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Monday, 19 May 2014
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Wine Around the World: Excerpts from Robinson's Wine Course
Using Jancis Robinson's Wine Course (Robinson 1996), I thought I would follow on from my post; Complementing Food with Wine: A Guide (Dolding-Smith 2014) and discuss wines from around the world. Ironically, I don't drink much wine, but I find the culture surrounding wine quite fascinating. Apparently the book accompanies a major television series, or so the front cover tells me, but since this book was from when I was six years old, I doubt many can remember it. However, the information in this book would not have changed much, and therefore, the text will still be relevant. I will also include some examples of wine you can purchase yourself.
KEY:
Red Wine
White Wine
Sherry
Port
Madeira
Rose Wine
Dessert Wine
FRANCE
Apart from Italy, France makes more wine than any other country, and provides the benchmark for all wines to be judged upon. Due to France's varied climate and temperature, it has an advantage over other countries that it can supply wines of virtually every style. "The Rhone valley supplies deep, rich reds while the Loire is better known for pinks and whites of all degrees of sweetness and fizziness", and obviously we know what the Champagne region is famous for. The French also produce their own port called 'Banyuls', and their own sherry known as 'Vin jaune' (Robinson 1996: 156). French wine will usually be created to stand long term rather than to be drunk as soon as they are bottled, thus may take more effort to be appreciated. This is in complete contrast to New World wine. "The French themselves see wine as an important part of their heritage, but are drinking less and less of it. The generation which took a daily litre of rough red for granted is rapidly being replaced by one to whom quality is much more important than quantity (Ibid: 157)."
"Bordeaux is France's most important weapon in the wine war. This large, south western wine region, ruled by the English for 200 years in the Middle Ages, produces more AC wine than any other (Ibid: 158)." AC is France's quality designation system that protects producers from plagarism and guarantees authenticity (Ibid: 157).
Burgundy on the other hand, is synonymous with a land ruled by wealthy peasant owners and an unchanged landscape, harking back to the days when the Mediaeval Dukes of Burgundy ran the self-governing region. 'Burgundy' is known as 'Bourgogne' in French, and is a premier wine region.
According to Robinson (1996: 165), land in Burgundy is extremely valuable and rarely passes out of the family's hands, "...but is generally part of a complex inheritance system which requires all property to be shared between each child."
The Champagne region is an hour's drive east of Paris. The wine itself has become very special, now known as the wine of choice for celebrations and glamour. Champagne itself, is made from black grapes, and the most common champagne grape used is the Pinot Meunier grape due to it being the only variety that will ripen reliably throughout the region. There are 300 Champagne villages, but only 17 of these villages are allowed to be qualified as Grands Crus. The higher the quality of the champagne, the least pressed are the grapes (Ibid: 172). Non-vintage champagne is usually about three years old, while vintage is around 6+ years and can age well for a decade, made exclusively from a crop specifically from a certain year. Prestige or luxury cuvee refers to top of the range, vintage champagne, while Blanc de Blancs are chardonnay champagnes that can age well. Finally, Demi-sec means sweet, while Brut is dry, and Sec, slightly less dry (Ibid: 173).
Wines from the Loire region are usually quite crisp, and neglected by wine enthusiasts because of their high acidity (Ibid: 180), but Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume are well known wines and come from the upper Loire (Ibid: 181).
Alsace produces soft, smokey white wines. For some time, Alsace was Elsass, and was part of Germany. "The local surnames and tall green tapered bottles reflect this, along with the dominance of Riesling and the fragrant nature of many of the wines. But unlike in Germany, winemaking philosophy in Alsace is to ferment all of the grape sugar into alcohol, resulting in dry, full bodied wines (quite different in structure from Germany's lighter, sweeter counterparts)" (Ibid: 177).
Rhone, however, produces beefy, red wines designed for ageing. In Northern Rhone, some of the oldest vineyards in France lie on the mountainside, so steep that in some places, pulley systems must be used (Ibid: 185). Southern Rhone produces warm, rich reds from the Grenache grape (Ibid: 188) unlike the North, which mainly produces wine from the Syrah grape (Ibid: 185). Southern Rhone has the label of producing France's most alcoholic wines, 14% being the norm (Ibid: 188), and their wines in Robinson's (1996: 189) opinion are best drunk in cooler climates. Their most famous wine is one that many will have heard of - Chateauneuf-du-Pape (Ibid).
There are of course, many more wine producing regions in France, but I have picked just a few from her book that seemed particularly interesting.
Examples of French Wine:
+ Bordeaux = Chateau tour de Calens (£17.90 at The Wine Shop)
+ Burgundy = Louis Jadot Clos des Chenes, Volnay Premier Cru (£42.50 at The Wine Shop), Pierre Vessigaud Pouilly-Fuisse Vieilles Vignes (£29.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Alsace = Cave de Turkheim Reserve Gewürztraminer (£12 at The Wine Shop)
+ Rhone = Domaine Chante Cigale Chateauneuf-du-Pape (£26.50 at The Wine Shop), Jean-Luc Colombo, Cotes-du-Rhone Le Vent (£9.90 at The Wine Shop)
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ITALY
When thinking of Italian wines, you must think of Italy as a group of regions than one, big, wine producing country. The South tends to produce "...heady, often sweet, ferments..." while the North produces "...delicate subalpine essences..." (Ibid: 206).
North West Italy's wine tends to produce wines that are a close resemblance to Burgundy, the region itself situated just over the Alps from France. "Wines here have traditionally, as throughout Italy, been matured in large, old Slovenian oak oval casks, but the importance of French barriques has recently caused a stir and some revision of wine styles..." (Ibid: 208-209).
Tuscany is particularly singled out from central Italy (Ibid: 214) because it is known for its dedicated winemakers and land of the smallholders. Tuscany is known as 'Toscana' to the Italians. "The relentlessly undulating landscape and its temperate climate make it ideal for producing red wines with the same sort of digestible weight (about 12 to 13 per cent alcohol) and ageing potential as red bordeaux. But the wines' flavours are very different from their French counterparts. The Sangiovese vine is king here and the quality of wine it yields depends heavily on the exposure and altitude at which it is planted." Chianti is made here and is usually created from the Sangiovese grape, and then lightened with a white grape such as Trebbiano. If you buy a wine with just the label, 'Chianti', on it, expect a basic red. Instead, find a label that describes where the Chianti comes from, such as 'Chianti Colli Aretini', the best quality being 'Chianti Classico' (Ibid: 216).
Out of the many places Robinson (1996: 221) lists under the heading 'Southern Italy and Islands', I decided to choose Sicily, purely based on the place I'd like to visit at some point. I knew a girl from there, and being her hometown, she spoke very highly of it, but it only made me want to visit it more, as she described the beauty of the place and the oranges. The choice I made to include Sicily is indeed a fine one, when Robinson (1996: 221) herself says that Sicily fascinates those of the modern wine world, as well as those of the ancient. Sicily is known to produce dessert wine [another reason I am keen to go, I adore dessert wine!!!], and "this large island, not far from the African coast, regularly produces as much wine as Australia, Chile and Bulgaria put together - yet exports remarkedly little under its own flag." It grows more white grapes than red and a famous wine from this island is Marsala. "Sicily's temperatures make it ideal for dessert wine production and the island has a long history of making noble, rich Muscat" (Ibid).
Examples of Italian wine:
+ Sicily = La Ferla Nero d'Avola (£8.50 at The Wine Shop), Planeta Chardonnay (£24.50 at The Wine Shop), Ca'di Ponti Shiraz (£6.80 at The Wine Shop), Volpetto Chianti Reserva (£10.90 at The Wine Shop), Aglianco Della Starza Gold Label (£12.90 at The Wine Shop), Marsala Wine Superiore DOC Garibaldi Dolce (£19.15 at Gourmet-Eataly)
+ Tuscany = Brunello di Montalcino - Il Marroneto (£44.99 at Vinitaly Wine Club), Chianti Classico Riserva Rancia - Felsina (£35.99 at Vinitaly Wine Club), Vernaccia di San Gimignano - Fontaleoni (£10.99 at Vinitaly Wine Club)
SPAIN
Spain has more land devoted to vines than any other country, and is well known for their sherry (Ibid: 222). Spain is fond of using American oak for their barrels, "(e)ver since the colonisation of the Americas there has been a lively import trade in American oak, which has been used extensively in Spanish wine cellars for extended maturation of both reds and whites. This often resulted in red wines that were relatively light in colour and marked by a vanillin-sweet overlay..." (Ibid: 224).
"Rioja, in north east Spain, was for long Spain's only high-profile wine region, but in the 1980s it lost many friends by overpricing and underperforming...Rioja has traditionally been American oak's most expressive ambassador. The wine is made from a blend of Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache) grapes aged for a considerable number of years in the sweet, vanilla-scented warmth of small American oak barrels...Rioja's fortune was made in the late nineteenth century when Bordeaux wine producers, devastated by the twin scourges of mildew and phylloxera, brought their techniques over the Pyrenees" (Ibid: 225).
My mother loves Cava, so I definitely thought to include this wine in the North-East regions of Spain. Cava itself, is not a region, but is the Spanish version of champagne. The majority of cava comes from the Penedes region. It produces the sparkling wine by the traditional method and "(t)he Spaniards buy so much Cava that the larger Cava houses Cordorniu and Freixenet have managed to finance their own sparkling wineries in California" (Ibid: 229).
The major centre of Spain's white wine production is in the North West of Spain (Ibid: 230).
As noted above, Spain is known for their sherry. Great sherry is complicated to make and thus replicating good quality sherry is the same as trying to plagiarise a good champagne. Sherry is made from the Palomino grape. "The sherry region, the only one that is allowed to use the word sherry in Europe [sherry from other places have to call them 'Fortified wines'], is one of the hottest fine wine regions in the world, just a short distance from the coast of North Africa in the south of Spain's most southern province, Andalucia" (Ibid: 233).
Examples of Spanish Wine:
Bornos Verdejo (£10.50 at The Wine Shop)
Juan Gil Silver Label Jumilla Monastrell (£14.20 at The Wine Shop)
Egomei Rioja (£20 at The Wine Shop)
As you like it Sherry (£32 at The Wine Shop)
Antique Palo Cortado Fernando de Castilla Jerez (£28.30 at The Wine Shop)
Freixenet Cava (£9.90 at The Wine Shop)
Juve y Camps Gran Juve Gran Reserva Cava (£30 at The Wine Shop)
PORTUGAL
Portugal is the home of port and madeira. Douro is an extremely dry place and is responsible for port and cork (Ibid: 236). Robinson (1996: 240) asserts that although other countries make port-like wines, nowhere can produce such fantastic port as Douro. "Ever since the late seventeenth century when British merchants scoured friendly Portugal for goods that would replace heavily taxed items from France, the commercial end of the port wine trade has been in predominately British hands, which has made for an even more delicate relationship between growers and bottlers than in most wine regions...The aim of the port producer is to make a wine that is deeply coloured and sweet as possible. To preserve the grapes' natural sweetness, spirit is added at quite an early point in the fermentation process to stun the yeasts, which means that the colour and tannin must be extracted as fast as possible. The Douro valley is one of the very few wine regions where foot treading is still practised..." (Ibid). A ruby port is young, bottled after two or three years in bulk, but you can get rubies that have been bottled after 4-6 years, and will carry the label LBV [late bottled vintage]. Tawny port is ruby mixed with white port, but an aged tawny is a port that has gained its colour from being aged for 10 to over 40 years (Ibid: 241).
"Madeira is a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic..." and is also a long-lived, tangy, fortified wine. It is actually the worlds lost longest-living wine and is high in alcohol. It is baked during production which gives it its almost immortality, being able to be left opened for months on end. Much madeira is only good for cooking with due to replacement of the good grapes for easy-to-grow grapes, thus, if you want to drink the stuff, look for madeira made from Sercial, Verdelho, Bual or Malvasia (Ibid).
Examples of Portuguese Wine:
Quinta do Crasto Douro Reserva (£22.50 at The Wine Shop)
Casal Mendes Vinho Verde (£7 at The Wine Shop)
Krohn Porto Ambassador Ruby (£11 at The Wine Shop, a personal favourite of mine)
Krohn 20 year old Tawny (£30 at The Wine Shop)
Madeira d'Oliveiras Colheita 1990 Malvasia Sweet (£64 at The Wine Shop)
Blandy's 10 year old sweet Malmsey (£18.90 at The Wine Shop)
THE BRITISH ISLES
Wine grown in either Wales or England is known as 'English Wine', and English vineyards cover around 2500 acres of southern England and Wales, the Gulf stream giving the grapes their lifeblood. "Wine has been produced in the British Isles for centuries, but the modern English wine industry dates only from the 1950s...Because of England's cool climate, only early ripening vine varieties stand a chance of reliably producing a crop. The most planted varieties are therefore Muller-Thurgau and the hybrid Seyval Blanc. The German crossing Reichensteiner is also quite widely planted but there is an enormous variety of white and some red wine varieties otherwise...Almost all grape musts have to rely on added sugar to produce wines with a decent alcoholic strength...and the natural grape acidity is usually notable. Such wines can make excellent bases for sparkling wines and there have been some truly refreshing dry whites which can even stand up to some barrel ageing. A little wine is also made from vines grown in warmer parts of Ireland." British wine, on the other hand, is not good stuff and is made from reconstituted grape concentrate imported from places such as Cyprus or Spain, the stuff they wouldn't even drink. They're very cheap but not something you want to take to a dinner party (Ibid: 305).
Examples of Wines from the British Isles:
+ England
Bolney Cuvée Noir Brut (£21.00 at Great English Wines), Chapel Down Rosé Brut (£23.95 at Great English Wines), Biddenden Ortega (£9.95 at Great English Wines), Brightwell Vineyard Bacchus 2009 (£9.99 at Great English Wines), Biddenden Dornfelder (£10.15 at Great English Wines), Three Choirs Late Harvest 2011 (£11.50 at Great English Wines)
+ Wales
Glyndwr Black Label Vintage Sparkling White 2010 (£19.90 at Glyndwr Vineyard)
GERMANY, AUSTRIA & SWITZERLAND
Germany produces mostly light, long-living wines (Ibid: 244), while Austria produces dry rieslings and sweet wines. Although Austria apparently does some great wines, they have a dark past. In 1985, "...some Austrian wine merchants tried to give extra body to certain wines by adding a harmless but illegal substance, most unfortunately also an ingredient in antifreeze. As a result of this national disgrace, Austria now probably has the world's strictest wine regulations...Austria has the only capital city in the world in which wine-growing, as well as wine drinking, is seriously important" (Ibid: 252).
Switzerland is interesting in that it produces concentrated reds that come from three very different cultures [France, Germany and Italy], as well as fragrant whites. "Swiss wines taste quite unlike those of Germany and Austria...because Swiss winemakers routinely encourage the second, softening malolactic fermentation...They also increase most of their wines' final alcohol content quite considerably by adding sugar to the fermentation vat..." (Ibid: 254).
Examples of German, Austrian and Swiss Wines:
+ Germany
Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese (£14.50 at The Wine Shop), Von Winning Riesling (£16.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Austria
Rabl Gruner Veltliner Eiswein Dessert (£37.50 at The Wine Shop), Gruner Veltliner 2009 Winzer Krems (£9.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Switzerland
Cornalin du Valais AOC (£14.52 at Switzerland Wine)
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE
Hungary produces fiery whites. Originally, Hungarian wine was based on quantity, not quality, as it was seen to supplied based on long economic plans, a commodity like grain or potatoes, rather than a luxury. This has somewhat changed today. Kadarka is Hungary's signature red grape (Ibid: 256). Tokay/ Tokaj is a famous Hungary wine and is made from rotten grapes since 1650 (Ibid: 257).
In Robinson's (1996: 258) book, she doesn't give a fond opinion of Bulgaria, saying that it produces cheap international varietals, however Bulgaria's blackcurrant flavoured Cabernet Sauvignon is quite successful (Ibid: 259).
However, Romania also has been given a harsh opinion of being seriously underdeveloped, but it has potential. Romania is a wine-drinking country, but it suffers from shortages of materials and equipment such as bottling equipment and refrigeration that are needed for wine-making (Ibid: 260).
Examples of Hungarian and Romanian Wine:
+ Hungary
Nyakas Sauvignon Blanc (£11.99 at Hungarian Wine Society, however you must buy a half case of wine from here), Bock Hárslevelű (£12.99 at Hungarian Wine Society)
+ Romania
The House Pinot Noir 2012 (£5.49 at Laithwaites), Paris Street Pinot Grigio 2012 (£7.49 at Laithwaites)
MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES
The Greek wine industry is extremely ancient, and some of the vine varieties grown there today may be the same that the ancient Greeks once drunk for themselves. The Malvasia vine owes its name from the corruption of the Greek port name 'Monemvasia'. "Many Greek varieties are extinct or nearly so but the aromatic white Malagousia has been rescued, as has Lagorthi, and Crete's Vilana (Ibid: 262).
Cyprus produces a dark, raisiny dessert wine known as Commandaria (Ibid: 263).
Examples of Greek and Cypriot Wines:
+ Greece
2009 Voyatzis Cabernet Franc Tsapournakos (£10.62 at House of Wine), Biblia Hora Ovilos White 2009 (£14.98 at The Oak Tree Wine Cellar)
THE AMERICAS
"When Europeans colonised the North American continent one of their first botanical discoveries was its rich diversity of indigenous vines. Botanists have identified more than 20 different species of vine native to north eastern America", it seems however that this distinct vines were too different from what Europeans knew, and nowadays, American wines still tend to be made from the known, easy-to-sell variety vines (Ibid: 264).
Canada produces Ice wines which are sweet to the taste and produced from lightly pressed frozen grapes (Ibid: 277), Germany also has ice wines, known as Eiswein (Ibid: 244).
Chile has done well at the end of the 19th century when much of the world's wine was crippled by mildew and phylloxera, whereas they had plenty of healthy wine. Back then, the Chilean wine industry was owned by only 10 families, but in the early 1990s, the return of democracy fuelled economic growth. The old ways began to wane, the evergreen beech vats replaced with modern US and French oak barrels (Ibid: 278).
"Chile dominates South American wine exports but Argentina makes almost five times as much wine, and (like the USA) regularly produces more wine than any other country other than France, Italy, Spain and the ex-Soviet Union...The distinguishing feature of Argentine wine has been the extraordinarily high yields, with reliably sun-ripened grapes literally pumped full of melted Andean snow via irrigation channels constructed in the nineteenth century. Since the late 1980s vines have begun to be planted in cooler areas deliberately to prolong the ripening process, and trained carefully on wires for maximum quality of the resulting fruit" (Ibid: 282).
Examples of Wines from the Americas:
+USA
Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel (£11.50 at The Wine Shop), Apothic Red (£12.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Canada
Peller Icewine Riesling 2007 (£39.00 at Great Western Wine)
+ Chile
Casillero del Diablo (£6.90 at The Wine Shop), Maycas del Lamari (£13.40 at The Wine Shop), Anakena Alwa (£21.90 at The Wine Shop), La Paz Merlot (£7.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Argentina
Santa Ana Sauvignon Blanc (£8.50 at The Wine Shop), Septima Noche Pinot Noir (£16.50 at The Wine Shop)
AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND & SOUTH AFRICA
Australia is usually seen as the cutting-edge wine producers of the New World. "Their wine industry is not fundamentally distinguished by history (Australia was one of the vines's later conquests), and certainly not by geography (Australian wine producers are congenital truckers of grapes and blenders of wines), but by its philosophy. 'Can do' perhaps best sums up the Australian attitude to wine production" (Ibid: 284). "Most of Australia's vines grow where summers are cool enough to allow some flavour to build up in the grapes before they are so embarrassingly high in sugar that they must be picked lest acids plummet to uncorrectable levels. (Most Australian wines will have some acidification, acid deliberately added...). Nearly half of all vines grow in the state of South Australia, a third in the state of Victoria and most of the rest in New South Wales" (Ibid:285).
New Zealand make crisp, fruity, acidic wines but only make a fraction of 1% of the world's wine.
"Wine has been made on the Cape of Good Hope since the mid-seventeenth century, which means that South Africa has a much longer, unbroken history of winemaking than either Australia or California" (Ibid: 300). South Africa mainly uses the Chenin Blanc grape. "Only about 15 per cent of the country's vineyard is planted with red wine grapes, of which the national speciality is a 1920s Cape crossing of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut called Pinotage" (Ibid: 301).
Examples of Australian, New Zealand and South African Wines:
+ Australia
Peter Lehmann Margaret Semillon (£16.20 at The Wine Shop), Mr. Smith Shiraz (£12.60 at The Wine Shop)
+ New Zealand
Southern Lights Sauvignon Blanc (£13.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ South Africa
Painted Wolf Lekanyane (£11.50 at The Wine Shop), Parrotfish Cab/Merlot (£7.60 at The Wine Shop)
ASIA
"China has a burgeoning wine industry, aimed chiefly at its growing tourist trade. A small sector of it in the far west is effectively an extension of Kazakhstan, but most of its vineyards are on the eastern coast, where large foreign companies are planting Western grape varieties as well as local specialities. The great majority of Chinese grape wine is light, white, crisp and just off fry."
Japanese wine is commercially sophisticated and Japan's humid climate yields healthy grapes.
India is said to create sparkling wine that is very close to champagne, sold under the name 'Omar Khayyam' (Ibid: 305).
[NOTE: Not interested in wine for yourself? Or are you tired of drinking alone? Maybe get a bottle of wine for your cat. That's right! Japan makes wine for your cats. Hilarious, yes, but I am tempted to buy some for my two. Read the article here]
If you wish to purchase the book, you can find it on Amazon, click here to buy!
Bibliography
Robinson, J. (1996). Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. The Book People Ltd: Surrey
KEY:
Red Wine
White Wine
Sherry
Port
Madeira
Rose Wine
Dessert Wine
FRANCE
Apart from Italy, France makes more wine than any other country, and provides the benchmark for all wines to be judged upon. Due to France's varied climate and temperature, it has an advantage over other countries that it can supply wines of virtually every style. "The Rhone valley supplies deep, rich reds while the Loire is better known for pinks and whites of all degrees of sweetness and fizziness", and obviously we know what the Champagne region is famous for. The French also produce their own port called 'Banyuls', and their own sherry known as 'Vin jaune' (Robinson 1996: 156). French wine will usually be created to stand long term rather than to be drunk as soon as they are bottled, thus may take more effort to be appreciated. This is in complete contrast to New World wine. "The French themselves see wine as an important part of their heritage, but are drinking less and less of it. The generation which took a daily litre of rough red for granted is rapidly being replaced by one to whom quality is much more important than quantity (Ibid: 157)."
"Bordeaux is France's most important weapon in the wine war. This large, south western wine region, ruled by the English for 200 years in the Middle Ages, produces more AC wine than any other (Ibid: 158)." AC is France's quality designation system that protects producers from plagarism and guarantees authenticity (Ibid: 157).
Burgundy on the other hand, is synonymous with a land ruled by wealthy peasant owners and an unchanged landscape, harking back to the days when the Mediaeval Dukes of Burgundy ran the self-governing region. 'Burgundy' is known as 'Bourgogne' in French, and is a premier wine region.
According to Robinson (1996: 165), land in Burgundy is extremely valuable and rarely passes out of the family's hands, "...but is generally part of a complex inheritance system which requires all property to be shared between each child."
The Champagne region is an hour's drive east of Paris. The wine itself has become very special, now known as the wine of choice for celebrations and glamour. Champagne itself, is made from black grapes, and the most common champagne grape used is the Pinot Meunier grape due to it being the only variety that will ripen reliably throughout the region. There are 300 Champagne villages, but only 17 of these villages are allowed to be qualified as Grands Crus. The higher the quality of the champagne, the least pressed are the grapes (Ibid: 172). Non-vintage champagne is usually about three years old, while vintage is around 6+ years and can age well for a decade, made exclusively from a crop specifically from a certain year. Prestige or luxury cuvee refers to top of the range, vintage champagne, while Blanc de Blancs are chardonnay champagnes that can age well. Finally, Demi-sec means sweet, while Brut is dry, and Sec, slightly less dry (Ibid: 173).
Wines from the Loire region are usually quite crisp, and neglected by wine enthusiasts because of their high acidity (Ibid: 180), but Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume are well known wines and come from the upper Loire (Ibid: 181).
Alsace produces soft, smokey white wines. For some time, Alsace was Elsass, and was part of Germany. "The local surnames and tall green tapered bottles reflect this, along with the dominance of Riesling and the fragrant nature of many of the wines. But unlike in Germany, winemaking philosophy in Alsace is to ferment all of the grape sugar into alcohol, resulting in dry, full bodied wines (quite different in structure from Germany's lighter, sweeter counterparts)" (Ibid: 177).
Rhone, however, produces beefy, red wines designed for ageing. In Northern Rhone, some of the oldest vineyards in France lie on the mountainside, so steep that in some places, pulley systems must be used (Ibid: 185). Southern Rhone produces warm, rich reds from the Grenache grape (Ibid: 188) unlike the North, which mainly produces wine from the Syrah grape (Ibid: 185). Southern Rhone has the label of producing France's most alcoholic wines, 14% being the norm (Ibid: 188), and their wines in Robinson's (1996: 189) opinion are best drunk in cooler climates. Their most famous wine is one that many will have heard of - Chateauneuf-du-Pape (Ibid).
There are of course, many more wine producing regions in France, but I have picked just a few from her book that seemed particularly interesting.
Examples of French Wine:
+ Bordeaux = Chateau tour de Calens (£17.90 at The Wine Shop)
+ Burgundy = Louis Jadot Clos des Chenes, Volnay Premier Cru (£42.50 at The Wine Shop), Pierre Vessigaud Pouilly-Fuisse Vieilles Vignes (£29.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Alsace = Cave de Turkheim Reserve Gewürztraminer (£12 at The Wine Shop)
+ Rhone = Domaine Chante Cigale Chateauneuf-du-Pape (£26.50 at The Wine Shop), Jean-Luc Colombo, Cotes-du-Rhone Le Vent (£9.90 at The Wine Shop)
+ Chablis = Chablis Bouchot-Ludot (£14.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Champagne = Piper-Heidsieck Rose (£24 at The Wine Shop), Perrier Jouet NV (£31 at The Wine Shop), Louis Roederer NV (£38.50 at The Wine Shop), Tattinger Vintage Brut (£50 at The Wine Shop), Laurent-Perrier Rose (£50 at The Wine Shop), Veuve Cliquot Vintage Brut (£60 at The Wine Shop), Bollinger Grande Annee Vintage Brut (£75 at The Wine Shop), Pommery 1998 Cuvee Louise Vintage Brut (£117 at The Wine Shop), Dom Perignon Vintage 2003 (£120 at The Wine Shop), Louis Roederer Crystal Brut (£159 at The Wine Shop)
When thinking of Italian wines, you must think of Italy as a group of regions than one, big, wine producing country. The South tends to produce "...heady, often sweet, ferments..." while the North produces "...delicate subalpine essences..." (Ibid: 206).
North West Italy's wine tends to produce wines that are a close resemblance to Burgundy, the region itself situated just over the Alps from France. "Wines here have traditionally, as throughout Italy, been matured in large, old Slovenian oak oval casks, but the importance of French barriques has recently caused a stir and some revision of wine styles..." (Ibid: 208-209).
Tuscany is particularly singled out from central Italy (Ibid: 214) because it is known for its dedicated winemakers and land of the smallholders. Tuscany is known as 'Toscana' to the Italians. "The relentlessly undulating landscape and its temperate climate make it ideal for producing red wines with the same sort of digestible weight (about 12 to 13 per cent alcohol) and ageing potential as red bordeaux. But the wines' flavours are very different from their French counterparts. The Sangiovese vine is king here and the quality of wine it yields depends heavily on the exposure and altitude at which it is planted." Chianti is made here and is usually created from the Sangiovese grape, and then lightened with a white grape such as Trebbiano. If you buy a wine with just the label, 'Chianti', on it, expect a basic red. Instead, find a label that describes where the Chianti comes from, such as 'Chianti Colli Aretini', the best quality being 'Chianti Classico' (Ibid: 216).
Out of the many places Robinson (1996: 221) lists under the heading 'Southern Italy and Islands', I decided to choose Sicily, purely based on the place I'd like to visit at some point. I knew a girl from there, and being her hometown, she spoke very highly of it, but it only made me want to visit it more, as she described the beauty of the place and the oranges. The choice I made to include Sicily is indeed a fine one, when Robinson (1996: 221) herself says that Sicily fascinates those of the modern wine world, as well as those of the ancient. Sicily is known to produce dessert wine [another reason I am keen to go, I adore dessert wine!!!], and "this large island, not far from the African coast, regularly produces as much wine as Australia, Chile and Bulgaria put together - yet exports remarkedly little under its own flag." It grows more white grapes than red and a famous wine from this island is Marsala. "Sicily's temperatures make it ideal for dessert wine production and the island has a long history of making noble, rich Muscat" (Ibid).
Examples of Italian wine:
+ Sicily = La Ferla Nero d'Avola (£8.50 at The Wine Shop), Planeta Chardonnay (£24.50 at The Wine Shop), Ca'di Ponti Shiraz (£6.80 at The Wine Shop), Volpetto Chianti Reserva (£10.90 at The Wine Shop), Aglianco Della Starza Gold Label (£12.90 at The Wine Shop), Marsala Wine Superiore DOC Garibaldi Dolce (£19.15 at Gourmet-Eataly)
SPAIN
Spain has more land devoted to vines than any other country, and is well known for their sherry (Ibid: 222). Spain is fond of using American oak for their barrels, "(e)ver since the colonisation of the Americas there has been a lively import trade in American oak, which has been used extensively in Spanish wine cellars for extended maturation of both reds and whites. This often resulted in red wines that were relatively light in colour and marked by a vanillin-sweet overlay..." (Ibid: 224).
"Rioja, in north east Spain, was for long Spain's only high-profile wine region, but in the 1980s it lost many friends by overpricing and underperforming...Rioja has traditionally been American oak's most expressive ambassador. The wine is made from a blend of Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache) grapes aged for a considerable number of years in the sweet, vanilla-scented warmth of small American oak barrels...Rioja's fortune was made in the late nineteenth century when Bordeaux wine producers, devastated by the twin scourges of mildew and phylloxera, brought their techniques over the Pyrenees" (Ibid: 225).
My mother loves Cava, so I definitely thought to include this wine in the North-East regions of Spain. Cava itself, is not a region, but is the Spanish version of champagne. The majority of cava comes from the Penedes region. It produces the sparkling wine by the traditional method and "(t)he Spaniards buy so much Cava that the larger Cava houses Cordorniu and Freixenet have managed to finance their own sparkling wineries in California" (Ibid: 229).
The major centre of Spain's white wine production is in the North West of Spain (Ibid: 230).
As noted above, Spain is known for their sherry. Great sherry is complicated to make and thus replicating good quality sherry is the same as trying to plagiarise a good champagne. Sherry is made from the Palomino grape. "The sherry region, the only one that is allowed to use the word sherry in Europe [sherry from other places have to call them 'Fortified wines'], is one of the hottest fine wine regions in the world, just a short distance from the coast of North Africa in the south of Spain's most southern province, Andalucia" (Ibid: 233).
Examples of Spanish Wine:
Bornos Verdejo (£10.50 at The Wine Shop)
Cayet del Pino Palo Cort Viejisimo (£25.90 at The Wine Shop)
PORTUGAL
Portugal is the home of port and madeira. Douro is an extremely dry place and is responsible for port and cork (Ibid: 236). Robinson (1996: 240) asserts that although other countries make port-like wines, nowhere can produce such fantastic port as Douro. "Ever since the late seventeenth century when British merchants scoured friendly Portugal for goods that would replace heavily taxed items from France, the commercial end of the port wine trade has been in predominately British hands, which has made for an even more delicate relationship between growers and bottlers than in most wine regions...The aim of the port producer is to make a wine that is deeply coloured and sweet as possible. To preserve the grapes' natural sweetness, spirit is added at quite an early point in the fermentation process to stun the yeasts, which means that the colour and tannin must be extracted as fast as possible. The Douro valley is one of the very few wine regions where foot treading is still practised..." (Ibid). A ruby port is young, bottled after two or three years in bulk, but you can get rubies that have been bottled after 4-6 years, and will carry the label LBV [late bottled vintage]. Tawny port is ruby mixed with white port, but an aged tawny is a port that has gained its colour from being aged for 10 to over 40 years (Ibid: 241).
"Madeira is a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic..." and is also a long-lived, tangy, fortified wine. It is actually the worlds lost longest-living wine and is high in alcohol. It is baked during production which gives it its almost immortality, being able to be left opened for months on end. Much madeira is only good for cooking with due to replacement of the good grapes for easy-to-grow grapes, thus, if you want to drink the stuff, look for madeira made from Sercial, Verdelho, Bual or Malvasia (Ibid).
Examples of Portuguese Wine:
Quinta do Crasto Douro Reserva (£22.50 at The Wine Shop)
Casal Mendes Vinho Verde (£7 at The Wine Shop)
Krohn Porto Ambassador Ruby (£11 at The Wine Shop, a personal favourite of mine)
Krohn 20 year old Tawny (£30 at The Wine Shop)
Madeira d'Oliveiras Colheita 1990 Malvasia Sweet (£64 at The Wine Shop)
Blandy's 10 year old sweet Malmsey (£18.90 at The Wine Shop)
THE BRITISH ISLES
Wine grown in either Wales or England is known as 'English Wine', and English vineyards cover around 2500 acres of southern England and Wales, the Gulf stream giving the grapes their lifeblood. "Wine has been produced in the British Isles for centuries, but the modern English wine industry dates only from the 1950s...Because of England's cool climate, only early ripening vine varieties stand a chance of reliably producing a crop. The most planted varieties are therefore Muller-Thurgau and the hybrid Seyval Blanc. The German crossing Reichensteiner is also quite widely planted but there is an enormous variety of white and some red wine varieties otherwise...Almost all grape musts have to rely on added sugar to produce wines with a decent alcoholic strength...and the natural grape acidity is usually notable. Such wines can make excellent bases for sparkling wines and there have been some truly refreshing dry whites which can even stand up to some barrel ageing. A little wine is also made from vines grown in warmer parts of Ireland." British wine, on the other hand, is not good stuff and is made from reconstituted grape concentrate imported from places such as Cyprus or Spain, the stuff they wouldn't even drink. They're very cheap but not something you want to take to a dinner party (Ibid: 305).
Examples of Wines from the British Isles:
+ England
Bolney Cuvée Noir Brut (£21.00 at Great English Wines), Chapel Down Rosé Brut (£23.95 at Great English Wines), Biddenden Ortega (£9.95 at Great English Wines), Brightwell Vineyard Bacchus 2009 (£9.99 at Great English Wines), Biddenden Dornfelder (£10.15 at Great English Wines), Three Choirs Late Harvest 2011 (£11.50 at Great English Wines)
Glyndwr Black Label Vintage Sparkling White 2010 (£19.90 at Glyndwr Vineyard)
GERMANY, AUSTRIA & SWITZERLAND
Germany produces mostly light, long-living wines (Ibid: 244), while Austria produces dry rieslings and sweet wines. Although Austria apparently does some great wines, they have a dark past. In 1985, "...some Austrian wine merchants tried to give extra body to certain wines by adding a harmless but illegal substance, most unfortunately also an ingredient in antifreeze. As a result of this national disgrace, Austria now probably has the world's strictest wine regulations...Austria has the only capital city in the world in which wine-growing, as well as wine drinking, is seriously important" (Ibid: 252).
Switzerland is interesting in that it produces concentrated reds that come from three very different cultures [France, Germany and Italy], as well as fragrant whites. "Swiss wines taste quite unlike those of Germany and Austria...because Swiss winemakers routinely encourage the second, softening malolactic fermentation...They also increase most of their wines' final alcohol content quite considerably by adding sugar to the fermentation vat..." (Ibid: 254).
Examples of German, Austrian and Swiss Wines:
+ Germany
Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese (£14.50 at The Wine Shop), Von Winning Riesling (£16.50 at The Wine Shop)
Rabl Gruner Veltliner Eiswein Dessert (£37.50 at The Wine Shop), Gruner Veltliner 2009 Winzer Krems (£9.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Switzerland
Cornalin du Valais AOC (£14.52 at Switzerland Wine)
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE
Hungary produces fiery whites. Originally, Hungarian wine was based on quantity, not quality, as it was seen to supplied based on long economic plans, a commodity like grain or potatoes, rather than a luxury. This has somewhat changed today. Kadarka is Hungary's signature red grape (Ibid: 256). Tokay/ Tokaj is a famous Hungary wine and is made from rotten grapes since 1650 (Ibid: 257).
In Robinson's (1996: 258) book, she doesn't give a fond opinion of Bulgaria, saying that it produces cheap international varietals, however Bulgaria's blackcurrant flavoured Cabernet Sauvignon is quite successful (Ibid: 259).
However, Romania also has been given a harsh opinion of being seriously underdeveloped, but it has potential. Romania is a wine-drinking country, but it suffers from shortages of materials and equipment such as bottling equipment and refrigeration that are needed for wine-making (Ibid: 260).
Examples of Hungarian and Romanian Wine:
+ Hungary
Nyakas Sauvignon Blanc (£11.99 at Hungarian Wine Society, however you must buy a half case of wine from here), Bock Hárslevelű (£12.99 at Hungarian Wine Society)
The House Pinot Noir 2012 (£5.49 at Laithwaites), Paris Street Pinot Grigio 2012 (£7.49 at Laithwaites)
MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES
The Greek wine industry is extremely ancient, and some of the vine varieties grown there today may be the same that the ancient Greeks once drunk for themselves. The Malvasia vine owes its name from the corruption of the Greek port name 'Monemvasia'. "Many Greek varieties are extinct or nearly so but the aromatic white Malagousia has been rescued, as has Lagorthi, and Crete's Vilana (Ibid: 262).
Cyprus produces a dark, raisiny dessert wine known as Commandaria (Ibid: 263).
Examples of Greek and Cypriot Wines:
+ Greece
2009 Voyatzis Cabernet Franc Tsapournakos (£10.62 at House of Wine), Biblia Hora Ovilos White 2009 (£14.98 at The Oak Tree Wine Cellar)
+ Cyprus
Hadjiantonas Cabernet & Shiraz 2006 (£13.41 at The Oak Tree Wine Cellar),
Kyperounda Chardonnay 2010 (£9.88 at The Oak Tree Wine Cellar)"When Europeans colonised the North American continent one of their first botanical discoveries was its rich diversity of indigenous vines. Botanists have identified more than 20 different species of vine native to north eastern America", it seems however that this distinct vines were too different from what Europeans knew, and nowadays, American wines still tend to be made from the known, easy-to-sell variety vines (Ibid: 264).
Canada produces Ice wines which are sweet to the taste and produced from lightly pressed frozen grapes (Ibid: 277), Germany also has ice wines, known as Eiswein (Ibid: 244).
Chile has done well at the end of the 19th century when much of the world's wine was crippled by mildew and phylloxera, whereas they had plenty of healthy wine. Back then, the Chilean wine industry was owned by only 10 families, but in the early 1990s, the return of democracy fuelled economic growth. The old ways began to wane, the evergreen beech vats replaced with modern US and French oak barrels (Ibid: 278).
"Chile dominates South American wine exports but Argentina makes almost five times as much wine, and (like the USA) regularly produces more wine than any other country other than France, Italy, Spain and the ex-Soviet Union...The distinguishing feature of Argentine wine has been the extraordinarily high yields, with reliably sun-ripened grapes literally pumped full of melted Andean snow via irrigation channels constructed in the nineteenth century. Since the late 1980s vines have begun to be planted in cooler areas deliberately to prolong the ripening process, and trained carefully on wires for maximum quality of the resulting fruit" (Ibid: 282).
Examples of Wines from the Americas:
+USA
Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel (£11.50 at The Wine Shop), Apothic Red (£12.50 at The Wine Shop)
Peller Icewine Riesling 2007 (£39.00 at Great Western Wine)
+ Chile
Casillero del Diablo (£6.90 at The Wine Shop), Maycas del Lamari (£13.40 at The Wine Shop), Anakena Alwa (£21.90 at The Wine Shop), La Paz Merlot (£7.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ Argentina
Santa Ana Sauvignon Blanc (£8.50 at The Wine Shop), Septima Noche Pinot Noir (£16.50 at The Wine Shop)
AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND & SOUTH AFRICA
Australia is usually seen as the cutting-edge wine producers of the New World. "Their wine industry is not fundamentally distinguished by history (Australia was one of the vines's later conquests), and certainly not by geography (Australian wine producers are congenital truckers of grapes and blenders of wines), but by its philosophy. 'Can do' perhaps best sums up the Australian attitude to wine production" (Ibid: 284). "Most of Australia's vines grow where summers are cool enough to allow some flavour to build up in the grapes before they are so embarrassingly high in sugar that they must be picked lest acids plummet to uncorrectable levels. (Most Australian wines will have some acidification, acid deliberately added...). Nearly half of all vines grow in the state of South Australia, a third in the state of Victoria and most of the rest in New South Wales" (Ibid:285).
New Zealand make crisp, fruity, acidic wines but only make a fraction of 1% of the world's wine.
"Wine has been made on the Cape of Good Hope since the mid-seventeenth century, which means that South Africa has a much longer, unbroken history of winemaking than either Australia or California" (Ibid: 300). South Africa mainly uses the Chenin Blanc grape. "Only about 15 per cent of the country's vineyard is planted with red wine grapes, of which the national speciality is a 1920s Cape crossing of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut called Pinotage" (Ibid: 301).
Examples of Australian, New Zealand and South African Wines:
+ Australia
Peter Lehmann Margaret Semillon (£16.20 at The Wine Shop), Mr. Smith Shiraz (£12.60 at The Wine Shop)
Southern Lights Sauvignon Blanc (£13.50 at The Wine Shop)
+ South Africa
Painted Wolf Lekanyane (£11.50 at The Wine Shop), Parrotfish Cab/Merlot (£7.60 at The Wine Shop)
ASIA
"China has a burgeoning wine industry, aimed chiefly at its growing tourist trade. A small sector of it in the far west is effectively an extension of Kazakhstan, but most of its vineyards are on the eastern coast, where large foreign companies are planting Western grape varieties as well as local specialities. The great majority of Chinese grape wine is light, white, crisp and just off fry."
Japanese wine is commercially sophisticated and Japan's humid climate yields healthy grapes.
India is said to create sparkling wine that is very close to champagne, sold under the name 'Omar Khayyam' (Ibid: 305).
[NOTE: Not interested in wine for yourself? Or are you tired of drinking alone? Maybe get a bottle of wine for your cat. That's right! Japan makes wine for your cats. Hilarious, yes, but I am tempted to buy some for my two. Read the article here]
If you wish to purchase the book, you can find it on Amazon, click here to buy!
Bibliography
Robinson, J. (1996). Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. The Book People Ltd: Surrey
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
Darwinian medicine: how useful is an evolutionary approach to understanding human illness?
All three papers given in the bibliography detail the benefits of Darwinian medicine.
One example given by Nesse (2001: 358) and Trevathan (2007: 141) explain
reasons for obesity, a growing concern in today’s western societies, argued to
be due to a throwback of when we were hunter-gatherers i.e. due to the
advantageous nature of acquiring certain foods, detecting them would be an
optimal evolutionary strategy, hence the cravings for carbohydrates would
increase energy yield when eaten. However, societies such as Britain readily
sell refined, cheap sugars that can be consumed in excess. Nesse (2001: 358)
even proposes why dieting may not be an effective model for loosing weight,
with dieting activating a famine response, so that people will then tend to
overeat. Although Trevathan (2007: 147) states that there are now more
successful popular-science books on Darwinian medicine, it is hard to see this
when diets are still abundantly popular, prominent in magazines trying to sell
weight loss programmes, some diets more dangerous than useless, such as the
Atkins diet (Revill 2003). However, the three articles do not only target an
evolutionary approach to obesity, but to a range of topics, such as;
childbearing and female cancers, chronic disease and low birth weight (Trevathan
2007: 144), anxiety and panic disorders (Nesse 2001: 358). Again however,
although these ideas are thought to be reaching the public, Alcock &
Schwartz (2011) argue otherwise, suggesting that an evolutionary approach to
medicine isn’t even reaching those who apply this subject the most in their
day-to-day lives: the doctors. Even though it is recognised by most to be an
important part of teaching in medical schools, many don’t implement it, with
students in North America allowed to reject the module on grounds of religion
(Ibid: 574). A quick overview of University of Nottingham’s undergraduate
programme for medicine reveals no trace of an evolution module taught (nottingham.ac.uk),
one would imagine that Darwinian medicine would at least be an optional subject
when Alcock & Scwartz (2011: 577) give a range of ways an evolutionary
approach could merge with so many different branches of the medicinal tree. On
top of this, studies have shown that there is of course much variation in the
human species, and that to design one type of ‘cure’ for one set of people, may
not be beneficial for the rest of the world (Trevathan 2007: 143).
Evolutionary theory is not an untested hypothesis, and has
been gaining stronger evidence ever since Darwin, although this is not
suggesting that every proposal within the theory is correct. Although all three
papers give only positive reviews on Darwinian medicine, it is difficult to
disagree, surely more understanding of health through evolutionary theory,
microbiology, biochemistry etc is beneficial. Positive feedback can then
entail, as, with more students learning about evolution and how it applies to
human illness, more money will be placed into the subject, allowing more
studies and better research to be carried out.
Bibliography
Alcock, J. & Schwartz, M. D. (2011). A clinical perspective in
evolutionary medicine: what we wish we had learned in medical school. Evolution: Education and Outreach 4:
574-579
Nesse, R. M. (2001). How is Darwinian medicine useful? Western Journal of Medicine 174: 358-360
Trevathan, W. R. (2007). Evolutionary Medicine. Annual Review of Anthropology 36:
139-154
Online Sources
Revill, J. (2003). Official: Atkins diet can be deadly. The Guardian.
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
Climate change or competition? What factors might have caused the extinction of the Neanderthals? Perspectives from Finlayson and Mellars & French
Finlayson (2008: 2246) argues against the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis being caused by
competition from Homo sapiens. He
states that evidence for this view is non-existent and is therefore not a valid
theory. Instead, Finlayson posits that it was rapid climate change that
fragmented resources and habitats of Neanderthal populations that led to their
extinction. Giving scores to 23 potential Neanderthal sites for their
suitability, Finlayson (2008: 2247-2248) found that there was a high
statistical significance between his given high scores and the last occupied
places by the Neanderthals i.e. Neanderthals remained in high suitability areas
longer than other areas. He (Finlayson 2008: 2249) also found that coastal
strongholds allowed Neanderthals to survive for longer than those more inland.
This may be because “coastal areas are prime ecotones that often combine marine
with terrestrial and wetland resources”, allowing individuals to maintain small
homeranges, with coastal shelves permitting links to other populations (Ibid:
2251). Finally, Finlayson’s (2008: 2249) climate hypothesis shows that
populations fragmented in an east-west pattern, with some exceptions of western
extinctions before some eastern.
While Finlayson (2008) argues so avidly against the
competition hypothesis, Mellars & French (2011: 623) postulate that
Neanderthal populations were replaced by H.
sapiens across Europe between 45-35 thousand years ago (kya). They base
this on age ranges of three successive techno complexes; the
Mousterian-of-Acheulean (44-55 kya), the Châtelperronian (40.25-44.4 kya)
and the Aurignacian (35-40.25 kya) industries; meat-weight densities and
occupation areas. This in turn would show; total numbers of occupied sites,
overall intensity of sites and “…overall spatial extent of the archaeological
occupation levels” (Ibid: 625). The research shows that over the
Neanderthal-to-modern-human transition, there is an increase in human
population numbers and densities (Ibid: 626). Mellars & French (2011: 627)
argue that their data is consistent with other research such as DNA data and
human and cave-bear occupation sites that show changing population numbers and
densities between Neanderthals and humans. They suggest that their data could
indicate competition between the two hominin groups. They also state that “a
range of climatic and associated environmental factors could have played a
further, critical role in this demographic replacement and extinction process –
above all, perhaps the impact of the sudden climatic cooling associated with
Heinrich event 4…”(Ibid). Although Finlayson (2008) does give a good case for
climate change and the reason why coastal areas were the last strongholds, he
does not explain H. sapiens role in
this historical period. Surely if humans were also in the area where
Neanderthal populations were, and there were drastic changes in climate to
allow for Neanderthals to die out, then humans would also be affected? Humans
would therefore potentially be in competition with species that occupied
similar niches. Even if humans were not directly killing Neanderthals, the need
for food, shelter etc in harsher climates would lead to competition. Hence,
environments with more resources, such as coastal areas, would have less
competition. It would be interesting to know if population density fell within
the H. sapiens groups during this
time also, even though they clearly had higher densities than Neanderthals.
[NOTE: What is Heinrich event 4? Heinrich event 4 was an abrupt cooling event that happened between 39-40 kya (Lopez-Garcia et al. 2013: 1053). Click here to read more on Heinrich events]
Bibliography
-
Finlayson, C. (2008). On the importance of coastal areas in the survival
of Neanderthal populations during the Late Pleistocene. Quaternary Science Reviews 27 (23)
- Lopez-Garcia, J. M., Blain, H. A., Bennasar, M., Sanz, M., Daura, J. (2013). Heinrich event 4 characterised by terrestrial proxies in Southwestern Europe. Climate of the Past 9
- Mellars, P. & French, J. (2011). Tenfold
Population Increase in Western Europe at the Neanderthal-to-Modern Human
Transition. Science 333 (6042)
Monday, 13 January 2014
Brief discussion on whether hominins made bamboo tools in Pleistocene East Asia
In conclusion, although the bamboo hypothesis cannot be disproved, at this point in time, it cannot be proved either. Possibly, more routes need to be travelled first and falsified before returning back to this idea, or, better means need to be researched before this hypothesis can be tested.
 |
| This is Dr. M. Eren, he was my old lecturer and made fantastic stone tools. I hope he doesn't mind me posting his picture here, but he did work with bamboo tools, shown in the bibliography below |
Bibliography:
·
Bar-Yosef, O., Eren, M., Yuan, J., Cohen, D.
& Li, Y. (2011). Were bamboo tools made in prehistoric Southeast Asia? An
experimental view from South China. Quaternary
International
·
Brumm, A. (2010). The Movius Line and the Bamboo
Hypothesis: early hominin stone technology in Southeast Asia. Lithic Technology 35 (1)
·
West, J. & Louys, J. (2007). Differentiating
bamboo from Stone Tool cut marks in the zooarchaeological record, with a
discussion on the use of bamboo knives. Journal
of archaeological science 34 (4)
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
Sugar's Bad Reputation: Addiction, Overconsumption and Slavery
For something so common and inconspicuous, sugar (sucrose) has managed to permeate much of our world. It has “…helped create the system of political institutions, economic forces, and cultural constraints that govern us to this day (Charles 2002: 132)”. From its birth in southern China as Saccharum sinense, the sugar cane was cultivated as S. officinarum (Dalby 2000: 26) and thus, its journey began. But sugar today cannot be used in the context of just sugar cane, instead sugar is found as an “indirect-use product (Mintz 2008: 99)” located in manufactured products, both sweet and unsweet (Mintz 1985: 195), such as Coca-cola and jam. This essay looks at sugar’s bad reputation; addiction and overconsumption through taste and slavery, of a product that has influenced so many of our lives today.
The taste for sugar is universal to humans, a genetic predisposition to the sweet. Newborns are found to prefer sugar solutions over water or less sugary solutions (Birch 1999: 46), with “Neonates prior to any feeding experience…” exhibiting “…distinct facial responses to sweet and bitter substances: a marked relaxation of the face versus open-mouthed grimacing with a flat, protruded tongue.” (Harris 1987: 80), and, if sweet substances are introduced into the amniotic fluid, the foetus begins to suckle (De Snoo 1937, cited in Armelagos 1987: 580). The preference for sugar may be due to ecological reasons whereby sweet-tasting foods indicate high-energy substances and a predictor of nutritive value, while bitter substances may indicate poisons produced by plants (Harbottle 1997: 182, Harris 1987: 80). This is similar to other frugivorous primates, whereby the motivation for fruit seeking may partly be due to the high palatability for sugars (Simmen 1997: 31), where primates in the Amazon forest have a higher threshold for sugar than those living in open dry forests (Hladik 1997: 23), like that of human populations living outside of the African forest, having higher sensitivity to sucrose than those living in the forest (Ibid: 22). This is due to the African rain forest having fruits rich in sugar compared with outside the forest, where fruits are limited, with low sugar content (Ibid: 23), hence lower levels of taste perception for sugar, results in an increased motivation for it.
Certain academics disagree that the predisposition for sweet substances is genetically encoded, such as Lupton (1996: 7), who says that the “…experience of eating is intertwined with… [baby’s] experience of close human contact with the provider of food…The sweetness of milk means goodness and pleasure not simply because of the taste, but because of the pleasurable associations with it”. She then goes onto say that the reasons for why sugar became a dominant part of the English diet cannot be traced back to “…the notion that ‘humans like the taste of sweetness’…”since there is variation of taste within culture, between cultures and through time (Lupton 1996: 15). Although Lupton is correct in that taste cannot be solely due to genetics, it is a nurture-over-nature debate, a now dated argument as both genes and environment play important roles. However, we cannot
discount the crucial part genes play in taste. We are “programmed” to accept foods that are sweet, and to accept the familiar and not novel edibles (Birch 1999: 45). While all newborns were found to prefer sweet over other, by 6 months of age, only infants that had been fed sweetened water by their mothers routinely, had a greater preference for it. “Preschool children repeatedly given tofu, either plain, salted, or sweetened, came to prefer the version they had become familiar with. This finding suggests that, in general, sweet taste is preferred but only in familiar food contexts” (Ibid: 46). So, although the preference for sweet is innate, as we grow older, we become accustomed to the familiar, which is why we can acquire a preference for bitter taste, even though it is instinctive to dislike the taste. This then explains why tolerance of sugar varies cross-culturally e.g. Iranian sweet foods such as Baklava is usually considered sickly sweet to the British, while the same is said for the Christmas pudding (without icing) for the Iranian palate, although Iranians born in England gain partiality to English cakes and pastries (Harbottle 1997: 182).
The genetic predisposition for sweetness may therefore explain overconsumption and addiction to sugar. McKenna (1992: 175) argues that “Sugar abuse is the world’s least discussed and most widespread addiction…[it being] one of the hardest of all habits to kick…The depth of serious sugar addiction are exemplified by bulimics who may binge on sugar-saturated food…” and then vomit or take laxatives so that they can indulge in more sugar. McKenna correlates high sugar consumption with high alcohol consumption, saying that; “After alcohol and tobacco, sugar is the most damaging addictive substance consumed by human beings”. In the USA, obesity is increasing with approximately half of American adults classified as overweight (Birch 1999: 42), this is said to be caused from American diets too high in total energy, sugar, fat, and too low in complex carbohydrates (Ibid: 43). “The high and increasing prevalence of overweight individuals suggest that the predispositions that were
adaptive under conditions where food was scarce are not adaptive in today’s environment…where inexpensive foods high in sugar, fat, total energy, and salt are readily available (Ibid: 45)”. However, overconsumption cannot be purely based on genetics, as Lupton said, since other forces must be at work to induce such extremes in certain countries. As noted by Mintz (1985: 189); “…the average French person consumes less sucrose…” than the average English person. Like how many people were enslaved for the sugar trade, the consumption of sugar may be a form of covert slavery imposed upon the unaware citizen.
Sugar has has had a dark past. McKenna (1992: 176) maintains that the modern drug trade resembles nothing of the scale in which kidnapping, transporting, and the mass murder of large populations happened in fuelling the sugar trade. In the beginning of the sugar industry; the Portuguese had Portuguese work on the sugar estates; usually convicts, debtors and Jews who refused to convert to Christianity (Hobhouse 2002: 63-64). The Modern Sugar Slave Trade began, however, when Prince Henry of Portugal's ships captured and enslaved a crew of Moslems, they were released after arguing that the best slaves were to be found in the hinterland of Africa. Thus trade began between Africa and southern Europe. The Portuguese saw the Africans as less than human, for they were children of Ham, and were not allowed to read or write, or convert to Christianity. Some were sold to Spain (Ibid: 66). Yet, there were not enough slaves to be imported to the Caribbean, where some of the
Spanish were settling. By 1530, slaves were sent directly from Africa to the Caribbean (Ibid: 69).
But it was Bartolomé de Las Casas who, upon seeing how the native
Caribbean Caribs and Arawaks were forcibly made to do jobs that they
couldn’t or wouldn’t do (many choosing to die than except slavery) (Ibid: 70),
that he “…suggested the introduction of blacks.” They were thought to
be docile beings, who would work willingly in servitude. The
transatlantic slave trade began. Abuse was harsh and commonplace upon
the slaves, and resigning his bishopric, Las Casas conducted a
nationwide campaign in 1548, against the trade he had started. His
efforts failed. It would be 200 years later before the slave trade would
once again be questioned (Ibid: 71). Instead, many human lives
meant only in the service to the sugar trade; in 1645 Barbados, there
were 4000 black people (all slaves), and 18,000 white people (only 7000
were free) (Ibid: 74). It is believed that 11.7 million slaves
were exported and “…9.8 million slaves imported into the New World
between 1450 and 1900” (Ibid: 76), with one ton of sugar
representing “…the lifetime sugar production of one slave who had been
captured, manacled, marched to the African coast, penned like a pig to
await a buyer, sold, chained again on board ship, sold on the island
market…” and then seasoned to the Caribbean before they would show
profit to an owner. The slave’s whole life was equal to that of one ton
of refined sugar (Ibid: 77). As Hobhouse (2002: 79)
writes; “It was the first time since the Roman latifundia that mass
slavery had been used to grow a crop for trade (not subsistence)…It was
also the first time in history that one race had been uniquely selected
for a servile role.”
At the same time, the sugar industry chained the free person. Cultures everywhere that have remained in a habitat for a long time build up knowledge of the environment around them, as well as a sustainable diet. Industrial food can help to supplement diets, yet, transnational advertising, ethnocentrism and uninformed individuals leads to the devaluation of traditional cooking and increased consumption of junk foods [Which contains and is based on, high fats and sugars] (Pilcher 2002: 223). Two examples of this can be seen in Britain and Mexico.
In Britain, sweetened tea and treacle were advertised in 1750, with mass consumption of sucrose happening around 1850 (Mintz 1985: 147-148), making it available to the poor. Britons began to produce less of their own food, spending more time away from the home and eating elsewhere, healthy foods such as broths and porridges were replaced with high-energy jam and white bread. Now women were not spending time on preparing food, they too could join the work force (Mintz 1997: 100). “Industrialisation drew people from the countryside, from their gardens and fields, woods and streams which had provided their food, to the tenements and back-to-back houses where they had to buy what they ate.” Buying cheap, store-bought, factory processed food allowed the abandonment of traditional cooking to spend more time working. Sugar was used as preservative, flavourer (Galloway 1989: 7), and quick energy to the working class. “By positively affecting the worker’s energy output and productivity…[sugar] figured importantly in balancing the accounts of capitalism… (Mintz 1985: 148)”. World sugar production rose from 572,000 tons in 1830 to 6,000,000 tons in 1890 [a 500% increase in 30 years] (Ibid: 73).
In 20th century Mexico, road networks allowed bottled soft drinks to become a staple commodity, with servings accounting for 15% of Coke’s and 20% of Pepsi’s international sales in the 1990s. Pepsi’s label found on many junk foods has led to the company’s success over coke (Leatherman & Goodman 2005: 839) with food manufacturers allowance to run mass advertising campaigns for soft
drinks and sweets, with only small print on advice to eat fresh fruit (Pilcher 2002: 233-234), it is therefore not uncommon to see a young infant with a soft drink (Leatherman & Goodman 2005: 839). Like that of sugary white bread replacing homemade loaves in Britain, fewer corn tortillas are eaten in Mexico, replaced instead with white flour tortillas [These are of course higher in sugar than the traditional corn tortillas] (Ibid: 840).
Charles, J. (2002). “Searching for Gold in Guacamole: California Growers Market the Avocado, 1910-1994” in Belasco, W. & Scranton, P. (eds.). Food Nations: Selling taste in Consumer Societies. Routledge: New York
Dalby, A. (2000). Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. The British Museum Press: London
De Snoo, K. (1937). “Sucking Behaviour in the Human Fetus”. Monatsschrift Geburtshilfe 105: 88-97.
Galloway, J. H. (1989). The Sugar Cane Industry: An historical geography from its Origins to 1914. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
Harbottle, L. (1997). “Taste and Embodiment: The Food preferences of Iranians in Britain” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Harris, M. (1987). “Foodways: Historical Overview and Theoretical Prolegomenon” in Harris, M. & Ross, E. B. (eds.). Food and Evolution: Toward a theory of Human Food Habits. Temple University Press: Philadelphia
Hladik, C. M. (1997). “Primate Models for Taste and Food Preferences” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Hobhouse, H. (2002). Seeds of Change: Six plants that transformed mankind (Second Edition). Pan Books: London
Jankowiak, W. & Bradburd, D. (1996). “Using Drug Foods to Capture and Enhance Labour Performance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective”. Current Anthropology 37: 717-720.
Leatherman, T. & Goodman, A. (2005). “Coca-colonisation of Diets in the Yucatan”. Social Science and Medicine 61: 833-846.
Lupton, D. (1996). Food, the Body and the Self. Sage Publications: London
McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution. Rider: London
Mintz, S. W. (1985). Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books: New York
Mintz, S. W. (2008). “Time, Sugar, and Sweetness” in Counihan, C. & Van Esterik, P. (eds.). Food and Culture: A Reader (Second Edition). Routledge: New York
Pilcher. J. M. (2002). “Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The Nutritional Consequences of Hybrid Cuisines in Mexico” in Belasco, W. & Scranton, P. (eds.). Food Nations: Selling taste in Consumer Societies. Routledge: New York
Simmen, B. (1997). “Food Preferences in Neotropical Primates in Relation to Taste Sensitivity” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Online Sources
BBC. (2007). Savoury Foods High Sugar Warning
The taste for sugar is universal to humans, a genetic predisposition to the sweet. Newborns are found to prefer sugar solutions over water or less sugary solutions (Birch 1999: 46), with “Neonates prior to any feeding experience…” exhibiting “…distinct facial responses to sweet and bitter substances: a marked relaxation of the face versus open-mouthed grimacing with a flat, protruded tongue.” (Harris 1987: 80), and, if sweet substances are introduced into the amniotic fluid, the foetus begins to suckle (De Snoo 1937, cited in Armelagos 1987: 580). The preference for sugar may be due to ecological reasons whereby sweet-tasting foods indicate high-energy substances and a predictor of nutritive value, while bitter substances may indicate poisons produced by plants (Harbottle 1997: 182, Harris 1987: 80). This is similar to other frugivorous primates, whereby the motivation for fruit seeking may partly be due to the high palatability for sugars (Simmen 1997: 31), where primates in the Amazon forest have a higher threshold for sugar than those living in open dry forests (Hladik 1997: 23), like that of human populations living outside of the African forest, having higher sensitivity to sucrose than those living in the forest (Ibid: 22). This is due to the African rain forest having fruits rich in sugar compared with outside the forest, where fruits are limited, with low sugar content (Ibid: 23), hence lower levels of taste perception for sugar, results in an increased motivation for it.
Certain academics disagree that the predisposition for sweet substances is genetically encoded, such as Lupton (1996: 7), who says that the “…experience of eating is intertwined with… [baby’s] experience of close human contact with the provider of food…The sweetness of milk means goodness and pleasure not simply because of the taste, but because of the pleasurable associations with it”. She then goes onto say that the reasons for why sugar became a dominant part of the English diet cannot be traced back to “…the notion that ‘humans like the taste of sweetness’…”since there is variation of taste within culture, between cultures and through time (Lupton 1996: 15). Although Lupton is correct in that taste cannot be solely due to genetics, it is a nurture-over-nature debate, a now dated argument as both genes and environment play important roles. However, we cannot
discount the crucial part genes play in taste. We are “programmed” to accept foods that are sweet, and to accept the familiar and not novel edibles (Birch 1999: 45). While all newborns were found to prefer sweet over other, by 6 months of age, only infants that had been fed sweetened water by their mothers routinely, had a greater preference for it. “Preschool children repeatedly given tofu, either plain, salted, or sweetened, came to prefer the version they had become familiar with. This finding suggests that, in general, sweet taste is preferred but only in familiar food contexts” (Ibid: 46). So, although the preference for sweet is innate, as we grow older, we become accustomed to the familiar, which is why we can acquire a preference for bitter taste, even though it is instinctive to dislike the taste. This then explains why tolerance of sugar varies cross-culturally e.g. Iranian sweet foods such as Baklava is usually considered sickly sweet to the British, while the same is said for the Christmas pudding (without icing) for the Iranian palate, although Iranians born in England gain partiality to English cakes and pastries (Harbottle 1997: 182).The genetic predisposition for sweetness may therefore explain overconsumption and addiction to sugar. McKenna (1992: 175) argues that “Sugar abuse is the world’s least discussed and most widespread addiction…[it being] one of the hardest of all habits to kick…The depth of serious sugar addiction are exemplified by bulimics who may binge on sugar-saturated food…” and then vomit or take laxatives so that they can indulge in more sugar. McKenna correlates high sugar consumption with high alcohol consumption, saying that; “After alcohol and tobacco, sugar is the most damaging addictive substance consumed by human beings”. In the USA, obesity is increasing with approximately half of American adults classified as overweight (Birch 1999: 42), this is said to be caused from American diets too high in total energy, sugar, fat, and too low in complex carbohydrates (Ibid: 43). “The high and increasing prevalence of overweight individuals suggest that the predispositions that were
adaptive under conditions where food was scarce are not adaptive in today’s environment…where inexpensive foods high in sugar, fat, total energy, and salt are readily available (Ibid: 45)”. However, overconsumption cannot be purely based on genetics, as Lupton said, since other forces must be at work to induce such extremes in certain countries. As noted by Mintz (1985: 189); “…the average French person consumes less sucrose…” than the average English person. Like how many people were enslaved for the sugar trade, the consumption of sugar may be a form of covert slavery imposed upon the unaware citizen.Sugar has has had a dark past. McKenna (1992: 176) maintains that the modern drug trade resembles nothing of the scale in which kidnapping, transporting, and the mass murder of large populations happened in fuelling the sugar trade. In the beginning of the sugar industry; the Portuguese had Portuguese work on the sugar estates; usually convicts, debtors and Jews who refused to convert to Christianity (Hobhouse 2002: 63-64). The Modern Sugar Slave Trade began, however, when Prince Henry of Portugal's ships captured and enslaved a crew of Moslems, they were released after arguing that the best slaves were to be found in the hinterland of Africa. Thus trade began between Africa and southern Europe. The Portuguese saw the Africans as less than human, for they were children of Ham, and were not allowed to read or write, or convert to Christianity. Some were sold to Spain (Ibid: 66). Yet, there were not enough slaves to be imported to the Caribbean, where some of the
Spanish were settling. By 1530, slaves were sent directly from Africa to the Caribbean (Ibid: 69).
But it was Bartolomé de Las Casas who, upon seeing how the native
Caribbean Caribs and Arawaks were forcibly made to do jobs that they
couldn’t or wouldn’t do (many choosing to die than except slavery) (Ibid: 70),
that he “…suggested the introduction of blacks.” They were thought to
be docile beings, who would work willingly in servitude. The
transatlantic slave trade began. Abuse was harsh and commonplace upon
the slaves, and resigning his bishopric, Las Casas conducted a
nationwide campaign in 1548, against the trade he had started. His
efforts failed. It would be 200 years later before the slave trade would
once again be questioned (Ibid: 71). Instead, many human lives
meant only in the service to the sugar trade; in 1645 Barbados, there
were 4000 black people (all slaves), and 18,000 white people (only 7000
were free) (Ibid: 74). It is believed that 11.7 million slaves
were exported and “…9.8 million slaves imported into the New World
between 1450 and 1900” (Ibid: 76), with one ton of sugar
representing “…the lifetime sugar production of one slave who had been
captured, manacled, marched to the African coast, penned like a pig to
await a buyer, sold, chained again on board ship, sold on the island
market…” and then seasoned to the Caribbean before they would show
profit to an owner. The slave’s whole life was equal to that of one ton
of refined sugar (Ibid: 77). As Hobhouse (2002: 79)
writes; “It was the first time since the Roman latifundia that mass
slavery had been used to grow a crop for trade (not subsistence)…It was
also the first time in history that one race had been uniquely selected
for a servile role.”At the same time, the sugar industry chained the free person. Cultures everywhere that have remained in a habitat for a long time build up knowledge of the environment around them, as well as a sustainable diet. Industrial food can help to supplement diets, yet, transnational advertising, ethnocentrism and uninformed individuals leads to the devaluation of traditional cooking and increased consumption of junk foods [Which contains and is based on, high fats and sugars] (Pilcher 2002: 223). Two examples of this can be seen in Britain and Mexico.
In Britain, sweetened tea and treacle were advertised in 1750, with mass consumption of sucrose happening around 1850 (Mintz 1985: 147-148), making it available to the poor. Britons began to produce less of their own food, spending more time away from the home and eating elsewhere, healthy foods such as broths and porridges were replaced with high-energy jam and white bread. Now women were not spending time on preparing food, they too could join the work force (Mintz 1997: 100). “Industrialisation drew people from the countryside, from their gardens and fields, woods and streams which had provided their food, to the tenements and back-to-back houses where they had to buy what they ate.” Buying cheap, store-bought, factory processed food allowed the abandonment of traditional cooking to spend more time working. Sugar was used as preservative, flavourer (Galloway 1989: 7), and quick energy to the working class. “By positively affecting the worker’s energy output and productivity…[sugar] figured importantly in balancing the accounts of capitalism… (Mintz 1985: 148)”. World sugar production rose from 572,000 tons in 1830 to 6,000,000 tons in 1890 [a 500% increase in 30 years] (Ibid: 73).
In 20th century Mexico, road networks allowed bottled soft drinks to become a staple commodity, with servings accounting for 15% of Coke’s and 20% of Pepsi’s international sales in the 1990s. Pepsi’s label found on many junk foods has led to the company’s success over coke (Leatherman & Goodman 2005: 839) with food manufacturers allowance to run mass advertising campaigns for soft
drinks and sweets, with only small print on advice to eat fresh fruit (Pilcher 2002: 233-234), it is therefore not uncommon to see a young infant with a soft drink (Leatherman & Goodman 2005: 839). Like that of sugary white bread replacing homemade loaves in Britain, fewer corn tortillas are eaten in Mexico, replaced instead with white flour tortillas [These are of course higher in sugar than the traditional corn tortillas] (Ibid: 840).
Unlike metal or cloth, drug foods such as sugar, encourages immediate consumption through our innate disposition to like sweet substances. Sugar therefore, is less likely to be stored, causing consumer demand to either remain constant or increase (Jankowiak & Bradburd 1996: 718). Through mass media and small print [e.g. Asda’s sticky chilli chicken and Tesco’s crispy beef was found to have more sugar content than vanilla ice cream (BBC 2007)], consumers are removed from their nourishment, and to see packaged foods as more natural than living plants and animals (Pilcher 2002: 236). As the body habitually gets sugar requirements from sucrose in processed foods, other enzymes are inhibited, making it difficult to digest starch and fibre. Naturally, people avoid what they cannot eat, and the manufacturers reduce fibre content and increase sugar content of factory foods. People become addicted, and disorders such as bulimia occur, overconsumption increases, and problems such as obesity, tooth problems and malnutrition are caused (Hobhouse 2002: 58). In Mexico; diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death nationwide, with adults usually both obese and anaemic at the same time (Pilcher 2002: 236).
To conclude, sugar has been used for centuries; written about in the Mahābhāshya [400 B.C] (Mintz 1985: 19), the Buddhagosa (Ibid: 23), and ancient Latin and Greek literature (Lupton 1996: 35). It was medicinal and used in many countries (Mintz 1985: 96-99). Sugar’s sweet taste is pleasurable to all humans, a genetic predisposition that tells us of its high energy content. Sugar didn’t always have a bad reputation. It wasn’t until mass quantities could be refined that its dark history was created, being used to push millions of people into slavery, whether overtly [working on the plantations] or covertly [“drug foods often serve as an alternative to military force and are generally selected because they are more efficient, more economical, or easier to sustain (Jankowiak & Bradburd1996:718)”]. Through today’s industry, we are taken away from being able to create food, manipulated into believing packaged is natural, swamped with a sugar overload from manufactured products. We overconsume, addicted to a taste that once was adaptive.
Bibliography
Armelagos, G. (1987). “Biocultural Aspects of Food choice” in Harris, M.
& Ross, E. B. (eds.). Food and
Evolution: Toward a theory of Human Food Habits. Temple University Press:
Philadelphia
Birch, L. L. (1999). “Development of Food Preferences”. Annual Review of Nutrition 19: 41-62.
Charles, J. (2002). “Searching for Gold in Guacamole: California Growers Market the Avocado, 1910-1994” in Belasco, W. & Scranton, P. (eds.). Food Nations: Selling taste in Consumer Societies. Routledge: New York
Dalby, A. (2000). Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. The British Museum Press: London
De Snoo, K. (1937). “Sucking Behaviour in the Human Fetus”. Monatsschrift Geburtshilfe 105: 88-97.
Galloway, J. H. (1989). The Sugar Cane Industry: An historical geography from its Origins to 1914. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
Harbottle, L. (1997). “Taste and Embodiment: The Food preferences of Iranians in Britain” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Harris, M. (1987). “Foodways: Historical Overview and Theoretical Prolegomenon” in Harris, M. & Ross, E. B. (eds.). Food and Evolution: Toward a theory of Human Food Habits. Temple University Press: Philadelphia
Hladik, C. M. (1997). “Primate Models for Taste and Food Preferences” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Hobhouse, H. (2002). Seeds of Change: Six plants that transformed mankind (Second Edition). Pan Books: London
Jankowiak, W. & Bradburd, D. (1996). “Using Drug Foods to Capture and Enhance Labour Performance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective”. Current Anthropology 37: 717-720.
Leatherman, T. & Goodman, A. (2005). “Coca-colonisation of Diets in the Yucatan”. Social Science and Medicine 61: 833-846.
Lupton, D. (1996). Food, the Body and the Self. Sage Publications: London
McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution. Rider: London
Mintz, S. W. (1985). Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books: New York
Mintz, S. W. (2008). “Time, Sugar, and Sweetness” in Counihan, C. & Van Esterik, P. (eds.). Food and Culture: A Reader (Second Edition). Routledge: New York
Pilcher. J. M. (2002). “Industrial Tortillas and Folkloric Pepsi: The Nutritional Consequences of Hybrid Cuisines in Mexico” in Belasco, W. & Scranton, P. (eds.). Food Nations: Selling taste in Consumer Societies. Routledge: New York
Simmen, B. (1997). “Food Preferences in Neotropical Primates in Relation to Taste Sensitivity” in Macbeth, H. (eds.). Food Preferences and Taste: Continuity and Change. Berghahn Books: Providence
Online Sources
BBC. (2007). Savoury Foods High Sugar Warning
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