故事
The technical dossier of the replanting: a ten-page article from 1909, read closely, and the figures that show how an entire vineyard region was replaced — not with enthusiasm, but with soil,…
The technical dossier of the replanting: a ten-page article from 1909, read closely, and the figures that show how an entire vineyard region was replaced — not with enthusiasm, but with soil, lime and temperature.
Phylloxera did not arrive in Transylvania as a scientific surprise. It had appeared in Hungary in 1874, at Pancsova, and by 1889 it was attested in the Târnava region. In the meantime growers had tried everything: forced uprooting of diseased vineyards, carbon disulphide treatments, intensive cultivation of the vines.
The 1909 article shows why none of it worked. Carbon disulphide was injected into the soil at 24–28 g/m² and worked only if the vine was still strong; the “cultural method” gave results only on light, dry soils. In Transylvania the old vineyards had roots close to the surface and were planted irregularly — impossible to treat uniformly. The treatments required an ordered vineyard, and the old vineyards were not ordered.
By the late 1890s phylloxera and downy mildew had destroyed, in practice, all the vineyards of the Kokel and Mureș regions. The answer that remained was not to save the diseased vine but to replace it: American rootstock, European scion. A survival technique that became, within two decades, an industry.
In 1889 Michael Ambrosi sen. submitted to the council of the Saxon Agricultural Association a memorandum calling for a Viticulture Commission. He did not ask for money, he asked for coordination: who inspects the outbreaks, who orders uprooting, who instructs the growers. The commission was founded, and he became its president.
From 1892 Friedrich Caspari — returned from Klosterneuburg and appointed state commissioner for combating phylloxera — worked alongside him for ten years. Together they held courses and rural sessions in the villages, explained grafting and legitimised it before growers who looked at the American vine with suspicion. The change was not only technical; it was a change in trust.
The result of that period can be seen in two places. The first is in the vineyards: replanted land, vine schools, nurseries. The second is on paper: Michael Ambrosi jun.'s 1909 article is the technical report of the generation that moved from panic to method. The commission did not enter the manuals; it entered the vineyard.
Choosing a rootstock was not a matter of preference but of soil. Riparia portalis suited fertile, deep soils, neither wet nor too dry, and tolerated no more than 12% calcium carbonate; Rupestris monticola was for light, dry soils in high, warm positions, with a tolerance of up to 30%; Solonis was for deep, wet soils with up to 25% lime, but it did not fully resist phylloxera. The new Berlandieri × Riparia 157 tolerated over 50% lime.
To know which rootstock to choose, the nursery used a Bernard calcimeter — a simple instrument that measured the lime in the soil from the amount of carbon dioxide released. Then came preparation: deep ripping to 60–80 cm, done with mattock and spade, not with explosives as in some parts of Hungary. Planting was at least 120 cm apart.
Grafting had two routes. In the vineyard, the American rootstock was planted and grown for two years, and in the third year, in May, the shoots were green-grafted by simple copulation at 60–80 cm. In the nursery, wooden grafting — English copulation — was followed by “Moosveredlung”: the grafts were laid in moss-lined boxes at 20–24 °C and high humidity, where callus formed in about three weeks. The method made the difference between a trade and an industry.
In 1909 the article spoke of two large nurseries in Transylvania, producing millions of grafts a year and employing together 800–1000 people at the peak of the season. They were not rootstock gardens; they were enterprises with a season, a hierarchy and deliveries on time.
At Buftea, where Michael Ambrosi jun. was associate and director from 1907, the scale is visible in figures: 40 ha of rootstock vineyard, 12 ha of grafted-vine school, 30 ha of apricots and plums, an orchard grown from 10 ha in 1904 to 50 ha in 1909. Irrigation supplied about 3 million litres a day. Eight to ten million rootstocks were produced each year, sold at home or exported to the Baltic countries.
The labour was local and trained at Aiud: in spring, at grafting, at deliveries and at the tree school, 800–1000 people worked daily. Such a concentration of people in a rural economy is hard to imagine today; for the period it meant that the rhythm of the villages moved, in spring, into the nursery. Hence the name “school of vines”: people learned a trade that was exported.
Grafted vines do not sell themselves. They need a catalogue, a price list, a way of paying and a railway wagon. Ambrosi built all four. The 1936 catalogue of the nursery — “Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.”, Aiud — is not a simple list: it carries conditions of sale, guarantees of varietal authenticity, complaint deadlines and a CEC account.
Transport explained the geography. The depots at Mediaș stood beside the railway, and orders left by train: within the monarchy, to the Kingdom of Romania and to the Baltic countries. Later the family would reach South Africa too — Hans Ambrosi led the viticulture department at Stellenbosch between 1954 and 1964 — but that is another branch of the story.
The details in the catalogue show a modern business: payment in advance, the rest by cash on delivery, packing and loading into the wagon charged at 5–10% of the invoice, complaints accepted within eight days. Prices were in lei, and buyers could ask for information on the telephone at Aiud 22. A catalogue is, in the end, a photograph of a market: who buys, what they pay and what they are promised.
The document behind this page is a ten-page article: “Die Weingartenerneuerung in Siebenbürgen”, signed Michael Ambrosi jun., Nagyenyed (Aiud), printed in 1909 on pages 39–48 of the journal. It is not a memoir; it is a technical report, with soils, figures and methods.
Ambrosi writes as a man who saw failure at close range. He begins with useless uprooting and carbon disulphide, continues with rootstocks, the calcimeter, deep ripping, grafting and the vine school, and ends with varieties and yields. The tone is dry, but it contains a sentence that gives the stakes away: after fifteen years of experience, it can be said that the future belongs to grafting.
The last page is the hardest. Phylloxera, he writes, ravaged the vineyards so badly that many growers were forced to take up their staff and try their luck beyond the ocean. The article does not hide the loss; it names it. That is precisely why it is a document of the replanting, not a brochure for it.
人物
葡萄委员会主席，苗圃经营者，嫁接小册子的作者
老迈克尔·安布罗西（1862—1933）出身特尔纳瓦地区一个古老的种植者家庭。1875 年父亲去世，他十三岁辍学，接手家族的葡萄园、耕地与牧场；从那时起，他在葡萄园里学这门手艺。1889 年根瘤蚜抵达这一带时，他向萨克森农业协会理事会提交报告，要求设立一个葡萄委员会；委员会成立，他被任命为主席。自 1892 年起，他与弗里德里希·卡斯帕里共事十年，举办课程与实操，1901 年起在协会理事会中代表萨克森种植者。他在梅迪亚什有 20 公顷，种葡萄藤与美洲杂交藤苗；在克勒丘内尔有 70 公顷，那片土地在国有化之后成为布拉日研究站的基础。他写过关于嫁接的小册子，其中有《一种新的嫁接法》（1910 年，1928 年修订）。
Portrait苗圃经营者，阿尤德与布夫泰亚的经理，《Der praktische Weinbauer》的作者，梅迪亚什市长
小迈克尔·安布罗西（1880—1940）先后就读梅迪亚什农业学校（1894—1897）、沙尔瓦尔乳品学校（1897—1898），1903 年毕业于布达福克葡萄栽培学院。1902 年，他主导了买下阿尤德产业之事，该产业 1905 年得名「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」，他从 1912 年起执掌；1906 年出版《Der praktische Weinbauer》，共三版，1913 年在克拉约瓦出了罗马尼亚文版。自 1907 年起，他任布夫泰亚 Știrbey 亲王苗圃的合伙人兼经理，那里有 40 公顷插条、12 公顷嫁接藤苗学校，每年 800—1000 万株藤苗。1919 年他接手格雷芬贝格葡萄园，1924 年迁居梅迪亚什，1920 年代完成了那些无性系选育——皇家费特亚斯卡之名很可能即由此而来。1933 年起任梅迪亚什市长。
Portrait律师，葡萄种植者，梅迪亚什福音教会堂务委员
阿尔弗雷德·安布罗西博士（1895—1974）毕业于斯特凡·路德维希·罗特中学，随后在第一次世界大战中作为炮兵上了前线。负伤并中毒气之后，他在克卢日—纳波卡攻读法律，1921 年取得博士学位；此后又在柏林农业大学与商学院深造葡萄栽培知识。他为汉堡的胡戈·施廷内斯工作过几年，之后又为同一位雇主在国内效力。1927 年他接手克勒丘内尔的产业，在那里以最现代的方法栽培葡萄，并因葡萄酒品类与酒窖经营而知名。藤苗出口为他赢得国际声誉，尤其是「Ambrosi-special」选系，以及在葡萄栽培大会上的展示。1942 年他成为梅迪亚什福音教会的堂务委员，直至移居德国。1974 年卒于慕尼黑；他为特兰西瓦尼亚葡萄酒做的广告出现在 1967、1971 和 1972 年的德国报刊上。
Portrait黑森州立葡萄园总监——埃伯巴赫修道院；葡萄酒作家
汉斯·安布罗西（1925—2012）1942 年在锡比乌布鲁肯塔尔中学通过毕业考试，随即被征入伍，派往俄军前线。战后他于 1947 年永久迁往德国，1948 至 1951 年在斯图加特—霍恩海姆攻读农学，两年后取得博士学位。他先后在盖森海姆的嫁接葡萄藤研究所工作，随后任斯图加特—霍恩海姆果树学研究所助理。1954 年他前往南非，主持斯泰伦博斯大学葡萄栽培系，并创建了 Nietvoorbij 研究所。1966 年起，他任黑森州立葡萄园总监，驻埃伯巴赫修道院，修复了修道院，并创办了莱茵高音乐节。1990 年退休，出版六十多本书；2001 年获特兰西瓦尼亚萨克森人文化奖。
Portrait重植欧洲的先驱，安布罗西家族的合作伙伴，防治根瘤蚜的国家专员
弗里德里希·卡斯帕里（1858—1935）是与老迈克尔·安布罗西并列的另一位重植欧洲的先驱。他在维也纳近郊的克洛斯特新堡葡萄栽培学校受训，1892 年回到特兰西瓦尼亚，被任命为防治根瘤蚜的国家专员。同年，他开始与老迈克尔·安布罗西合作，十年间共同举办众多课程与实操。家族纪念册描述了势力范围的分野：卡斯帕里主要向西工作——特兰西瓦尼亚、匈牙利、奥地利、德国、列支敦士登、俄国——并在瓦拉希亚做过一些事，任德勒格沙尼 Știrbey 亲王苗圃的经理，在布加勒斯特近郊的若伊察有一座苗圃。安布罗西则向东与向南，后来还越过大洋。此处所用的生卒年并不见于家族纪念册。
Portrait亲王，德勒格沙尼与布夫泰亚苗圃的主人
在安布罗西家族的资料里，巴尔布·Știrbey 以亲王以及德勒格沙尼和布夫泰亚苗圃主人的身份出现。小迈克尔·安布罗西 1904 年在布夫泰亚为他种下一片十公顷的果园，1909 年扩至 50 公顷，并照管 30 公顷杏与李；自 1907 年起，他任亲王苗圃的合伙人兼经理。同样在布夫泰亚，还有 40 公顷插条葡萄园和 12 公顷嫁接藤苗学校，配一套每天约三百万升的灌溉系统，雇工则在阿尤德受过专门训练。
Portrait阿尤德「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」公司的合伙人
关于约瑟夫·菲舍尔，本卷宗的资料几乎没有留下什么：没有日期，没有肖像，没有信件。他的名字活了下来，留在阿尔巴县阿尤德的「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」公司里；这家公司 1936 年秋季的目录（九月于阿尤德印行）只在信头上提到他，旁边是电报地址「Ambrosi-Fischer Aiud」、电话 22 和邮政储蓄账户 43.026。公司自称是罗马尼亚苗圃经营者总会的成员，并注明已存在「三十五年有余」，这意味着其开端在 1901 年之前。1936—1937 年的目录列出结果果树、玫瑰、美洲砧木与嫁接葡萄藤，其中有皇家费特亚斯卡。就这些：一个公司名、一座苗圃、一份目录。
Portrait