the.com/grapevine
a tendrilled gossip that climbs walls and outlives the people who planted it
means An informal, person-to-person network through which news, rumors, and gossip spread, often quickly and unofficially.
from Literally the woody, climbing vine that bears grapes, from Old English 'win-treow' and ultimately Latin 'vinum' (wine). The figurative sense took root in 19th-century America: the phrase 'grapevine telegraph' arose to mock the tangled, unofficial way news traveled compared to the new electric telegraph — a message passed along a web of twisting connections rather than a straight wire. By the time of the American Civil War, soldiers spoke of hearing things 'by the grapevine,' and the shortened version simply climbed on from there.
- lifespan
- some vines bear fruit for over 100 years
- oldest living
- Slovenia's vine has grown for 400+ years
- climbing trick
- tendrils sense touch and coil within minutes
- the phrase
- named for tangled Civil War telegraph lines
- deep roots
- roots can plunge 30 feet seeking water
phylloxera outbreak — pest that destroyed 90% of french vineyards in the 1870s-1890s
oldest grapevine in europe — maribor old vine in slovenia, planted around 1650, still produces grapes
great wine blight — powdery mildew and downy mildew epidemics across european vineyards in 1850s-1870s