In the mid-1860s, after countless centuries of bearing the fruit that would become wine, French grapevines began to wither and die in ever increasing numbers and no one knew why. It started in southeastern France, in the Rhone Valley, as Christy Campbell tells the tale in his masterful The Botanist and the Vintner. Within 30 years the inexorable rolling disaster that was the phylloxera... (read more)