The spotted lanternfly has descended on the Virginia wine country.

The invasive, polka-dotted, winged insects are sucking the sap straight out of the grapevines and threatening the harvest in what just two years ago was named the best wine region in the world.

Virginia Tech studying ways to track, kill spotted lanternflies

Insecticides could work, but Virginia’s summer storms make it difficult for chemicals to stick long enough on the plants to have any effect. And while researchers are working on a solution, specifically targeting the lanternfly’s favorite host plants, they are still a ways off from a strategy that can be employed across Virginia’s 4,000 acres under vine.

“They are a nuisance for sure,” Matthieu Finot, winemaker at Crozet’s King Family Vineyards, told The Daily Progre

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