Folle Blanche, white grape variety, probably gouais blanc progeny, once grown in profusion along the Atlantic seaboard of western France, providing very acidic but otherwise neutral base wine for distillation by the largely dutch wine trade. It never regained its position after phylloxera ravaged the vineyards of Europe in the late 19th century and France’s total plantings of Folle Blanche continue to decline: from 12,000 ha/29,640 acres in 1968, to 1,366 ha/3,374 acres in 2011, mainly for gros plant production. It has also been grown to a very limited extent in California, and possibly northern Spain.
