The grower who planted without grafts. A Bordeaux gamble, put to the test.

A pest that changed wine

Jamie opens with the story of how phylloxera arrived in France in the 1860s on vine cuttings brought from America, and then spread across Europe and on to California, Australia and South Africa. European varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling and Pinot Noir had no defense. The fix was to graft them onto resistant American rootstocks, and that is why nearly all the wine we drink today comes from grafted vines.

Before heading south, Jamie stops in a rain-soaked Mosel vineyard where ungrafted vines still grow beside grafted ones. He tastes a berry from each, with a smile about how uncontrolled this little test is. It sets up the question nicely: does a vine on its own roots give different fruit?

Jean-Sébastien Capdevielle's brave bet

In Saint-Émilion, Jamie meets Jean-Sébastien Capdevielle, who bought his estate in 2008 and in 2016 began a trial planting of 3,400 ungrafted vines. His aim is to rediscover the taste of Saint-Émilion before phylloxera. He made the ungrafted and grafted vines into wine the same way to compare them, and what he found convinced him to replant his whole 6.4-hectare vineyard on its own roots.

He shows Jamie how it works: dormant cuttings pushed straight into the ground, many of which fail. Because the wood comes from very old vines, the vineyard keeps a great deal of genetic diversity. His defenses against the pest are a free-draining soil of limestone, sand and gravel with very little clay, where phylloxera's tunnels collapse, and flooding the vineyard in winter from the water table to drown the insects. Jamie even plants a cutting of his own.

Inside the science of phylloxera

In Gaillac, Jamie visits the Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin to meet Olivier Yobrégat, an expert on phylloxera. On the leaves of an American rootstock they find galls, the little blisters where a female insect, which needs no male to reproduce, lays hundreds of eggs. Jamie cuts one open under a macro lens to see the exit holes the young insects use.

Olivier explains why own-rooted European vines are in such danger: underground, the insect attacks the roots little by little until the vine dies, and its numbers can explode. Sandy and volcanic soils with no clay offer some protection, but they are a small part of Europe's vineyards. In the institute's collection Jamie also meets Vitis vinifera sylvestris, the wild forest vine from which every wine grape was domesticated.

How a grafted vine is made

Next comes the Daydé nursery, a family business with a huge greenhouse capacity. Owner Fabien lets Jamie try an omega grafting machine, joining a Merlot bud to a rootstock in a single cut. That one bud will become the whole vine above ground, so a strong, clean union matters for decades.

For balance, Olivier pulls up a potted ungrafted vine and shows the first sign of attack: a hooked young root tip known as a bird's beak. He understands why growers want to rediscover the old way, and why the result may taste different, but he is clear that it is dangerous.

The comparison tasting

The film ends back at Château L'Évêché, where Jean-Sébastien pours his first ungrafted wine, Sanctum 2019, mostly Cabernet Franc and made in amphora, beside the estate's grafted 2019 red aged in barrel. Jamie tastes them side by side, a comparison he says he has never been able to make before.

Is ungrafted really better, or simply different, and is it worth the risk? Watch the episode to hear Jamie's tasting notes and his final verdict.