There exist, in a few rare pockets in unexpected places, grape vines that survived the “great wine blight” of the late 1800s, which decimated the vineyards of France before moving on to the rest of Europe.
The blight was caused by a microscopic aphid called Phylloxera vastatrix. It was unknowingly introduced to France by one Monsieur Borty, a wine merchant living in the Rhône Valley, who imported American vine cuttings and planted them in 1862, giving the aphid, which hid...
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