Great French Wine Blight | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 05/06/2019

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight


00:02:37 1 Background
00:04:10 1.1 Phylloxera
00:05:12 1.2 Journey to Europe
00:06:20 2 The blight
00:06:29 2.1 Initial appearance
00:07:25 2.2 Damage
00:08:23 2.3 Discovery
00:13:06 2.4 Solution
00:15:13 2.4.1 Prize
00:16:04 3 Present day
00:17:13 4 Notes and references



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SUMMARY
=======
The Great French Wine Blight was a severe blight of the mid-19th century that destroyed many of the vineyards in France and laid waste the wine industry. It was caused by an aphid (the actual genus of the aphid is still debated, although it is largely considered to have been a species of Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, commonly known as grape phylloxera) that originated in North America and was carried across the Atlantic in the late 1850s. While France is considered to  have been worst affected, the blight also did a great deal of damage to vineyards in other European countries.
How the Phylloxera aphid was introduced to Europe remains debated: American vines had been taken to Europe many times before, for reasons including experimentation and trials in grafting, without consideration of the possibility of the introduction of pestilence. While the Phylloxera was thought to have arrived around 1858, it was first recorded in France in 1863, near the former province of Languedoc. It is argued by some that the introduction of such pests as phylloxera was only a problem after the invention of steamships, which allowed a faster journey across the ocean, and consequently allowed durable pests, such as the Phylloxera, to survive the trip.
Eventually, following Jules-Émile Planchon's discovery of the Phylloxera as the cause of the blight, and Charles Valentine Riley's confirmation of Planchon's theory, Leo Laliman and Gaston Bazille, two French wine growers, proposed that the European vines be grafted to the resistant American rootstock that were not susceptible to the Phylloxera. While many of the French wine growers disliked this idea, many found themselves with no other option. The method proved to be an effective remedy. The "Reconstitution" (as it was termed) of the many vineyards that had been lost was a slow process, but eventually the wine industry in France was able to return to relative normality.
The blight also allowed Absinthe to gain even more popularity as consumers switched over due to rising wine prices and low availability.