Biting the hand that feeds IT Biting the hand that feeds IT 
| Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World | ||
| Special Order | ||
| Book Information | |
| The near-collapse of the French wine industry in the second half of the nineteenth century is a story of ecological disaster on an epic scale. The unwitting culprit was a French wine-merchant who improved American vines without realising that their roots carried a tiny, destructive aphid called phylloxera. Only after one million hectares of French vineyards had been destroyed - and a range of bizarre theories explaining the cause of the blight suggested - did Jules-Emile Planchon propose the solution. Grafting aphid-resistant American vines onto their infected French cousins was a controversial remedy tthat ignited passions on both sides of the Atlantic. And the story is not yet over. Even now, new strains of phylloxera are attacking teh vineyards of Austrailia, California and New Zealand. . . |
Published by: HARPERCOLLINS