Francisco Solano Fuentes was a Spanish wine expert engaged in the late 1870s by the newly-founded South African Wine Growers' Association to help revive the deteriorating wine industry in the Western Cape, following the introduction of phylloxera in 1873. By that time he had already written A short manual on the manipulation of wines (Cape Town, 1872, with a separate Dutch edition), a pamphlet containing some elementary instructions for wine farmers. By 1879 he had become a member of the South African Philosophical Society, remaining on the list of members to 1883. At the meetings of the society in February and March 1881 he read two papers on viticulture. The first, "Notes on the soils and manures suitable for the cultivation of the vine at the Cape", was illustrated by some diagrams prepared by the Vine Diseases Commission. The second was titled "On the vine and its culture".

Fuentes was declared insolvent in 1883, and appears to have been employed in the Public Works Department of the Cape Colony around 1900.

List of sources:

FamilySearch: Francisco Solano Fuentes. https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.anyPlace=South Africa&q.givenName=Francisco Solando&q.recordCountry=South Africa&q.surname=Fuentes

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Fuentes, Francisco Solando / Fuentes, F.S.

South African bibliography to the year 1925. London: Mansell, 1979.

South African Philosophical Society. Transactions, 1877-1883, Vol. 1-3, lists of members; Vol. 2, pp. xlviii-xlix: Minutes of Proceedings.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2024-05-29 11:48:08