when you think of an old disease that decimated the European population you probably think of the black plague but when it comes to Wine it’s actually this tiny yellow pest it’s called phra and it doesn’t just look gross in the 1800s it almost killed wine as we know it the disease was brought to European Vineyards unknowingly by botanists the bugs would feed on a Vines Roots relentlessly until the vine died fura ripped through European Vineyards in France for example it killed half of the country’s wine production and caused thousands of Growers to flee so how do we still have fantastic French Spanish Italian wines and more today well American Vines did have a defense against f they had evolved to deal with the pest by releasing sta which would clog the mouths of the bugs when it tried to feed on the roots of the vine now wine Growers didn’t want to start planting and harvesting from American Vines The Vines they were using in Europe already produced much better wine but they had an idea could they combine the two into one could they use American vines on the bottom to fight fxra and European vines on the top to produce the grapes they could and it completely saved European Vineyards Europe is back to producing well over half the world’s wine and almost all of it is from these grafted Vines
