How the Irish created the great wines of Bordeaux (and elsewhere) Do tariffs count for more than terroir?
You can thank the Irish Wine Geese for many of the Grand Crus of France.
Category: Podcasts
Back to the mountains of Pamir A book about Pamiri culture and agriculture wins a global award
In 2007, Frederik van Oudenhoven travelled to the Pamir mountains in Central Asia to document what remained of the region’s rich agricultural biodiversity. Almost 100 years before, the great Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov became convinced that this was where “the original evolution of many cultivated plants took place.” Soft club …
Sweetness and light Sugar may not be the malevelent demon many people think it is
Before I read Christopher Emsden’s book Sweetness and Light: Why the demonization of sugar does not make sense I had no idea that the statistical correlation of air pollution and the epidemic of “diabesity” was stronger than the correlation with sugar. Or that among the indigenous people of Canada, those …
The True Father of the First Green Revolution Nazareno Strampelli, born 150 years ago this week
Today’s show is something of a departure; I’m talking about someone who is crucial to global food security and yet who is almost unknown. It’s true, as Jean-Henri Fabre, the French naturalist wrote, that “History … knows the names of the king’s bastards but cannot tell us the origin of …
A brief history of Irish butter The world's first quality control system made it great
The Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, features on some lists of the world’s quirky etc. food museums but not others. It ought to be on all of them. This is a seriously interesting museum for anyone who likes butter, and in my book, that means just about everyone. (I refuse …