Link:

Mirassou On-line.

Sure, potatoes have been fermented to make brandy and butanol, but how are potatoes linked to the California wine industry? Simply put, it was thanks to potatoes that the first California vineyard could come into being. A Frenchman, Pierre Pellier, established the wine industry on the east side of the Santa Clara Valley in the 1860s. Pellier, great- great-grandfather of the present-day Mirassous family, was en route from France with grapevine clippings when the fate of his vineyards was saved by potatoes. Around the Horn of South America, his clippings began to die from dehydration. Pellier finally convinced the ship's chef to allow him to plant the remainders of his clippings in the many potatoes aboard. Thus the clippings were kept alive, and today, people enjoy the wines of California, including the wine of America's oldest wine-making family, the Mirassous.

-LO (Information from Los Gatos Weekly and Mirassous On-Line)