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Your scribe often attends food shows of the latest hot products on the consumer market. Usually disappointed by too many fast food items ranging from potato chips to popcorn with a new sometimes bizarre flavour. Therefore approached the latest one GSF19 Grocery & Specialty Food West Show at the Vancouver Convention Centre with lower expectations on April 1. However I found 5 food discoveries that captured my interest and recommend them as follows:

1. Nature Valley Granola Bars. Bit sweet but can be a good emergency fallback at breakfast while travelling. Like their crunchy Oats ‘n’ Dark Chocolate one and there is a new one chewy trail mix coconut dark chocolate.

2. QueenBee Natural Honey 100% Canadian but newly mixed with a Ginger Boost.

3. Siggi’s Icelandic Skyr Thick 0% Fat Plain Yogurt with only 3 grams of sugar – that is low. Like they use 100% natural ingredients and have large print notice of LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES. Also like what it lists that it doesn’t have: NO aspartame, sucralose, stervia, gelatin, artificial, preservatives – none of those.

4. Fruta Mil (frutamil.com.br) 100% natural frozen pulp from Brazil – especially passion fruit + açai – imported by nutreewholesale.com. Investigate.

5. Casa Luker Cacoa from Columbia at www.cacaofinodearoma.com. Good quality at better prices. My fav single origin Tumaco 85%.

Good luck exploring new food products.

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Question: Seeking out the name of a famous deceased French winemaker who made two top white wines from different regions. Who would that be?

Answer: Suspect you must be thinking of Didier Dagueneau who died in a plane crash in 2008. He had a cult following for his Pouilly Fume Sauvignon Blanc named Silex from the Loire Valley and also Les Jardins de Babylone made from Petit Manseng in Jurancon (at the foot of the Pyrennes in Southwest France).

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Question: Noticed someone in a wine shop wearing a T-shirt with a neat “PET-NAT” logo on it. What is that?

Answer: A trendy way of making natural wines in a petillant fizzy style.  Derived from the old French method used for  “PETillant-NATurel”. In some markets including the UK these wines have been dubbed “hipster bubbles”. Bottled before the fermentation is complete so contains some natural carbon dioxide from the continued fermentation in the bottle of the remaining sugar. They have become quite popular particularly for those supporting the natural wine movement and looking for a lower alcohol sparkling with less residual sugar. Fun!

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Question: Can you tell me what the characteristic of the size of Champagne bubbles is called?

Answer: Not sure I fully comprehend your question. There is physics on the release of pressure allowing dissolved carbon dioxide to release bubbles.  Also  “Ostwald Ripening” developed by a German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald relates larger crystals or bubbles to dominate smaller ones in sparkling wine or even in boiling water. Without being so technical it is fun just to study the size of bubbles on pouring a sparkler. Many of us still look for that small steady stream of tiny bubbles for an indication of top quality. Helps to use a consistent pouring procedure to get reliable results. Your scribe pours some into the first glass to swirl around then transfers that one by one into all the other glasses to be used. Keep the last glass for yourself and check that the wine is sound before refilling all the glasses. This “seasons” the glasses and allows you to pour into a wet glass with more consistent pure bubble results IMHO. Try it. Bubbles prominent with an estimate of 49 million per Champagne bottle with apparently a wide range in size from .4 mm to 4 mm – big variation. Characteristic of these bubbles, bead, or pearl (perle in French) on being poured is having them form a “raft” on the top surface. Some sparklers are meant to have fewer bubbles like cremant and petillant style.

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Question: Which of the 50 states of USA produces the most wine and what percentage of the total?

Answer: Yes an easy one to answer as California easily reigns. However the second part is a bit more surprising as 85% of the wine made in the USA comes from California.

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