How Would You Stop a Vineyard Apocalypse?

(WineSpectator) - Imagine a bacterial scourge that was silently spreading from vineyard to vineyard, striking down grapevines in their prime, bankrupting wineries and threatening to turn even the most basic of wines into a rare luxury. Take a deep breath. It's fiction, for now. But it's a horrible reality for farmers who produce another of our favorite beverages: orange juice. Since 2005, bacteria has been spreading through orange groves from Florida to California, inflicting a disease called citrus greening. Infected trees produce small, sour oranges.

Since the illness was found in a Florida grove eight years ago, growers have tried to slow it by chopping down and burning hundreds of thousands of infected trees. They have stepped up their pesticide spraying, targeting the Asian citrus psyllid insect that carries the bacteria, and they have looked for naturally resistant orange breeds with no luck. The most promising solution, according to a recent New York Times article, is a tree developed by scientists who inserted a gene from spinach into orange DNA.

While the trees remain in quarantine, facing years of testing, the farmers worry that even if they thrive, no one will drink their juice because it comes from a genetically modified organism (GMO), an organism whose genes have been altered, in this case by inserting genetic material from another plant.

I prefer coffee in the morning, but the debate made me wonder: Would I drink wine from a genetically modified vine?

GMOs are controversial, and wine has not been spared. In 2010, activists tore apart an experimental vineyard in Alsace, destroying 70 vines modified to resist fanleaf virus, a widespread affliction in Burgundy and Champagne. Mendocino voters outlawed the planting of GMOs in their county in 2004 (sparing the world both GMO Pinot Noir and GMO marijuana), and this past fall California voters narrowly rejected a proposition requiring special labels for foods containing GMOs. Whole Foods recently announced it would stop stocking most foods with GMO ingredients and require labels on the remainder by 2018.