SC - There are no old world grapes.

[jeffrey s heilveil]

I was going to stay out of this one, but I feel I no longer have a choice.
It turns out that earlier in our history, a bug, the grape phylloxera, got
into Europe form the Americas and began decimating the roots of European
grapes.  From there, all of the European wine industry was in trouble.
The only way that the were able to continue growing grapes was by
importing American root stocks, and grafting European varieties on them.
The reason is that American grapes had been selected such that only
strains that were resistant to the phylloxera were able to survive (high
predation pressure).  So ineffect, there is no longer extant "old world"
grapes, because even the mighty french have had to rely on American root
stocks.  (And boy do they love that...)

Sorry for the science,
Bogdan din Brasov

On Mon, 15 Dec 1997, Tyrca wrote:

> In a message dated 97-12-15 10:37:48 EST, you write:
> 
> << I have been looking for a source for concentrated grape juice from Old
>  World varieties of grapes for several years and tho't perhaps that my search
>  was finally over. Oh weel, back to the quest. ;-)
>  
>  Ras >>
> 
> Do you have any sort of wine/beer making supply store around you?  Here in
> Oklahoma, they are all over, and most of them carry cans of grape concentrate
> to make wine out of, so you can choose Reisling, or Chardonnay, or whatever
> kind of white wine variety grape you like.  Is that the sort of thing you are
> looking for?
> 
> Tyrca
> ============================================================================
> 
> To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
> Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
> 
> ============================================================================
> 

============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================