A drive through the country. Crisp autumn air. Leaves turning color. Apple picking. Pumpkin carving. There’s no better way to warm up this harvest season than trying some delicious new recipes. Whether it’s a wonderful addition to your next dinner, celebration table or a simple picnic in the orchard, use theses flavor combinations as your inspiration for a warming chutney, jam, jelly or preserve. They make great holiday gifts too!
Question: Sid I would like to know if you favor wine made by wild ferment or with the use of cultured yeast?
Answer: Interesting topical question. Yeasts are an important factor in winemaking. Think of how sourdough or levain influences your bread. I like wines that use the wild yeasts which are in the vineyard and the winery. These usually bring a slower more risky less efficient fermentation – but sometimes results in less alcohol with better terroir. Cultured yeasts nearly always work fast and efficiently. However, recent research reveals that the yeasts you use for the first time in the winery tend to remain and dominate regardless of your later choice. If you want to go with wild yeast it might be a good idea to paint the inside walls of your brand new winery with yeasts from your vineyard to get them well established!
If you’re a rare wine collector, then 2016 is shaping up to be your year! First came billionaire tycoon Bill Koch who, in the spring, auctioned off 20,000 bottles from his massive collection, which ended up garnering an astounding $21.9 million dollars. And just last week, a treasure trove of fine Bordeaux belonging to the late Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy in Oklahoma City was also placed under the gavel. Projected to sell between $5.1 and $7.6 million dollars, this collection ended up defying expectations by earning $8.44 million with approximately 80% of the lots going above the high estimate.
McClendon, a pioneer in hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking) and former co-owner of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder was also known for being one of America’s biggest wine collectors. Never shy about showing off his spoils, reporter Chris Helman wrote that during an interview at a restaurant owned by the billionaire, McClendon poured him a 1989 Petrus, a 1989 Haut Brion, and a 1982 Lafite Rothschild. Not a bad five figure pairing to go along with some steak and fries, but as he told Helman rhetorically, “We can drink cheap wine, or we can drink good wine.”
So when Hart Davis Hart Wine Co., based in Chicago announced that the collection comprising of 1057 lots would be auctioned off, wealthy oenophiles from around the world were ready to bid, both in person and online. According to the company’s press release, nearly 1,000 bidders from 42 states, 17 countries and 4 continents generated $57 million dollars in bids. Unsurprisingly, given McClendon’s philanthropic endeavors along with his public role in moving the Seattle Supersonics to his home state, many native Oklahomans showed up to bid. “We had more than ten times the usual number of Oklahoma bidders on this record breaking day,” said the president of Hart Davis.
Question: Why do some Syrah wines have a mix of Viognier?
Answer: Many Syrah are 100% for pure definition of that variety. Some others add less than 10% Viognier to the mix. Recent Master of Wine and a native of Australia Marcus Ansems MW is the proprietor of Daydreamer Wines in the Okanagan Valley producing an excellent Syrah. At a wine seminar on global Syrah this month Marcus gave 3 reasons for the use of Viognier with Syrah:
I asked Marcus if in addition to the floral pepper aromas and rounder mouthfeel whether co-fermenting with Viognier might also improve colour density. His reply was that Syrah usually has plenty of intense colour already.
From those of us who simply slice it into our breakfast cereal to the diehards who consider it to be an integral part of their post exercise smoothie, the banana is ubiquitous in every city across the United States. Whether it’s the need for potassium, fiber or affordable flavor, Americans have made them the highest selling fruit crop for over a century. And despite the thousands of miles they have to travel in order to get here, bananas continue to outsell apples at the grocery store, even though the latter is usually grown within mere miles of many U.S. cities.
But behind this spectacular rise is also a dark past—and a murky future. With the banana’s friendly price tag came numerous coup d’états and military juntas that completely altered the political landscape of numerous countries near the equator. Meanwhile, with the possibility of crippling diseases making their way across the oceans, many are uncertain that this cherished fruit can survive into the next century. It is a fascinating subject that author Dan Koeppel dives into with his 2007 book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. “The banana is one of the most intriguing organisms on earth,” writes Koeppel. “Most of us eat just a single kind of banana, a variety called Cavendish, but over one thousand types of banana are found worldwide.”
If you’ve eaten plenty of bananas over the course of your life, then you’ll definitely have a new appreciation for this fruit by learning just how important they are across the globe. For example, in Uganda, a country that grows 11 million tons annually (or 500 pounds per person), famine and hunger is nearly nonexistent due to its banana production. Likewise, to combat Vitamin A deficiencies that affect 150 million children worldwide, the Federated States of Micronesia may have the answer in a hybrid known as Utin lap, which contains 6,000 micrograms—far more than the daily requirement for a child—of beta-carotene, a precursor to Vitamin A.
Another fascinating chapter deals with the continent of Asia, and more specifically, India. As the author points out, “If banana consumers were as enthusiastic and inquisitive as wine lovers, a tour of Asia’s groceries and plantations would be the equivalent to a visit to Bordeaux or the Napa Valley.” Of course, nowhere are people crazier about this fruit than in India, which grows approximately 20 percent of the world’s bananas and has more varieties than anywhere else. While many will scoff at the Indian practice of substituting tomatoes for bananas in their ketchup, you can’t help but feel shortchanged at the grocery store when you learn that there are so many different types beyond Cavendish (the ‘McDonalds of bananas’ according to the author) that we in North America have become so accustomed to. After finishing Koeppel’s book, the urge to try something new will make you go bananas!
Chiquita Banana commercial from the 1940s
For history buffs, a large section is rightfully dedicated to the disturbing role that bananas have played in the Americas since the late nineteenth century. Beginning in 1870 with Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker who made the first commercial transaction by bringing back 160 bunches of Gros Michel to the United States from Jamaica, we learn all about the banana craze that eventually made it America’s number one fruit. Interestingly, at first, the banana was considered a luxury item and extremely taboo due to its phallic nature, requiring an aggressive marketing campaign to assure women of the Victorian Era that it was perfectly fine to eat. But as the twentieth century began, the cost of bananas came down significantly due to several factors. The first was its monoculture where companies focused exclusively on growing only the Gros Michel or “Big Mike” cultivar. Unlike apples, which have many varieties resulting in higher prices, bananas were kept simple, allowing them to undercut their competition despite the distance they had to travel in order to reach consumers. More importantly however was that in order to keep costs down, wages needed to be low, yields high, and countries completely subservient to their interests.
From 1900 to 1930, approximately 25 interventions were conducted by the United States military on behalf of the banana companies, helping them overthrow governments and squash uprisings. In fact, we learn that the term “banana republic” was popularized in a story for Esquire magazine in 1935, describing countries that bent over backwards in order to accommodate the U.S. government and its fruit companies. United Fruit (now Chiquita), the company synonymous with this era is highlighted in great detail, especially for its role in CIA-backed overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.
However, as Koeppel contends, all of these incursions ended up being pyrrhic victories for United Fruit. Following the numerous regime changes, a new threat emerged that couldn’t be bribed or overthrown: Panama disease. A fungus that knows no boundaries, the damage this disease did to United Fruit’s banana fields was so extensive that by 1960, the Gros Michel that millions of people had grown up eating was nearly gone. But instead of finding ways to combat it, United Fruit simply tried to find more land while its competitor Standard Fruit (now Dole) began growing Cavendish, a banana resistant to Panama disease. This strategy would end up knocking United Fruit off its pedestal as the number one banana grower.
More than fifty years later, the question that still remains is could another plague reach the Americas? Koeppel certainly believes so, stressing other diseases like Bunchy Top and Black Sigatoka while demonstrating how easy soil can be contaminated. All it takes is one person with traces of it on their shoes to destroy entire banana fields. And since the business model of American banana growers is based on a monoculture, this makes them particularly vulnerable. Oenophiles will undoubtedly draw parallels between this scenario and the phylloxera epidemic that nearly destroyed France’s vineyards in the nineteenth century. So, could cross breeding bananas work the same way grafting vines on resistant rootstock worked for vintners?
A key strength of the book comes from the tangible solutions that the author proposes. In addition to advocating cross breeding, Koeppel also recommends genetic engineering, a proposal that won’t win him any friends with the organic crowd. Also, it is time for consumers to demand a greater selection of bananas, moving beyond the standard Cavendish. After all, many think that it pales in comparison in terms of taste with the other varieties. And since it seems inevitable that an epidemic will hit Central and South America, it is time that consumers take action before the banana is gone forever.
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