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| | Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved for the World |
 | | Scientific investigation of phylloxera, unsurprisingly, slowed down, although Professor Signoret reported to a fellow scientist in a balloon-born letter from the siege of Paris that "though he himself was reduced to eating cats, dogs, and horseflesh, the phylloxera, which he had in boxes, kept well and in good health". |
 | | Phylloxera still haunts the whole wine-growing world (California's Napa Valley has seen recent outbreaks), and it is tempting to read some geo-political metaphor into the notion that the noble French wines are grown only by being grafted on to hardy, disease-proof American rootstock. |
 | | But by the time Phylloxera had nearly reduced French vines to extinction, that was all you could get (it was called "the wine of the resistance, the wine of the anarchists, the wine that drives you mad", and it was in fact revived in 1993 by some enthusiasts in the Ardèche). |
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