Steven Erlanger writes in the NYT:
The importance of terroir to the French psyche and self-image is difficult to overestimate, because it is a concept almost untranslatable, combining soil, weather, region and notions of authenticity, of genuineness and particularity — of roots, and home — in contrast to globalized products designed to taste the same everywhere. ...
The notion of terroir is essentially political, at heart a conservative, even right-wing idea, even though it has been picked up by a new generation that would consider itself on the left, opposing globalization and pesticides. ...
Jean-Claude Ribaut, a food critic for Le Monde, called terroir “a sort of lost paradise.” But it also stands for a reaction to modernity, he said: “One could say it’s a vision a bit backward-looking, but it’s also, I think, a battle of today, to try to safeguard what gives us pleasure and health.”
The preservation of terroir is finally a kind of unwritten conspiracy between the farmers and the wealthy, as well as the bourgeois bohemians of the big cities, who will pay more for quality, for freshness, for artisanal craft and for that undefinable authenticity that is the essence of terroir.
I'm all in favor of localist eating in theory, but, lacking perceptive taste buds, I have to admit that I'm perfectly happy eating whatever Costco is selling.
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80 comments:
There's a lot that's conservative about the locavore movement, though many locavores don't seem to register the fact. But there was a lot that was conservative about the hippie movement too.
Lately there's been a lot more "upscale" burger joints. They're fine, but it's still just fast food more or less at a higher price. I think the main appeal of them is that they give people an excuse to eat fast food without admitting that it's fast food like one of the major chains like McDonald's.
It's well-known that terroir is a fashionable form of primogeniture. California is almost certainly better ground for wine-making.
I have a Whole Foods near my job. The biggest discovery I've made since I started shopping there was that artisanal cheeses do not in any way belong to the category of pretentious BS. They tend to have much more flavor than regular, cheapo cheeses. It's as if the cheap stuff was diluted with water. Artisanal cheeses also display a much greater variety of flavors. I've never tasted many of these flavors in any other foods. Some of it is subtle, genuinely surprising stuff. A few recommendations: Roquefort, Manchego, Saint-André, Wensleydale with cranberries, Tomme de Savoie, real Cheddar (no relation to regular, orange Cheddar).
Steve has written about Mast Brothers chocolate. It's nothing special. I haven't found artisanal chocolates to be better than the regular kind.
The cereals that Whole Foods sells are worse than the Kellogg's and Post stuff, which it doesn't sell. The sausages that I get at Whole Foods are better though. Thursday Cottage jams are pretty good.
Order a pound of chocolate truffles from Leonidas. You will think you've never eaten chocolate before.
Re: California wines, they tend to be on the Kool-Aid side. They call it "fruit forward", which means loaded with sugar because they don't try to make aged dry wines, and sugar covers a multitude of sins to the American palate. There are good California wines- at twice the price of an equivalent French or Italian one. (Some Spanish wines, especially Rioja vineyards, are a very good value).
Finally, try Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. You'll never touch Starbucks again. Over-roasted low quality beans for maximum extraction. Basically crap.
@Glossy, let me recommend that you try baked cheese, using Brie or Camembert.
1) Buy a small B or C and a half-baked baguette.
2) Put cheese on small dish and bake in oven, while also baking the baguette.
3) While they are baking make a salad or two - green salad, Waldorf, whatever.
4) Dress salad; serve cheese and baguette.
5) Consume, dipping the bread into the cheese as if it were an informal fondue.
6) Sigh with pleasure.
I work with local farmers. They tend to be pragmatic progressive types. Notice how every major local farming movement is centered around liberal cities.
Terroir, from the Latin word territorium. As if your rural home town had its own dialect, recipes and legends. There must be some US equivalents, in some rural US areas. But France being much older than the USA, its rural regions are also much older, with the legendary or semi-legendary lives of local saints dating back to Roman times.
Terroir: where recipes devised by starving medieval peasants become delicacies (and I am not thinking only of snails...). Thatched cottages used to be the hovels of the poor. Now they are luxurious countryside villas.
French city dwellers like me are fascinated by terroir. We have lost our roots and traditions in the asphalt jungle, even our genetic identity. We speak the standardized dialect of TV shows. Terroirs are a paradise lost (it wasn't exactly a paradise for those who had to actually live there, though) where instead of modern standard Euro-agnosticism there are places where saints and the Virgin Mary made miracles, stone crosses which are (were) actually revered by the locals, etc.
Terroir: what enables you to keep your sanity, when you tell some SWPL that the nation is becoming black and muslim, and they reply, Hillary-style, "What difference does it make?"
I grow a very nice garden. Whether it's organic... who the hell knows? The definition of organic seems to be that the food costs two to three times as much as the non-organic.
My girlfriend likes to douse the tomatoes with Miracle Grow. Miracle Grow is chemicals, namely, potash, nitrogen and a bunch of trace elements, mostly metals. And, it works!
Chemicals are precisely what tomatoes need... but, Miracle Grow is not organic. The argument seems to be over how these chemicals are introduced. Horse shit... good! Miracle Grow... bad!
Whether this really makes a difference, who knows?
Since I am a native Midwesterner, now living in the Northeast (the epicenter of this local food thing), I've noticed that regional rivalry places a big role here.
The land in the Northeast does not lend itself to the vast tracts that produce corn, soybeans and wheat in the Midwest. The mountains and valleys in the Northeast are beautiful, but farming is restricted to bottom lands in the valleys. You can't turn a huge tractor and plow around in these small plots, as you can out there on the prairie.
The Northeast doesn't hate the Midwest with that bitter passion it reserves for the South. But, the feeling remains in the Northeast that those Midwesterners are crude yokels living in a raw and undeveloped state in the hinterlands.
So it is that the economic strengths and natural resources of the Midwest are always being defined in some negative way by the Northeasterner. The Midwestern style of farming, which takes advantage of the endless, wide open space available is now derided as "factory farming" by Northeasterners.
You might be right, Steve. The Northeast needs some big time football programs so that Northeasterns can work out their competitive anger at other regions in a sensible manner.
Try finding local peaches from a farmer's market. Eat those, then eat some of the balsa wood stuff from the supermarket. The sugar is what makes the fruit taste at al. The difference is painfully obvious.
Stone fruits -- peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries -- won't fix sugar after they have been picked. Industrial orchards serving huge chains have to pick the fruit green because otherwise it will spoil in transit. Also, green fruit can be picked with a machine but ripe fruit is too soft for that. The supermarket chains spray the fruit with ethylene to make it turn the color of ripe fruit while still tasting nasty. The supermarket peach clearly meets the definition of "Frankenfood" -- altered by an industrial process to vaguely resemble food, but still mostly artificial.
The Whole Foods that opened near me has combined the locavore with terroir; they're growing vegetables on the roof to sell in the store!
I'm perfectly happy eating whatever Costco is selling.
Jesus H Christ, Steve, shopping at Costco is like sending a weekly donation straight to Frankfurt School Central Command.
How can you do that and then stand to look at yourself in the frigging mirror the next morning?!?
Seriously, dude.
Surely there's somebody you can buy your groceries from who isn't working day and night to destroy Western Civilization.
PS: If that thing about Costco was actually a rather serious JOKE, poking fun at "MacErlanger" and the "Scots-Irish York Times", then kindly accept my apologies in advance.
But it sure didn't feel like a joke.
Dadgummit, man.
Ahistorical, unrealistic, romantic nostalgia for a non-existent ideal past that never existed is the historic foundation for leftist thinking. It starts with Rousseau's noble savage and can be found as a subcurrent in left-wing thinking from Marx through Mao to the late-and-unlamented Occupy Wall Streeters. Locally grown and prepared food IS much more intensely flavorful and enjoyable (once you get used to the new tastes and textures) than mass-produced products shipped thousands of miles. (Until one has seen the contents of a fresh-laid egg plop solidly into a frying pan, hold its shape, and fry up in a few moments and until one has tasted the complexi richness of the result, one has not lived!) Even more importantly, local farmers help preserve the large genetic variation in food crops and livestock that is a defence against disasters like the Irish potato famine and the more recent elimination of the original market variety of banana. However, such production is too expensive to support all but a small, well-off section of the total population. It also relies heavily on modern technology and free market systems in a lot of hidden and not so hidden ways. Without the support of a free market and technology, if we were reduced to relying once again on such local agricultural production most of us would starve and life would once again become nasty, brutish, and short. So two cheers for terroir but always remember that mass agriculture is what keeps most of us alive, relatively healthy, and reasonably content.
Terroir, Tejano style.
Terroir: My first thought was that this is something the modern age has decided to commodify, e.g. southern California had nice weather, nice people, and nice food; so it was advertised as such by the open border types 'cause they sell real estate and toilet paper. Thus people are ushered in until the place starts to look like Tijuana and the Terroir is spent.
However, it also sounds like 'terror' in English.
Is the NYT trying to confuse the great unwashed masses just when Obama has declared the French to be our great first allies?
I traveled up the Loire Valley a couple years ago, the area De Gaulle and others called La France Profonde, the real France.
One of the most remarkable things about it was that, when you get outside the cities on the Loire itself, the countryside is almost entirely farmland and seemingly deserted during weekdays. I cycled for about 60 miles at a time on hot summer days, aching for a coke or anything to drink, but there were no roadside restaurants, fast-food or otherwise, and the handful of villages I passed through were empty with all their shops closed. The rural French apparently go to work in fields or city jobs and do not hang out in coffee shops.
It was a strange but very peaceful experience. The land looked very much as it must have for the last thousand years or so.
"Re: California wines, they tend to be on the Kool-Aid side. They call it "fruit forward", which means loaded with sugar because they don't try to make aged dry wines, and sugar covers a multitude of sins to the American palate. There are good California wines- at twice the price of an equivalent French or Italian one. (Some Spanish wines, especially Rioja vineyards, are a very good value)."
Absolute nonsense. California wines are better and a better value than Old World wines. If you think all inexpensive California wines are Arbor Mist, you don't know anything about wine.
Its amazing how all the lefties who see value in local sustainability see no hypocrisy in favoring open borders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/technology/from-example-to-excess-in-silicon-valley.html
Come to St. Louis, so I can load Steve the Sailer Man down with toasted ravioli, sauce-drowned pork steaks, paper thin crust pizza cut (with provel cheese of course) in rectangles and ooey gooey butter cake.
Diet? What diet?
More on the STEM Crisis
Everyone seems afraid to say that it is a shortage of high IQ individuals that is the problem, and all the training and education in the world cannot turn a sows ear into a silk purse.
With respect to cheese, yes: and what you really, really want is an Époisses. You can savor it while reading Ray Sawhill's great essay on the French, which I guess he's too modest to bring up:
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/001451.html
Sample sentence: "Hard though it is for an American to believe, the French wake up in the morning and look forward to a full day's-worth of Being French."
Ribbit.
Well just shut up and try to pretend you can tell.
We would all be better off if we had smarter farmers who could make a living without depending on big business, crony capitalism and all that produces.
Aren't you guys a yeoman republic? Well better have some yeomans then.
OT, David Frost just had a heart attack whilst on a cruise ship. Is it just me, or do cruise ships have a high rate of CVD fatalities?
Not being able to distinguish between a Vosnee Romanee and say Sonoma or a Clos De Goisses and a Clos Mesnil is roughly like saying there is no difference between say Blazac and Grisham. I will take whatever Borders is selling today.
Notice how every major local farming movement is centered around liberal cities.
...trying to preserve surrounding open space by restricting it to farming.
Just so's you know.
I'm all in favor of localist eating in theory, but, lacking perceptive taste buds, I have to admit that I'm perfectly happy eating whatever Costco is selling.
My taste buds aren't all that "perceptive" either, but the stench from the smell of the food served in the fast food area of the stores I've been in makes for a daunting trip to Costco.
Bill Grant
The French lost their food mojo a few decades back. If interested, the book "Au Revoir to All That" is a reasonable explication of the downfall of French cooking in France. It is still the greatest of all cooking traditions, but standards have fallen dreadfully in the land of terroir (is somebody in love with terroir a terroirist?) and many French no longer give a fig for their food traditions. Meanwhile, the second biggest market for McDonald's is France.
The fact that little French babies are becoming rarer than raw milk cheeses won't help. Eventually the Muzzies will take over, and they will tear up the vineyards and smash the cathedrals, and then everyone will be happy.
Funnily enough, some of the best French cooking is now being done by those masters of copying, the Japs.
I've tried a number of times today and in the past to satisfy your Google guardians. Not usually a problem at other sites requiring such "proofs". Win or lose on this one, I give up.
Regards,
Bill Grant
@Ray Sawhill :
The green movement in Europe has successfully been co-opted by the trotsko-libertine-liberals but for many decades, the green movement was quite conservative, especially in the German speaking countries.
It was the Australian wine industry that launched The War on Terroir. The difference is that theirs has been largely successful.
It's not just you Steve
http://priceonomics.com/is-wine-bullshit/
(Mangan linked to this a while back)
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Ray Sawhill said:There's a lot that's conservative about the locavore movement, though many locavores don't seem to register the fact. But there was a lot that was conservative about the hippie movement too.
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According to Haidt, respect for tradition/authority, ingroup loyalty and purity are conservative, but many countercultural ideals are based on these supposedly right wing moral foundations.
Because Leftists usually venerate alternative traditions, follow different authorities, use different definitions of purity and express loyalty to alternative in-groups, the leftist content of their beliefs often obscure a conservative belief structure.
This can apply to anti-racists and technocrats as well as locavore foodies. On a surface level, anti-racists are openly hostile to the ideas of purity, in-group loyalty, and tradition, but a closer look reveals that their beliefs are deeply linked to these explicitly denigrated moral foundations.
For example, multiculturalists often refer to "racists" as gross, disgusting, vile, creepy, icky, nasty and so on. To me, such visceral responses suggest a deeply violated sense of purity.
If you want evidence of their in-group loyalty, recall the fate that befell young Mr. Richwine when it became widely known that he had uttered the word "sibboleth" as a graduate student.
-The Judean People's front
It's well-known that terroir is a fashionable form of primogeniture.
Does this sentence actually mean anything?
California is almost certainly better ground for wine-making.
Better than Kansas? Sure. Other than that, was this sentence another stab at meaning something that didn't quite work out?
(All things pass - even the steam-roller of contemporary globalization - but viticulture rolls on for millenia. Verily, even the vineyards of California will one day be as ancient as those of Provence and Burgundy, and will breathe forth distinctive terroir.)
(Erlanger) The notion of terroir is essentially political...
No, it's not. It's "essentially" emotional, and humane. It becomes politicized and pretentious in a mass society that bleaches all "local flavor" out of human beings themselves, not just cheese and wine.
(Apropos of the topic, I remember enjoying Roger Scruton's I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine. Don't recall its succeeding in getting any philosophy into my head, but iirc it was at least partly a meditation upon terroir, and it did make me tremendously thirsty.)
. But there was a lot that was conservative about the hippie movement too.
Hippie futurists like the Whole Earth Catalog's Stuart Brand spotted this early on and criticized it.
Political beliefs, attitudes / stances, and behavior aren't a one-dimensional thing like "liberal" vs. "conservative." There's a second dimension of "populism" vs. "planning" that is too strong to ignore.
Leftists used to be populists back in the New Wave Age -- question authority, protest the Democratic National Convention, down with corporate hegemony, and so on.
Now, along with the right wing, they've switched to the planning side of the spectrum. Obey Clinton the All-Powerful, obey Obama the All-Wise. A life bereft of Apple gadgets and Prius cars is not worth living. Steve Jobs is thy Savior.
The locavore niche is the last remaining form of leftist populism in today's planning-centric culture.
End the hogocaust.
Shame of a nation that does this to an animal as intelligent and emotionally rich as dogs and cats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar#Demographics
"The population has tripled in the decade to 2011, up from just over 600,000 people in 2001, leaving Qatari nationals as less than 15% of the total population.[82] The influx of male labourers has skewed the gender balance, and women are now just one-quarter of the population."
Qatarese are only 15% of the Qatar and the rest are made up of foreign workers.
I guess there is a kind of universal aristocracy for Qatarese since they are assured of an income from the oil and gas wealth regardless of whether they work or not. Since Qatarese don't have to do the dirty work, they hire cheap foreign labor to do the work that Qatarese won't do. And since foreign workers don't have the same rights and assurances, they better work hard or else.
It seems this is sort of like the thinking of the 'creative' globalist class in US cities. They got the money, the connections, and the privileges. A lot of the kids have trust funds and can take it easy and work at stuff that 'fulfills' them. But they still need people to pick up the garbage, mow the lawn, and do all the dirty work; and foreigners are easier to hire and use than American blacks, unionized blue collar whites, and other Americans who know something about their 'rights'.
Of course, the difference is that Oatar will not bestow citizenship on the foreign workers whereas globalist American elites seem to think that stuff like amnesty and path to citizenship are a good idea.
Part of the reason for this difference could be that Qatar is ruled by the Qatarese elites. If non-Qatarese gain citizenship, they can work to undermine the Qatarese elites since the entire Qatarese citizenship population is only 15%, not enough to defend the Qatarese elites from the non-Qatarese masses.
But in the US, Jews rule as elites, and they fear white gentiles more than anything else. So, masses of non-whites becoming citizens and undermining the power of the GOP is seen as advantageous for the Jews. But if great masses of immigrants, legal and illegal, in the US, were conservative whites(who are likely to join the GOP if they were to gain US citizenship)from Europe, the globalist Jewish elites might not be so welcoming of the idea of expanding citizenship to just about everyone.
Though Qatarese nationals are vastly outnumbered by foreign workers, they control the guns. Also, as foreign workforce is diverse--from all over Asia and Middle East--, there's no chance of them uniting into a cohesive force against the Qatarese population.
Diversity of the lower elements is always the strength of the minority elites.
One thing for sure, America is NOT exceptional in creating national schemes such as this.
But are you indifferent to the effects of corporations like Costco on community?
Terroir, from the Latin word territorium. As if your rural home town had its own dialect, recipes and legends. There must be some US equivalents, in some rural US areas. But France being much older than the USA, its rural regions are also much older, with the legendary or semi-legendary lives of local saints dating back to Roman times.
There was a brief surge of interest in Appalachian folklore and folkways in the 1970s. See,as one example, Foxfire. That fad fizzled out more quickly than most.
Terroirist?
Is Terroirism more about tastebuds and flavor or about tribalism and loyalty?
Maybe a true terroirist prefers local stuff even if non-local stuff is better. It just tastes like home.
Two summers ago I was the guest of a generous host with a manor house on the Loire. The five of us (including an American born marquise) had just finished a typically superb lunch al fresco, with every single thing we had eaten and drunk coming from within a radius of no more than 20 or 30 miles.
I leant back in my chair, smiled with delight, and said: "I simply could not live in this country".
My host looked at me in pained astonishment and asked: "But why ever not?"
My reply ("Because I would never think of anything else but the next meal") was met with the amused riposte: "But that is exactly what all of us do!", thus neatly summing up the glory which is France, why the concept of terroir is essentially French, and why not even the best of California (my native state) can begin to touch it. No, not even the Napa Valley.
Before I became HBD aware I was a typical pacific northwest SWPL-type. However I have retained my appreciation for local food, grass fed beef, sustainable farming practices, and its surprising to me that the HBD aware world and the locavore movement do not intersect more. They are both motivated by recognizing the costs of different elements of globalization.
I would go so far as to say perhaps the most powerful tool the HBD community could harness to attack the powers that promote globalization of Labor is to eat local sustainable food and promote that.
At least where I live you're far more likely to convince people they should be concerned about the provenience of their beef than that they should be so concerned about their neighbors. The less money big agribusiness receives the less they can use to lobby for the disintegration of national borders and the destruction of our national character.
France has great climate and soil for farming. And lots of good fisheries too. Colder waters up north have less variety of sea food.
Does Angus raised in Oklahoma count if eaten in Oklahoma City?
goatweed
"Terroir, Tejano style."
I wouldn't be surprised if the commercial was made by a NY ad company.
The French seem to have this thing for "taste."
Is Terroirism more about tastebuds and flavor or about tribalism and loyalty?
Terroirists probably thrive best in countries where you don't really have to choose between the two. (How many regions of France have crap culinary traditions?)
Maybe a true terroirist prefers local stuff even if non-local stuff is better. It just tastes like home.
In the glorious borderless future, comrade, nothing will ever taste (or look, or smell, or feel) like home again!
RE: Wines
Some decent wines are being made in NJ. A shock to some, but then again, this is Terra di Guido. Yes, there are a bunch of spoiled guinea brats here too.
Bits of tid.
Since 1960, French wine consumption per capita has declined over 50 percent.
Dozens of French cheeses have disappeared entirely. Raw milk cheese used to be nearly 100% of all French cheese. By the mid-2000s it was less than 10% of French cheese.
The largest private sector employer in France is McDonalds.
The thin French woman is largely a myth. By 2005, more than 40 percent of French were overweight or obese, the number increasing 10% per year.
1996 saw the first three-star Michelin restaurant in France go bankrupt, the first time ever. The French no longer support their own great restaurants the way they once did.
French bureaucracy has much to do with the demise of French dining, including labor laws. Establishing a new company in the U.S. takes about seven days. In France, sixty-six.
Quote from Marc Sibard, owner of Les Caves Auge, one of the finest wine emporiums in Paris: "In France, the better you do, the more they try to fuck you, the more they want you to die." French law even dictates what classes of wine can be displayed next to other classes in a store. To violate the rules is to receive a large fine. Sibard: "Can you imagine this bullshit?"
Inheritance taxes of up to 60% make it very difficult to maintain wineries in a family.
The movement of women into the workforce has broken the cultural chain of people learning good French food at home. Now, the typical family is more likely to get a Moroccan takeout than to have mother cook dinner.
In short, the combination of Cultural Marxism, immigration and insane government overreach has destroyed the greatest food culture the world has ever known.
The 'foxfire' project lost steam after its founder was jailed as a serial pedophile.
In short, the combination of Cultural Marxism, immigration and insane government overreach has destroyed the greatest food culture the world has ever known.
Greatest? I don't see why it's greater than, say, Italian. The French are just more arrogant about their food. The Italians don't care what anybody thinks about their food and aren't snobby at all about it.
1996 saw the first three-star Michelin restaurant in France go bankrupt, the first time ever. The French no longer support their own great restaurants the way they once did.
Was it replaced by a Michelin tire store?
Anonydroid at 3:33 PM said: I wouldn't be surprised if the commercial was made by a NY ad company.
Hunsdon said:
Young and Rubicam. NEW YORK CITY?
The thin French woman is largely a myth. By 2005, more than 40 percent of French were overweight or obese, the number increasing 10% per year.
That sounds like one of those "Mississippi is richer than Scandinavia" stats libertarian bloggers dined out on for about year back around 2003. I visit France every year and overweight women under the age of 50 are not the norm outside of tourist or immigrant areas. I'd like to know how they defined overweight.
The largest private sector employer in France is McDonalds.
The McDonald's in France are much better with fresh bread, a variety of cheeses, and mostly locally sourced food in general.
The movement of women into the workforce has broken the cultural chain of people learning good French food at home.
Sadly, this appears to be true, especially in Paris.
The French are just more arrogant about their food. The Italians don't care what anybody thinks about their food and aren't snobby at all about it.
Given how boring and bland a lot of Italian food is - how many types of similar tasting pasta does each restaurant need? - they've very little to be snobby about.
"In short, the combination of Cultural Marxism, immigration and insane government overreach has destroyed the greatest food culture the world has ever known."
Nothing beats the pizza.
PS: I think French have the worst of both worlds.
German economy is heavily regulated but Germans work hard and make the rules work. It's a trust nation.
In Italy, it doesn't matter how many rules and regulations there are since everyone cheats and is expected to cheat. Indeed, cheating is the essence of Italian business, and they sort of make it work.
French are not as diligent as Germans and but they are not as dishonest as Italians.
There are two ways to do business. But playing by the rules, as German so, or by breaking all the rules, as Italians do.
French seem to halfway play by the rules and halfway break all the rules.
Anonymous said...
"Re: California wines, they tend to be on the Kool-Aid side. They call it "fruit forward", which means loaded with sugar because they don't try to make aged dry wines, and sugar covers a multitude of sins to the American palate. There are good California wines- at twice the price of an equivalent French or Italian one. (Some Spanish wines, especially Rioja vineyards, are a very good value)."
Absolute nonsense. California wines are better and a better value than Old World wines. If you think all inexpensive California wines are Arbor Mist, you don't know anything about wine.
9/1/13, 8:31 AM
(laughing at the unique combination of ignorance and arrogance on display)
I lived in France for 11 years.I know a little about real food, not California Crap (and for the record, I was born in Beverly Hills, so this is not a case of "California Jealousy".) I am very aware of all the manufactured hype about the glories of California Kerosene. I ask that people taste the products and decide for themselves. If you are a typical American, with a typical American's palate, you will most likely be fairly immune to the TREMENDOUS amount of sugar in American foods. If you have a European palate, especially a European palate from years ago, the sweetness of American food overwhelms you. Most Americans have been so desensitized to it they can't even taste the sugar in ketchup!
I know all about the competitions where American wines won. As I said, there are good California wines- but at prices twice or higher the prices that a decent French or Italian wine costs.
There are studies that show that most people, even wine experts, can't tell the difference between quality of wines after a half glass or so. I believe that that is due to the flavor of the food that they're pairing it with.
If you ever get the chance to go to a wine dinner, where you taste different vintages of the same wine, you will very quickly be able to taste the differences- blindfolded. Unfortunately, Les Amis du Vin no longer exists- they were the best that I found. Most people involved in wine are doing it for the social status it confers, not the taste involved. Much like the majority of people who buy high-dollar sports cars to idle around South Beach.What's the point, outside of status display? Yes, I have driven a $300,000 Ferrari around South Beach- but a 30 year old Austin Mini on the Grande Corniche, driving in and out of clouds, is such a superior driving experience only the car mags would argue otherwise. Wonder why? For the same reason you hear about California wines- advertising dollars.
It's like all the "Rivieras" that developers are always building in third world central American shitholes- go see for yourself, then get back to me.
A Bientot!
Has there been any plague more terrible than the worldwide plague of bobo's?
The fact that little French babies are becoming rarer than raw milk cheeses won't help. Eventually the Muzzies will take over, and they will tear up the vineyards and smash the cathedrals, and then everyone will be happy.
Their total fertility rate is 2.08, which is not too bad. Some of this is due to higher fertility among Muslim immigrants, but the consensus is that the gap has been exaggerated by alarmists, and that native, white, Catholic and post-Catholic Frenchwomen are being reasonably fecund.
Cennbeorc
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Regarding the size of French families: it is the French Catholics (the serious ones, not the Vatican II types) who are the champs: a family with three or four children is considered vexingly small; the norm is six to eight, and ten to twelve is, if not common, far from unknown.
These are not ignorant peasants either. Most of them are upper middle or upper class; well-educated; socially and politically engaged; heavily over-represented in the armed forces.
When the inevitable struggle between la France profonde and the Islamic intruder begins, I know which side I would back.
"I know all about the competitions where American wines won. As I said, there are good California wines- but at prices twice or higher the prices that a decent French or Italian wine costs."
Hilarious. California wine is simply higher quality dollar for dollar than Old World wine. Not to mention that you just can't find California wine that can compare with some of the undrinkable sewage that comes from the Old World.
The fact that you lived in France makes your stubborn ignorance even more perplexing. You should know full well how truly horrible a large proportion of Old World wine is. Unless you're just a poseur, which seems likely given your opinions on the topic.
And then you went on to a lazy, silly car analogy. Appropriate.
Given how boring and bland a lot of Italian food is - how many types of similar tasting pasta does each restaurant need? - they've very little to be snobby about.
LOL. Italian food is the furthest thing from boring and bland. Italian food actually has flavor. French food has no flavor. It's just fatty and creamy.
Also French bread is crap. The Germans have much better bread.
French cuisine is what happens when you take delicious ingredients and flavors from Italy and douse it in fat and cream, removing all the flavor in the process.
The movement of women into the workforce has broken the cultural chain of people learning good French food at home.
Haute cuisine though will survive no matter what happens in France. It has its own chain, mostly male and all pro, which presumably goes back to medieval kings' and nobles' personal cooks and their apprentices. And it has strong appeal to international elites. The Japanese love it. Why wouldn't the Chinese?
Believe whatever you wish. Enjoy your Big Mac and wine coolers!!
Yeah, that's why there are so many bakeries worldwide churning out German bread.
But are you indifferent to the effects of corporations like Costco on community?
Please explain to us the effects on community of corporations like Costco.
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Stewart Brand: As I understand him, he started out with his slide show and lecture tour called "America Needs Indians."
He was a back to the land, build your own solar heated yurt equipped with a build-it-yourself ham radio kind of guy
Hence the *Whole Earth Catalog*.
Decades ago, Stewart B. was also proud of his pre-Viet Nam service in the US Army.
After the *Whole Earth Catalog* era, maybe in the 1980's, Brand started getting deeper and deeper into San Francisco cultural Bolshevism, touting activities such as women artificially inseminating themselves with oven basters.
Nowadays, the elderly Brand is mostly a Jerry Brown hanger-on and sycophant.
And many of the male children of *Whole Earth Catalog*-reading fathers would probably struggle to nail two boards together competently
Yeah, that's why there are so many bakeries worldwide churning out German bread.
They don't promote their bread. But it's definitely high quality stuff and better than French bread.
Charlesz Martel,
What's your opinion of California Alembic Brandies vs. Cognac? What about Armenian Brandy? I like Cognac well enough but find that Armenian, Californian, and Spanish brandies offer a far superior value. Based on your professed hatred of sugar, I would assume that you despise Brandy de Jerez, but California produces some fine Cognac style brandies.
-The Judean People's Front
Their total fertility rate is 2.08, which is not too bad. Some of this is due to higher fertility among Muslim immigrants, but the consensus is that the gap has been exaggerated by alarmists, and that native, white, Catholic and post-Catholic Frenchwomen are being reasonably fecund.
No. Ethnic and racial statistics are illegal in France, therefore the awful reality is hidden to most people: in most French cities, you see many Arabs, but you see even more Blacks. White children are a minority in most big city schools.
Just come to any large (or even not so large) French city and use public transit. The French nation will soon resemble its soccer teams.
I'm an Armagnac drinker myself. But I would imagine that California could make some decent brandies, given the high sugar content of many of their wines.
If you like champagne, one of the best values is Domaine Carneros, which is owned by Taittinger. The California product is virtually identical to the French Taittinger, but is priced about 40% less.
I know- it's a sparkling wine, not a champagne. etc. Try it- you will be impressed.
Chacun a son gout!
German bread is a decent bread- but remember, there are over 300 varieties of French bread, including Ryes and Pumpernickel. It goes far beyond the baguette or batard. The French are very good at improving other people's food.
I will ignite another firestorm, but I have to say this as well: The French make better Pizzas than the Italians. Cantal cheese or Emmentaller are used in the South of France for Pizza, and frankly, it is a better choice than Mozzarella. They also do a heck of a job with pastas.
The French are basically masters of sensual pleasures.
I will leave you with the following joke:
Heaven is where:
The French are the Cooks,
The Germans are the Engineers,
The English are the Police,
The Italians are the Lovers,
And it is all organized by the Swiss!!
Hell is where:
The English are the Cooks,
The French are the Engineers,
The Germans are the Police,
The Swiss are the Lovers,
And it is all organized by the Italians!!
70 ntrainsfCharlesz, you've obviously been blinded by the plonk. Starting with the Judgement of Paris in 1976 and on through the blind tastings by the "experts" over the next 20 years, the best wines of Cali have consistently beaten those of la belle France. The lesser vintners' hot wines, American versions of vin ordinnaire, in no way represent Cali's best. That said, I'm with you; nothing in the world beats Armagnac.
Jeffery Steingarten, the respected food editor at Vogue, wrote in one of his books about his shock at finding large containers of ketchup in almost every Michelin-starred kitchen he visited in Paris. That Joel Robuchon, the chef with more Michelin stars than any other, has moved away from fine dining to more "accessible" cuisine, should tell you the direction French cuisine is headed; a truly great restaurant meal needn't require 3 servers and $350 apiece. Paris is going to become San Francisco, where the excellence is in the mid-range.
But the French will always have my respect for their unparalleled cheeses and for continuing to blow up a game bird's liver to abnormal size for the world's greatest food, foie gras!
I am involved in a Midwestern local food movement organization and I am a farmer as well. Weare not all liberal left leaning! One big argument we use for local food is that it helps to give a sense of place. In other words foods that can be grown in Iowa can create dishes that are endemic to Iowa, giving it a sense of place that is lacking in this country. It is really a very conservative idea having a sense of place and a common culture that is worth defending rather than being part of some global village where all sense of place is thrown aside. After showing a conventional farmer (usually very conservative and very anti-treehugger)the fact that they can make money growing a few tomatoes sustainably on unused land, the next biggest argument that has swayed them toward the local food movement is the one I pointed to above.
BTW, I am glad that you are with the local food movement in at least theory!
Found some links on the subject. Seems I'm not the only one who thinks California wines are a little on the Hawaiian Punch side.
http://www.callunavineyards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=97&Itemid=106
http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/May-2012/French-vs-California-Wine/
http://www.hootnannieblog.com/2010/09/the-age-old-debate-california-vs-french-wine/
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-french-wines-differ-from-american-wines.html
http://www.windsorwinemerchants.com/2012/04/5-reasons-why-french-wine-is-better.html
If you read between the lines, what these folks are saying is that Americans like overly-sweet, high alcohol fruit punch like wines. But if it sells, sell it! It's the American Way!
On the other hand, nobody else seems capable of making a decent cheeseburger except Americans. If you saw Whit Stillman's film, Barcelona, there's an exposition about cheeseburgers a the end. Very bightingly accurate.
Now, don't get me started about how mp3's and CD's sound like crap next to vinyl. If you've got tin ears, you're lucky, as you're happy these days. If you know what music really sounds like, these are trying times!
I've tried to post these comments before, but they seem to get eaten somewhere. So this will be my last attempt.
Glad someone else likes Armagnac- most people have never even heard of it! It's a great accompaniment to a good cigar after a good meal- Dominican is my preference, although Nicaraguan are moving up
nicely. Cubans are basically crap nowadays, regardless of what Marv Shanken promotes. I've bought
cigars from the Government store in the Parque Central Hotel in Havana- all counterfeit crap. I
bought a box of very good Cubans from another store, recommended by a Cuban friend. Those were
excellent. The proprietor explained that you have to buy the lesser -known brands and be very
careful where you buy, as EVERYTHING is counterfeited. I have bought crap Cubans from Canada, France, Spain, etc. Years ago, I could get superb Cubans without a problem (pre-cigar boom). Now?
For the price and the hassle, and the high probability of buying junk, I would advise people to buy
Dominican.
O.K., back to wine.
I knew an American who worked on a cooking show for Tele Monte-Carlo years ago. They would film a local chef at a well-known restaurant making his signature dish, and then the crew and chef would eat it. Several times, the American was the only one who thought the food was not too sweet. The chef would invariably explain that he did that to suit the palates of his Anglosphere customers,(Americans were rich back then) who liked their food sweeter. (Like California wines). The English like mint jelly with lamb and other flavors, such as fig or apricot, with pork, for example. Sugar. The same preference extends to wine. Americans are renowned for their preference for Coca-Cola, as opposed to less sweet carbonated drinks (although, if you go the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta, you can try colas that are even sweeter, sold to the third world- hideously sweet, but the locals like them).
As to why different countries prefer different tastes, a lot has to do with what people are exposed
to, and that gets back to economics. The economics of American wine-making dictate a higher volume, faster return on invested capital. Aging wines costs money. So you get such abominations as forcing wine through stainless steel mesh under
pressure with oak shavings as opposed to barrel aging. Extra sweetness helps cover up the over-
oaking and excess tannin and harshness this method gives to the taste of the wine. Again, cheap
wines. High-end California vintners simply copy the French methods.
I remember reading in Business Week (I think- might have been the Financial Times) about how an
Italian wool mill stored their finished wool fabric in an underground cave where a stream ran alongside the wool, which slowly allowed the fabric to relax and absorb moisture. The aticle went on an on about how inefficient this was, how much better modern industrial methods were. (The modern method
would be to run it through a pair of heated steel rollers while injecting steam, to control what's
called the "regain" -moisture uptake.This causes the fabric to be stretched and rolled under
tension, which will inevitably cause the fabric to shrink asymmetrically when cut on the cutting table. Which is better? Well, the modern method is much faster and cheaper- but the old method will give a better hand to the goods, and the goods will move less when they're cut-resulting in a better-fitting suit, although the difference will be small. Does this matter? Well, is the suit
going to be sold for $800 or $6,000? Is the customer an Italian gentleman, or Snooki's boyfriend?
Or one of the primates that the Kardashian whores are fornicating with?
In textile manufacturing, the old beck-dyers, though horribly inefficient both energy and labor-wise, produce better quality goods than modern jet dyers. Fiberglass is cheaper and less maintenance intensive than wood on yachts, but nowhere near as warm and traditional. There's always a trade off. What does the customer/culture value? Economists have no method for judging value except via the price function. What people are willing to pay for is what gets produced.
Americans are very funny about this sort of thing. Gourmet food trucks are all the rage- but how
gourmet is the experience of eating a gourmet burger, while standing in the middle of a NYC street, surrounded by the third world? A mediocre meal in a sit-down French restaurant in a little village in France is a far more civilized, enjoyable experience than that, in my view. To each his own.
Steve had an article a while back about how the NYT suggested that having more sandwich fanchise
places in Italy would be better for Italians than having lots of locally owned trattorias. Right,
we're gonna give lessons on quality of life to one of the oldest civilizations in the world,
renowned for their quality of life. (paraphrasing Steve). We can't even protect our elderly from third-world racially motivated savagery, and we're lecturing the world on quality of life issues.
What a joke.
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