I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, The 1870s, 80s, and 90s were a volatile time for French. The after a long siege, a siege so serious that restaurants started serving rats and other unusual animals in order to combat starvation.

During this time of political and social chaos, Phylloxra raged through the vineyards and there was no blamed steamships for bringing vines from America across the Atlantic in record times, which didn't give Phaloxera enough time to perish during the usually long journey.

And many people still denied there was a problem at all,

and they chalked up the dying vines to a brief malady caused by changing weather and geology.

But soon the problem could not be ignored or brushed away as a strange one-time phenomenon.

Desperate farmers drove wagons full of dead vines to the markets to sell as firewood.

Others pulled out all their vines and burned their land in an attempt to exterminate Phylaxera, and others spent much time and

money injecting sulfur directly into their soils to kill the bug.

After seeing some vines survive on waterlogged riverbanks, some wine growers flooded their

vineyards, hoping to drown Phyloxra, and they met with some success.

Soon American Entomologist some success.

Soon American entomologists started making connections between Darwin's theory of evolution and

why Phylloxra affected European vines but not U.S. vines. The evolution of the American grape vines

over long periods of time with Phylloxra made them resistant. But in Europe, Darwin's

theory of evolution was still being debated and contested, and a clear link between pest

resistance species and evolution wasn't made as strongly by many farmers in France.

In the early days of the infestation,

non-Darwinists made logical assumptions that led them to look for causes of the problem

in the wrong areas.

Because they didn't accept evolution,

...