it actively confuse people who haven’t been exposed to the wide variety of vinifera cultivars?

This double standard results from wine writers – likely MW’s or other “experts” – who have had very little exposure to anything but Vinifera Culture and see the world through the prism that limits “fine wine” to only European “pure” vinifera grapes (and usually only a select few of those). Several of the most egregiously prejudiced lines in some entries about the flavors hybrid grapes were actually cited, and the citation linked to entries in the Oxford Companion to Wine. So it seems more than just Wikipedia needs to be edited. While Vinifera Culture has been navel gazing for the last half-century or more, the rest of the world has continued to adapt and change, and… surprise! Vinifera Culture finds itself completely out of touch with the current realities in wine.

But more than lack of awareness permeates entries about hybrids. I edited the entry on the grape Kyoho, which started with the line: “Kyoho grapes (巨峰葡萄, Kyohō budō; lit. 'giant mountain grape'") are a fox grape (Concord-like) cross popular in East Asia.”

The term “fox grape” is, again, outdated, and also inaccurate. “Fox grape” is the term given to the crop wild relative (Vitis labrusca). The children of the sexual reproduction of labrusca with other species of grapes can no longer be called the fox grape. This might be semantic. I know many people have called grapes with labrusca parentage fox grapes, even if not entirely labrusca. But it might also be a dog whistle. What they seem to want to imply, strongly, is that Kyoho is a “foxy” grape, for those of you who know what I mean, wink wink.

What troubled me most was that the writer felt the need to put this piece of information as the first line in the entry about Kyoho. So someone coming to Wikipedia to learn about Kyoho now must see it through the lens of “fox grape” and what does that mean and how should I feel about that? How relevant to its existence and importance in the world of grapes is the fact that it has similar parentage to Concord and is a “fox grape”? I’m relatively sure that’s a designation that neither its breeder nor the billions of people who love it would ever apply to it.

So I changed the entry about Kyoho to read: “Kyoho grapes (巨峰葡萄, Kyohō budō; lit. 'giant mountain grape'") are the most planted grapes in the world by area.[citation added] They are a variety of hybrid grape popular in East Asia.” Isn’t that a more accurate, helpful, and unbiased introduction to a grape you might be trying to learn more about?

Then there were the really big changes. The “History” section of the entry for Hybrid Grape in Wikipedia read:

“During the first half of the 20th century, various breeding programs were developed in an attempt to deal with the consequences of the Phylloxera louse, which was responsible for the destruction of European vineyards from 1863 onwards. After extensive attempts, grafting European varieties onto North American rootstock proved to be the most successful method of dealing with the problem.”

I changed it to read:

“During the first half of the 20th century, various breeding programs were developed in an attempt to deal with the consequences of globalization, which resulted in Europeans and European-Americans bringing the Phylloxera louse from North America to Europe, as well as several North American parasitic fungi - like black rot (Guignardia bidwellii), downey mildew (peronospora), and powdery mildew (oidium). Phylloxera devastated European vineyards throughout the late 1800's. While many hybrids were able to successfully resist Phylloxera, as well as the novel fungal pressures, European producers chose to graft their susceptible traditional, single-species European varieties onto North American resistant rootstock.”

I spent a lot of time re-writing to choose this wording and version of history-telling, and I won’t go into all the details. But one of the things that I think is worth noting is the line ending the previous version saying that grafting “proved the most successful method of dealing with the problem.”

What bothers me about that line is that I don’t think grafting actually dealt with the problem. The problem wasn’t Phylloxera. The problem was an unwillingness to adapt. The problem wasn’t with the world, out there, it was with our prejudices and perspectives, inside us. If phylloxera was the problem, hybrid grapes did and do deal with that problem and the other “problems” of grape-loving fungi. But Europeans instead chose not to adapt, but rather employed a technique that allowed them to continue to grow their susceptible varieties of vinifera: i.e. grafting. However, this left the problem of the fungi, which they dealt with by using new chemical pesticides. Again… this didn’t deal with the problem, actually. It kept their viticulture stagnate an enabled them to avoid adapting.

What this wiki edit, and really all of the edits I’ve done, shows is that the problem was never dealt with. The real problem continues to shape the thinking of those who have come to know wine through this culture, and it comes out in the way they write about wine and grapes on Wikipedia. Until we free our minds from the prejudice of Vinifera Culture, we’ll continue to kick this problem down the road for someone else to deal with… for someone else to try to edit.

After spending a couple hours editing, I did find a bit of encouragement. I realized I could see that stats associated with my account, and I discovered that thousands of people have visited the pages where I’ve attempted to edit out prejudice and mis-information in the past. My hope is that these are new wine lovers, new wine journalists, looking for unbiased information about these grapes. Maybe by learning about these grapes without the slant of a vinifera-centric perspective they will be part of the generation that actually deals with the problems that cause the problems.

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