The 1st World War arrived just when wine growers were beginning to recover from another crisis. Phylloxera, a tiny insect that attacks the roots of grapevines, had invaded France in the middle of the nineteenth century, reducing vast areas of vineyards to what one winegrower described as "rows of bare wooden stumps – resembling huge graveyards".
   The remedy, as it turned out, was grafting vines onto American rootstocks, which were naturally resistant to the root-eating louse. It was a long and costly process. Vineyards had to be uprooted and replanted. Then growers had to wait several years for their vines to begin bearing fruit, and even longer for them to reach full maturity.
   Then the 1st world war broke out in 1914, but the French government mounted an extraordinary campaign to help the wine industry. Wine growers were granted delays in being called to active duty, military labor detachments were sent to the vineyards and farm horses of small growers were not to be requisitioned until the harvest was completed.
   In England, the period from the end of the First World War to shortly after the end of the Second World War may well be the only time in two millennia that vines to make wine on a substantial scale were not grown. Doubtless, during that time, there were some vines being grown on a garden scale by amateur growers, but for more than 25 years there was a total cessation of viticulture and winemaking on a commercial basis.
   Suffice it to say that the 1st World War put an end to pretty much all developments in Wine Making although the art was certainly not lost.
   In the USA, Prohibition was introduced soon after the war by means of the Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution and also the Volstead Act. Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. In fact, it is not so widely known that by 1905 three American states had already outlawed alcohol, by 1912 it was up to nine states, and by 1916 legal prohibition was already in effect in 26 of the 48 states. The act merely made it illegal in all states. Although limited amounts of wine and hard cider were permitted to be made at home and some commercial wine was still produced in the U.S., but was only available through government warehouses for use in religious ceremonies, particularly for communion in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Episcopal churches and in some Jewish ceremonies.
   Many sources say that this period caused the loss of several great wine and beer recipes and also of yeast stocks - and that America is only just now catching back up with the rest of the wine producing world as a wine making country of excellence.
   But elsewhere, just when things began looking up after World War I, disaster struck again. This time it was the Great Depression, and the effect on the wine industry was devastating. In Champagne, major houses could no longer afford to buy grapes from their growers. In Alsace, huge numbers of winegrowers went bankrupt. Those in Bordeaux were forced to accept prices that were below the national average – the first time in history that had happened. In Burgundy, wine production fell 40 percent as nearly half the vineyards went uncultivated heralding the biggest set-back to wine making since the Dark Ages.