Isabella

Isabella is an American hybrid, chiefly Vitis labrusca with some vinifera, that was found in South Carolina and named in the 1810s. It travelled to Europe early in the nineteenth century as an ornamental and a curiosity, and it carried the phylloxera louse with it. The vine is resistant to the louse. Every European vinifera vine was not, and the resulting epidemic destroyed most of the vineyards of France.

The European response was to graft vinifera onto American rootstock, which is still how nearly all the world's vines are grown. Isabella itself was widely banned. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece all prohibited it for wine, on the argument that it produced harmful levels of methanol, a claim that later work found to be overstated but which the bans outlived.

It is still grown for wine in Brazil, Georgia, Moldova, Uruguay and Colombia, and in pockets of Italy where old vines survive the prohibition. The wine is foxy in the labrusca way, strongly perfumed, usually sweet or off dry. Georgia knows it as adesa and treats it as a country wine rather than a serious one.