I'm telling everyone who asks here in France that I'm from Texas. European wine snobs love to turn up their noses at American wine, but they conveniently forget that their precious vineyards would be literal dirt if Central Texas hadn't bailed them out. Back in the 1800s, a nasty root-eating bug pushed the French wine industry to the brink of total extinction until they came begging the Lone Star State for help. Today, a whopping 80% to 90% of all grapevines in France are physically spliced onto the rugged, subterranean roots of the stubborn Central Texas Mustang Grape. Because those nasty bugs are still chilling in the European soil today, French grapes cannot survive on their own. Every single bottle of overpriced French wine you buy is a total hybrid—delicate European fruit up top, riding piggyback on a tough-as-nails Texan bodyguard down below. The French really ought to be writing "thank you" notes to the rocky, sun-baked hills of Central Texas every single day. While roots from other states withered and quit, those Central Texas vines had spent centuries surviving brutal droughts and limestone dirt, making them completely immune to the bugs. In 1887, thousands of rugged Central Texas cuttings were shipped across the pond, and French farmers had to slice open their fancy vines and glue them onto Texas muscle just to keep from going belly up.