Who knows what evil lurks beneath the wrinkled skin of an “economy” English sausage? And what delights won for the Cumberland and the Newmarket their coveted status of Protected Geographical Indication? Jan Davison, that’s who. She wrote the book on English sausages and is the guest in this latest episode.
Did you know that malt whisky owes its existence in the marketplace to the stock market crash of 1973-74?
Neither did I, so when one of the people I interviewed for the craft distilling episode a few weeks back made that claim, I wanted to know more. Unfortunately, if you just plug “scotch whisky economic history” into an online search engine, you don’t find anything of real interest, at least not in the first few thousand hits.
Speculators are responsible for food price spikes? Food price spikes are responsible for riots in the streets? First-world hipsters are responsible for hungry quinoa farmers in Peru? Seeking answers to basic questions.
A story of exploration, aristocracy and promiscuity, all in the service of better food. What more could you want?
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about craft distilleries is how fast they’re spreading, at least where they’re allowed. British Columbia has gone from 5 to 50 in about three years. The USA now has more than 1000 registered small distilleries, almost a third of which are so-called “seed to sip” farm distillery operations. The British Isles too have seen a mushrooming of small distilleries. This episode is just a taste of things to come.