FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - My Favorite FANTASTIC Magical Wine! -- REVISED

GreenieLeBrun

wrote:
> two bob wrote:
> > >
> > Why French grapes? Are there any such thing any more. Most of the french
> > vines were wiped out by disease and replaced with vines from the US, which
> > were disease resistant.
>
> And yet, the EU still complains about genetically-modified organisms.
> Thanks to GMOs, it appears that the US has saved the French wine
> industry.
>
> Ha ha ha. Now that's funny.
>
> --Alex
>
> ***************************
> Alex B. Berezow, Grad Student
> Dept. of Microbiology
> University of Washington School of Medicine
> Seattle, WA 98195

Phyloxera was introduced into Europe, South Africa and Australia on
American vines in the mid 1800's. The European vines were very
suseptible to this North American pest, the American vines were more
resistant.

The modern root stock is not a GMO is the strict sense of the term but
a cultivated hybrid/selected cultivar in the same sense as Red
Delicious , Golden Delisious, Cox's Orange Pippen apples are.

Rather than the US saving the wine industry it devistated it and the
viticulturalists had to resort to resistant root stock from the area
that started the problem.