How to Use phylloxera in a Sentence

phylloxera

noun
  • This vineyard, though, is on sandy soils, in which phylloxera cannot survive.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 21 June 2018
  • The wines here are grown in the rich volcanic soil and harvested by hand, and the vines are some of the few in the world that escaped the phylloxera blight.
    — William Leigh, theweek, 9 May 2024
  • But a phylloxera outbreak in the 1970s all but wiped out the island’s vineyards.
    — Chadner Navarro, Condé Nast Traveler, 6 Mar. 2025
  • But a phylloxera outbreak in the 1970s all but wiped out the island’s vineyards.
    — Chadner Navarro, Condé Nast Traveler, 6 Mar. 2025
  • Mondeuse is an old grape variety that was grown before the phylloxera in several parts of eastern France.
    — Per and Britt Karlsson, Forbes, 21 Sep. 2021
  • Back then, France, which had been devastated by phylloxera, an aphid that preys on grape roots, began buying wine from Etna.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 7 July 2016
  • The white timorasso was on the verge of extinction, having all but disappeared during the phylloxera.
    — Per and Britt Karlsson, Forbes, 21 Dec. 2021
  • But phylloxera arrived in Sicily in the 1930s, and war shortly after.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 7 July 2016
  • Back in the late 19th century, the vineyards of Europe were devastated by the phylloxera aphid, which preyed on their roots.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 3 Aug. 2017
  • To this day, all of Europe’s famous grapes grow on vines that have been grafted onto American rootstock to protect against phylloxera.
    — Alex Mayyasi, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Nov. 2023
  • In the mid 19th century, the phylloxera louse decimated vineyards throughout the world.
    — Tom Mullen, Forbes.com, 6 Apr. 2025
  • The higher percentage of sand helped stop phylloxera, a pest which wiped out many of the oldest root stocks in Europe and abroad in the 20th century, from spreading.
    — Alissa Fitzgerald, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
  • The wine is made from grapes farmed organically at some of the highest altitudes in Italy, and some from low-yielding pre-phylloxera vines as old as 140 years.
    — Craig Laban, Philly.com, 11 May 2018
  • While some original vines remained, the practice helped beat back phylloxera, allowing the continent’s wine economy to recover.
    — Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 15 Dec. 2024
  • Little can grow in layers of volcanic ash and pumice, including the phylloxera pest that destroyed most of Europe’s vineyards in the 19th century.
    — Bloomberg.com, 30 Mar. 2018
  • Like other European wine-growing regions, its vineyards were ravaged by phylloxera in the late 19th century.
    — Liz Thach, Forbes.com, 29 Apr. 2025
  • In the late 19th century, Málaga’s fortunes changed, as an outbreak of phylloxera destroyed the region’s vines, and then the economic crisis and war took their toll.
    — Lisa Johnson, Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Nov. 2023
  • The visual narrative highlights how malbec once commanded attention in France, nearly vanished after phylloxera, then reemerged in a new hemisphere.
    — Rachel King, Forbes.com, 12 Apr. 2025
  • Ungrafted vines and indigenous grapes The Canary Islands were never affected by phylloxera.
    — Emily Price, Forbes.com, 24 Jan. 2026
  • Priorat was once a country seat for the Barcelona elite and a fine wine region, but phylloxera (a pest that destroys grapevines) swept through in the early 1900s, depleting the wine industry.
    — Maya Kachroo-Levine, Travel + Leisure, 26 Nov. 2023
  • After the phylloxera outbreak destroyed vineyards in France in the late 19th century, rye whiskey became the spirit of choice for the eponymous Sazerac cocktail.
    — Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 19 Jan. 2025
  • But when phylloxera hit France and winemakers from Bordeaux headed south to Rioja to make wine the focus shifted from making white to red specifically for the export market.
    — Mike Desimone, Robb Report, 26 June 2026
  • By the 1860s, phylloxera from North America had reached France, hitching a ride on grapevines imported by European botanists.
    — Alex Mayyasi, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Nov. 2023
  • The Penedès region lost many red wine varieties to the scare, and afterwards, wineries planted white varieties that had been grafted with phylloxera-resistant American rootstock.
    — Matthew Sedacca, The Atlantic, 17 July 2017
  • These historic varieties are the grapes that thrived before the phylloxera louse ravaged European vineyards in the late 19th century, nearly destroying the global wine industry.
    — Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 27 Oct. 2024
  • Since the 19th century, when a plague of phylloxera ravaged most of Europe’s grapevines, the solution was to graft the European vines onto American roots, which are immune to the aphid.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 21 June 2018
  • Before that, the Russian Empire’s ineffective tackling of grape phylloxera – an aphid-like pest which feeds on grapevine roots – caused great loss in Ukraine, as elsewhere in 19th-century Europe.
    — Charlotte Reck, CNN Money, 17 Nov. 2025
  • Liber Pater wines are made on a tiny patch of land in the Graves region of Bordeaux, one of the few places unaffected by the phylloxera bacterium that destroyed vineyards across Europe in the mid-19th century.
    — Matteo Atti, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2024
  • Greece’s Peloponnese region experienced a boom in wine production starting in the 1860s, when the industry in France collapsed because of a phylloxera epidemic.
    — Sarah Souli, Travel + Leisure, 10 Nov. 2023
  • During the 19th century, many vineyards in Western European countries like France and Spain suffered from phylloxera, a microscopic aphid that attacks the grapevines’ roots and causes rot.
    — Matthew Sedacca, The Atlantic, 17 July 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'phylloxera.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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