“95 or more percent of all the vines grown anywhere in the world are planted on American rootstock, because it turned out there’s your cure [to the pyylloxera plague],” says Master Sommelier and Master of Wine Doug Frost. “And it’s C. V. Riley and it’s George Husmann and it’s Isidor Bush and Herman Yeager, who quickly figured this one out. They’re like, ‘Well, we coexist with the plant, so you graft our American rootstock with European vines. It’s expensive, it’s difficult, but it can be done. And your plants will be fine. Your wine industry will recover.’ It took decades for that to happen because it’s a very expensive process. And we think millions of plants were shipped from Missouri by those four individuals to France, such that there is a statue in Southern France to them today because it’s understood. They saved not just the French wine industry, but frankly, the wine industry [as a whole].”
