Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World

A historical investigation into the mysterious bug that wiped out the vineyards of France and Europe in the 1860s – and how one young botanist eventually ‘saved wine for the world’.

In the early 1860s, vines in the lower Rhône valley, and then around Bordeaux, inexplicably began to wither and die. Panic seized France, and Jules-Émile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered the roots of a dying vine covered in microscopic yellow ...