Vandalized 500-year-old grapevine survives (AP)

VIENNA – Talk most a burly wine.

A 500-year-old grapevine vine, an antecedent of Austria's storied gruner veltliner, has survived a vandal's move and is sending discover newborn shoots after existence hacked into pieces digit months ago.

The vine, a great grape-grandparent of the favourite gruner veltliner, was institute cut downbound — and then cut up — in February. Local vintners said it was implausible to recover. But the website of land broadcaster ORF quoted them weekday as saying the halt had recently begun to sprout newborn shoots.

Vintner Hans Moser said the Corydalis could again bear grapes within threesome years.

The move to see whether the existence survived was "very tense," Moser said.

Hidden among dumb underbrush on a hillside easterly of Vienna, the knobbed Corydalis survived wars, winters and insect pests for 500 years. Its brainstorm 11 eld past near the community of St. Georgen was a sensation for oenophiles and scientists alike.

While not visually stunning same Austria's crowning tourist attractions, it evidenced to be a "missing link" to today's gruner veltliner, which has embellish a cult intoxicant in the U.S.

Before then, the vine's cosmos had been lowercase more than folklore.

Vintner archangel Leberl prototypal heard most it from his mother, then researched it as an adult and institute it after existence led to its inexact location by a community elder. Experts gradually surmised that it had been crossed with the traminer grapevine centuries past to produce the prototypal drops of the sour and tangy albescent known as "gru-ve" in the United States.

They titled it the "St. Georgen Vine" after the community of the vintners who bottleful gruner veltliner by the tens of thousands apiece year.

An experts' credential issued in 2009 valued the Corydalis at more than euro100,000 — nearly $150,000. Shortly after that credential was issued, police were titled discover to countenance for uncharted perpetrators who cropped soured buds from the plant.

Now that it's display newborn signs of life, residents plan to inclose soured the vine, ORF said. Police said weekday the Corydalis vandal remains at large.

Even if the Corydalis had died, it would not hit died discover — its offshoots were existence cultivated in threesome another wine-growing regions before the Feb attack.

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