Question: What Texas horticulturalist is credited with saving the French wine industry in the 1880s?
Answer: Thomas Volney Munson. Born in Illinois in 1843, Munson was raised on a farm and moved with his family to Denison in 1876, where he was impressed by the “grape paradise” along the banks of the Red River. He opened a nursery and became one of the nation’s foremost experts on cultivating grapes, traveling thousands of miles across the country collecting wild grapes that he used to develop 300 different varieties.
In 1865, a root louse called phylloxera began killing European vineyards. By the 1880s, two-thirds had been wiped out. Munson provided cuttings from grapes found in the Texas Hill Country to a delegation of French scientists who visited his nursery, and they were grafted into grapevines throughout France. The disease-resistant species provided by Munson fortified French vineyards against the pestilence and helped preserve a range of delicate French grape varieties, including cabernet, merlot, pinot noir, and chardonnay. Munson was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal in 1888 for his role in saving the French wine industry.
