Academe

academe, originally a Greek word for a site of scholastic endeavour, and today a term embracing all that is achieved there. It impinges considerably on the world of wine.

Winemaking was already a sophisticated practical art by the beginning of the 19th century, and Europe’s first formal viticultural training school was established in sachsen in what is now eastern Germany in 1811–12. In the second half of the century, however, the seminal work of Louis pasteur heralded its transition to an applied science worthy of academic study. Vine-growing and winemaking were soon recognized as academic disciplines and in 1880, coincidentally, both the University of California (now established at davis) and the Institut d’Oenologie at the University of bordeaux began teaching and researching viticulture and oenology. The devastation caused in the mid to late 19th century by fungal diseases and the phylloxera pest may help to explain the coincidence.