Jancis Robison, wine connoisseur and editor of  The Oxford Companion to Wine, Third Edition, recently revealed the drawbacks of South Africa’s stringent wine standards: because South African wine law mandates that 100 % of the grapes must be grown in the appellation (geographic location) specified on the bottle, consumers usually have no idea exactly where their wine is from. According to Robinson this is a shame given that there are more than 80 appellations in South African wine country; terroir clearly shapes how a wine tastes and this law precludes wine drinkers from learning anything about “the Cape’s wonderfully varied geography.” But on the plus side, the average quality of wine being exported from South Africa has improved immensely.

In continuation of our “Place of the Year” celebration, I offer you some quick facts on the growing South African wine industry from The Oxford Companion to Wine, Third Edition. After successfully gleaning two or three talking points for your next tasting or wine/cheese mashup, be sure to check out other “Place of the Year” contributions here.

Beginner
You have a case of “Two Buck Chuck” in your kitchen. Wine falls in two categories: white and red.

• South Africa has only 1.5% of the world’s vineyards, but it is one of the world’s top ten wine producers.
• The winelands are widely dispersed throughout the Western and Northern Cape, some 700km/420 miles from north to south and 500 km across, strung between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
• Just as Europe and America people are drinking less, but better, South Africa has shifted away from a beer-and-spirit-only consumption pattern. This coupled with a tenfold increase in exports between 1993 and 2003 has shifted the focus to quality not quantity for South African vine-growers.

Intermediate
You have been a member of the Wall Street Journal wine club (WSJwine) for over a year now. When out for drinks you are confident in returning a glass to the bar because “it has turned.”

• The father of the South African wine industry was 33-year-old-Dutch surgeon Jan van Riebeeck, sent to establish a market garden to reduce the risks of scurvy on the long sea passage between Europe and the Indies. In 1652, seven years after sailing into Table Bay, he recorded: ‘Today, praise be to God, wine was pressed for the first time from Cape grapes.’
• The Benguela current from Antarctica makes the Cape cooler than its altitude may suggest, which means many new vineyard areas south towards Agulhas as well as on the west coast offer the prospect of a long, slow ripening seasoning.
• White varieties constitute by far the majority of Cape vineyeards. Chenin Blanc, known sometimes as Steen, has for long been the dominant grape variety in South Africa.

Advanced
“Education and Work” on your Facebook profile includes “seasoned viticulturist.” If you are a devout Catholic you steer clear of the chalice—even on religious holidays. And you have this commited to memory.

• Controlled malolactic fermentation, reduced dependence on flavour-stripping filtration and stabilization processes, as well as new canopy management strategies and increasing vine densities have all played a role in the increase of wine quality.
• The definition of ‘dry’ in relation to South African wines sold on the domestic market has recently been changed: the maximum residual sugar content is now 5 g/l rather than 4 g/l/.
• Pinotage, the Cape’s own crossing of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut, is becoming increasingly popular and was the single most planted new red vine variety in 1996 (Chardonnay was the white) although it still represented only 6.7 per cent of the nation’s vines in 2004.

The only foods that I can think of as being as “American as apple pie” are recipes that have been lifted from other countries: pizza, sushi and, of course, Chinese food. College in New York has meant that I eat a lot of Chinese food. In his new book, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, Andrew Coe chronicles Chinese food’s journey across the ocean and into the hearts of Americans everywhere. Below, I’ve excerpted a passage from Chop Suey in which Coe details the earliest written account of an American’s experience eating Chinese food for the first time almost 200 years ago.

Nevertheless, the first account we have of Americans eating Chinese food does not appear until 1819, thirty-five years after Shaw’s visit. It was written by Bryant Parrott Tilden, a young trader from Salem who acted as supercargo on a number of Asia voyages. In Guangzhou, he was befriended by Paunkeiqua, a leading merchant who cultivated good relations with many American firms. Just before Tilden’s ship was set to sail home, Paunkeiqua invited the American merchants to spend the day at this mansion on Honam island. Tilden’s account of that visit, which was capped by a magnificent feast, is not unlike the descriptions Shaw or even William Hickey wrote a half century earlier. First, he tours Paunkeiqua’s traditional Chinese garden and encounters some of the merchant’s children yelling “Fankwae! Fankwae!” (“Foreign devil! Foreign devil!”). Then Paunkeiqua shows him his library, including “some curious looking old Chinese maps of the world as these ‘celestials’ suppose it to be, with their Empire occupying three quarters of it, surrounded by ‘nameless islands & seas bounded only by the edges of the maps.” Finally, his host tells him: “Now my flinde, Tillen, you must go long my for catche chow chow tiffin.” In other words, dinner was served in a spacious dining hall, where the guests were seated at small tables.

“Soon after,” Tilden writes, “a train of servants came in bringing a most splendid service of fancy colored, painted and gilt large tureens & bowls, containing soups, among them the celebrated bird nest soup, as also a variety of stewed messes, and plenty of boiled rice, & same style of smaller bowls, but alas! No plates and knives and forks.” (By “messes,” Tilden probably meant prepared dishes, not unsavory jumbles.)

The Americans attempted to eat with chopsticks, with very poor results: “Monkies [sic] with knitting needles would not have looked more ludicrous than some of us did.” Finally, their host put an end to their discomfort by ordering western-style plates, knives, forks, and spoons. Then the main portion of the meal began:

Twenty separate courses were placed on the table during three hours in as many different services of elegant china ware, the messes consisting of soups, gelatinous food, a variety of stewed hashes, made up of all sorts of chopped meats, small birds cock’s-combs, a favorite dish, some fish & all sorts of vegetables, rice, and pickles, of which the Chinese are very fond. Ginger and pepper are used plentifully in most of their cookery. Not a joint of meat or a whole fowl or bird were placed on the table. Between the changing of the courses, we freely conversed and partook of Madeira & other European wines—and costly teas.”

After fruits, pastries, and more wine, the dinner finally came to an end. Tilden and his friends left glowing with happiness (and alcohol) at the honor Paunkeiqua had shown them with his lavish meal. Nowhere, however, does Tilden tell us whether the Americans actually enjoyed these “messes” and “hashes.”

In honor of New Year’s Eve I thought we should excerpt about some NYE food and drink traditions. The piece below is from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America which I found through Oxford Reference Online. I hope you all have a fabulous time tonight (but not too fabulous) and I wish you a healthy and happy 2009!

Although champagne has become de rigueur as midnight strikes, no single food epitomizes the contemporary New Year’s holiday. The menu may be luxurious caviar at a New Year’s Eve bacchanalia or sobering hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day. Celebrations marking the inexorable march of Father Time often involve foods imbued with symbolism, such as in the Pennsylvania Dutch New Year’s tradition of sauerkraut (for wealth) and pork—the pig roots forward into the future, unlike the Christmas turkey, which buries the past by scratching backward in the dirt.

Seventeenth-century Dutch immigrants in the Hudson River valley welcomed the New Year by “opening the house” to family and friends. The custom was adapted by English colonists, who used brief, strictly choreographed, January 1 social calls for gentlemen to renew bonds or repair frayed relationships. Ladies remained at home, offering elegantly arrayed collations laden with cherry bounce, wine, hot punch, and cakes and cookies, often flavored with the Dutch signatures of caraway, coriander, cardamom, and honey. Embossed New Year’s “cakes,” from the Dutch nieuwjaarskoeken—made by pressing a cookie-like dough into carved wooden boards decorated with flora and fauna—were a New York specialty throughout the nineteenth century.

Politicians embraced—or were embraced by—the New Year’s open house. George Washington inaugurated a custom of presidential New Year’s levees in 1791. The levees, which continued until the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, were a powerful statement in the fledgling democracy: Any properly dressed person with a letter of introduction, could—without an invitation—drink punch and nibble cake with the president. The diarist Philip Hone reported in 1837 that “scamps” with muddy boots stormed the home of the New York mayor, shouting “huzzas” for the mayor and demanding refreshment. The police restored order only after the celebrants had drained the mayor’s bottles, devoured his beef and turkey, and wiped their greasy fingers on his curtains.

Heavy drinking, especially among the young and the disadvantaged, was widely reported from the late eighteenth century on, when servants and slaves pounded on doors in the middle of the night demanding New Year’s drinks. Alcohol continues to assume a prominent place in New Year’s parties, notwithstanding the efforts of nineteenth-century temperance advocates, who pointedly poured effervescent sarsaparilla, coffee, and tea.

The New York custom of open house spread westward in the nineteenth century. Although the Dutch palimpsest continued in the “cold-slaw” found in Eliza Leslie’s menus for New Year’s dinner in New Receipts for Cooking (1854), other influences shaped the holiday, particularly in the South. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries those of French and English backgrounds celebrated the twelve days of Christmas with gifts of food and festive dinners on January 1 . Antebellum plantation owners sometimes gave slaves oxen to slaughter on New Year’s Day as well as liquor for the slaves’ parties. African Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made one of the most enduring contributions to the modern holiday. Starting in the Carolinas but extending throughout the South, hoppin’ John and greens became traditional New Year’s fare, black-eyed peas bringing luck and the rice (which swelled in the cooking) and greens (like money) bringing prosperity. In the early twentieth century Japanese Americans adopted the open house tradition, serving glutinous rice dishes, soups, boiled lobsters (signifying health and happiness), and fish specially prepared to appear alive and swimming.

For one weekend every year, New York City becomes the capital of the running world. When marathon weekend hits, crowds gather all over the five boroughs to cheer on professionals runners, celebrities, friends, and co-workers alike. I personally recommend mile 24—it doesn’t get enough attention because it’s so close to the end, but it’s when you get to see people really fall apart, or rally up and show an incredible amount of grit. And admit it—some voyeuristic inspiration can do us cold hard New Yorkers some good every now and then. Though I should confess, I may have been one of the more inspired bystanders at mile 24, because I knew ten of the top female runners personally.

I moved to New York sixth months ago, a retired collegiate runner, and when I joined the New York Athletic Club Running Team (NYAC), I didn’t realize that I would be running with possibly the most successful cross-section of women in New York City. You want to network? Speak to these women. A VP at Goldman Sachs, an orthopedic resident, a special education teacher, a compliance director for Governor Patterson, a law school student, a production manager for Fila, an editor at another big time publishing company whose name shall not be mentioned…I could keep going, but you get the idea. These women are all successful, under 35, and fast!

To give you an idea of their speed, I’ll throw some statistics out there. Six of the women on the NYAC team ran the marathon in under 2 hours and 55 minutes. That means each of these girls ran 26.2 miles in under 6:40 minute pace per mile. And all ten of the women that ran did it in under 7:15 minute pace per mile. Let me put this in perspective. I’m guessing you did the mile fitness test at some point in junior high gym class. Perhaps you were shrewd enough to come up with a believable excuse to not participate, or you were able to strategically injure yourself with a protractor in geometry the period before. But chances are you experienced the burning lungs, lactic acid—perhaps even considered feigning death—as you made your 16 laps around the gymnasium floor. Now imagine doing that 25.2 more times. That’s kind of what the marathon is like.

And you know what the crazy thing is? The women of the NYAC running team are still running! They are currently training for US Cross-Country Nationals this winter (think grass, spikes, and barriers comprised of hay and water, or Michael Cera in the film Juno), and the US Half-Marathon Championships in January. And here comes my real plug. The team is approaching only its two year anniversary—meaning there is still a lot of room for growth and development. NYAC just garnered its first New York Road Runners Racing Series Championship—a fancy way of saying this team is the better than all 53 other competing teams in the state of New York—and the pundits (admittedly comprised of running message board junkies) think there could be many more.

So, I’m inviting all New Yorkers, runners and gym class slackers alike, to come support the NYAC Running Team this Thursday, where my teammates and I will be guest- bartending at the bar Third and Long in order to raise travel funds so that we can have the chance to do some real damage on the National Scene.

Information is as follows:
Who: New York Athletic Club Women’s Running Team
What: Guest-Bartending Fundraiser
Where: Third and Long
When: Thursday, November 18, 6-8pm

What you get:
• $10 at the door gets you a bracelet that will get you drink specials ($4 drafts and house drinks from 6-10)
• Party souvenir
• Raffle of various running-related items as well as various non-running related items
• Dart board

Directions: Third and Long is at 523 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10016

Check out the NYAC running team here.

But I’m not here to preach.  I was a pudgy little kid, my preferred description is “pleasantly plump,” and while puberty slimmed me out I still remember the trauma of a family friend coming up to me at my high school graduation party (which was 80’s themed and had me decked out in spandex) to tell me that he was so proud of how slim I’d gotten.  He was likely trying to give me a compliment but my fragile ego interpreted it as an insult.  Similarly, I remember my college graduation when a family member pulled me aside to tell me I looked too slim and that they were concerned.  I took it as a compliment.  Crazy right?

My point here is that we all have our self-image issues.  Luckily, mine faded with time.  I don’t own a scale and I know I eat a healthy diet so I figure there isn’t all that much to worry about.  In celebration of Fat Talk Free Week perhaps we should all consider holding our tongue when giving a compliment, complaining about our weight or simply comparing ourselves to others.  Instead of talking diets with your girlfriends consider talking about exercise, or the upcoming election or the amazing book you just finished reading.

Take a moment to check out the “Fat Talk Free Week” website sponsored by Delta Delta Delta, Seventeen Magazine, NOW, NEDA, and AED and be sure to watch their video which drives the point home.

Having just returned from eight days in England, I was slightly at a loss about what to feature in my weekly post this afternoon. But an item in today’s news caught my attention and got me thinking about geography. According to the 2008 Farm Bill that the U.S. Congress just passed this summer, all unprocessed meat, produce, as well as selected nuts will have to be labeled with their country of origin beginning next Tuesday, September 30. Touted as a safety measure to help American consumers make informed decisions about their food purchases, I wonder if it will do anything to improve our geographic literacy. Are we just a nation of shoppers looking for a bargain and familiar brands, or are we prepared to educate ourselves about how and where the things we eat are raised, grown, fertilized, or slaughtered? Although symbols and flags have not been deemed permissible labels (personally, I think small silhouettes of each country would be truly—pun intended—COOL), I’m of the belief that such abbreviations might actually force us to learn even more than we will from the names of countries alone. Just think of all the moms and dads pushing their inquisitive children around grocery stores in Maine or California. What questions might they ask upon spotting a piece of fruit bearing the image of Chile’s long, sinuous outline, or a package of peanuts stickered with the vaguely Pac-Man-esque shape of Senegal?

Learn more here and here.

Yesterday we posted part one in our dialogue between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published Starved For Science) and Pamela Ronald (author of Tomorrow’s Table). These two experts will be debating all week how to best ensure a safe food supply with the least amount of damage to the environment. This is the second part of the series, so be sure to come back and check out part three tomorrow.

Robert Paarlberg is the Betty F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. His most recent book is Starved For Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa(Harvard University Press), explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought.

Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her most recent book, written with Raoul W. Adamchak, is Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, genetics, and the Future of Food, which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.

Dear Pamela,

Thanks for your careful note, which helps me understand some important technical points. I like your reminder that cover crops have multiple roles, and also your reference to the high cost of synthetic fertilizers given today’s much market price for natural gas. These are solid arguments to support some techniques employed by organic farmers.

I am also glad that you endorse using more science, not less, to address productivity and sustainability issues in agriculture. I am particularly attracted to your advocacy for a new science of “biotic controls” for crop pests. One of my earliest and strongest impressions of what this kind of science can deliver came during a visit I made to Benin, in Africa, in the early 1990s, where I saw first hand how the introduction of a tiny parasitic wasp from Brazil had helped bring under control damage to cassava plants from a mealy bug. The mealy bug had earlier been introduced (along with the cassava) from Brazil, but without the wasp which was its natural biological control.

But let me challenge you, at this point, with a less technical matter. On the question of the environmental implications of science-based productivity in farming, I have recently come across the views of James Lovelock, who was the independent scientist who first developed Gaia theory in 1972. Lovelock has recently made a bold and daring argument. He has asserted than an adequate protection of nature in some places may require a more complete engineering or domination of nature somewhere else. Lovelock has even imagined an ideal landscape for human habitation as divided into three parts: one-third would be given over to human residential and industrial use, and one-third to highly intensive farming, which would allow (by his calculation) the final one-third to be left to evolve entirely free of any human interference. This is an extreme and fanciful vision, but it is founded on an important insight about farming: less intensive, low-input models of agriculture that are designed to imitate nature would – just like nature itself – produce too little human food per hectare, thus requiring the use of much more land in farming, encroaching on the natural environment.

What do you think of this vision?

Thanks again for your generous engagement in this stimulating dialogue.

Rob Paarlberg

James Lovelock presents an interesting and practical model for human utilization of natural resources. In a sense, this is somewhat how these resources are now being managed, although the proportions likely differ from what Lovelock envisioned. I completely agree that less intensive, low-input models of agriculture produce too little human food per hectare. This is what you have in Africa, right? With dire consequences. If we use this approach in the US, we would need to clear vast amounts of land for farming which would increase global warming.

Although Sir Albert Howard, one of the founders of the organic movement did believe that farms should imitate nature world (a very fundamentalist view), few organic farmers in the developed world now use this approach.

Instead, the most successful organic farms are science based and highly intensive. The difference from many conventional farms is that there is less fertilizer runoff and pesticide use, because alternative approaches are used. In ideal farming conditions, yields from organic farms are similar to those of conventional farms. However, when diseases or environmental stress strike, organic farmers do not always have adequate tools available. For example, because there was no tool to combat papaya ringspot virus that infected papaya orchards in Hawaii, when the disease hit, yields of both conventional and organic orchards plummeted. Once the fields were replanted with GE papaya that is resistant to the disease, the productivity rapidly rebounded.

So what I advocate is intensive farming using the most ecologically responsible approaches. In our view this would include many organic production practices and GE crops

I hope this clarifies. Thanks for the interesting question!

Regards
Pam

All this week we will be featuring a discussion between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published Starved For Science) and Pamela Ronald (author of Tomorrow’s Table). Check out part one of their discussion here. To whet your appetite we excerpted a recipe from Ronald’s book for Plum Cake. Ronald goes on to discuss the plum pox virus, but for now, just enjoy the cake!

Tante Lissy’s Pflaumenkuchen (Plum Cake)
Ingredients

1 c Butter

1 c Sugar

1 Egg

2 tsp Almond extract (or vanilla)

1 tsp Salt

1 c White flour

1 c Barley flour

10 Plums, pitted and cut in half

2 Tbsp warmed apricot jam

Directions

1) Beat together butter and sugar.  Add in egg, almod or vanilla extract, and sat.

2) Mix in flours to form a dough.

3) Pat 2/3 of the dough into an 8-inch pan with removable rim.  Arrange plums, cut side down, in pan.

4) Lattice rest of dough on top; drizzle with apricot jam.

5) Bake at 350 degrees Farenheit for 45 minutes.

Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis and the co-author with her husband Raoul Adamchak of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. In the post below Ronald responds to an editorial by Paul Krugman.

“Most Americans take food for granted”, reports the New York Times in an editorial last week. I would add that we also take abundant water, vast expanses of wilderness and clean air for granted. The price of oil, global warming and skyrocketing food prices are changing the way we think about land. It is about time. Have we forgotten that land and its resources are precious? Have we forgotten how to be good stewards?

In an editorial this week in the NYT, Paul Krugman places part of the blame on biofuels: “We need to push back against biofuels that turns out to have been a terrible mistake.” But this conclusion is premature and overly simplistic.

Whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. If we destroy rainforests and grasslands to plant food crop–based biofuels, then Kurgman is right. This is a bad idea. Such an approach would release 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. (Fargione et al, science 2008).

In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials (so called cellulosic biomass) incurs little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages. Research on cellulosic biofuels have only just begun and there are tremendous opportunities. For example, plant biologists are working towards developing new and more productive non-food crops that can be grown on marginal lands. If we triple the yield of biomass we can use 1/3 less land. If we use the most ecologically responsible farming practices available (e.g. organic farming) to produce this new crop biomass, we can reduce the environmental impacts.

Nathanael Greene in an interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday today said we need new innovations and we need to use them smartly. That is what should be done.

Chin Hills, Burma

Coordinates: 22 30 N 93 30 E

Maximum elevation: 10,018 feet (3,053 m)

Desperately trying to keep the Taxman at bay for a few more hours, I wound up at my favorite Monday night watering hole with a few friends last night, earnestly discussing the summer foods we enjoyed most. After listening to everyone’s peculiar arguments I found myself championing the mango as the perfect fruit for warmer days ahead. And yet as I tried to explain its versatility as an ingredient and its unrivaled popularity (the National Mango Board claims that more fresh mangos are eaten every day than any other fruit in the world), I realized that I knew precious little about its geographical origins.

As it turns out, this succulent relative of the cashew and the pistachio has been consumed in India for thousands of years, although it didn’t reach the United States until the late nineteenth century. Pinpointing the location of the first mango, when there are hundreds of varieties of the plant today, is not something I wanted to undertake but fortunately others had already agreed on the higher terrain forming the border between India and Burma (Myanmar). Running north-south, the evergreen-clad Chin Hills stretch across much of this tropical zone, and may hide an ancient progenitor in their forested slopes.