Phylloxera is a pest which eats away at the roots of vines and withers the plants’ leaves. Arriving from America in the second half of the 19th century, it nearly wiped out Europe’s vineyards. But it was also from America that the solution arrived, in the form of pest-resistant rootstocks (rootstocks: the underground part of the vine stock which is grafted with cuttings from the desired grape variety). The first incident of phylloxera in Greece broke out in Pylaea, Thessaloniki, around 1898. Gradually, the blight of phylloxera spread through the vineyards of northern Greece which, together with the vineyards of Epirus to the southwest, was afflicted the most. Luckily, phylloxera never made it to most of the Greek islands.