We all nurture a mental picture of famous chefs^[1] going to the market early in the morning to select their ingredients. We like to think this is the case for some small yet acclaimed restaurants and eateries on their way to a glorious future, but what about the vast majority? Teasing aside, where should chefs source their produce if they intend to satisfy a clientele that is increasingly demanding when it comes to organic and eco-sustainable food? Some may be inclined to tell you a “tall story” while others...

Freshly picked... at the Cash&Carry!

The latest novelty in the ambit of locally grown produce is surprisingly that of supermarkets. Vegetables can now be grown in special vertical glasshouses actually positioned in the fruit and vegetable departments of supermarkets and hypermarkets. A Metro cash&carry store of Berlin was the first to implement the idea of between-the-aisle farming^[2], based on a project by Infarm^[3]. The indoor high-tech concept whereby vegetables are grown thanks to the hydroponic culture technique is encountering the favour of trade operators. Its widespread launch is just around the corner, for the joy of all those who will soon be able to count on spanking fresh products for their menus, obtained with zero or close to zero environmental impact. In actual fact, this is no real novelty since it is simply a smaller scale version of an existing phenomenon.

Vertical farming: a fashion trend or a real need?

Whether indoors or out, for some time now, we have been hearing a lot of talk about vertical farming as the answer to the dreaded lack of farmable land. According to FAO and NASA sources, over 80% of farmable land is already being cultivated and from now to 2050 the world population will grow exponentially^[4]. How are we going to bridge the ever widening and alarming gap between demand and supply? In this respect, we have already heard of some amazing projects in terms of volume and innovation: to quote just a couple, consider the cases already featured on Fine Dining Lovers of Singapore^[5] or Chicago^[6]. It still has to be proved, however, that the future of farming points upwards and that it implies nothing but advantages: the experts are in fact in the process of evaluating the pros and cons^[7]. But, in the meantime, there is another trend in full swing, that of roof farming.

Who are the new urrban farmers?

It is a widespread opinion that the "farm to table^[8]" phenomenon is rapidly evolving. Nevertheless, those living in densely populated urban areas have a hard time finding products that come up to their expectations. Chefs also encounter the same problem and, in their search for a solution, have not even left the premises. In New York, for instance, from Brooklyn to Broadway, from West Village to Midtown, the "farm to table" trend has been upgraded to "roof to table". Who hasn’t heard of the Abc Kitchen^[9] or Rosemary's^[10], not to mention the Waldorf Astoria, an authentic garden of Eden in the heart of the Big Apple^[11].

The trend is soaring to such an extent that those intent on opening a venue, carefully consider the advantage of finding a location which allows for the roof to be converted into a convenient vegetable garden. A recent report published by Restaurant Hospitality^[12] states that the business potential has not only been grasped by restaurateurs but by the real estate market in general. For example, a giant player on the United States property market, the Federal Realty Investment Trust, has recently implemented a colossal project: Bethesda Row just outside Washington DC, which forecasts a harvest for the year in course of over 4.5 tons of vegetables in a single area. Ready to reap the benefits are the restaurateurs contractually bound to the real estate colossal, such as Jose Andres from Jaleo, Mussel Bar & Grille, for instance, or the restaurant chain Sweetgreen specialized in salads.

And who are the gardeners behind this abundance of fresh produce? In the case of smaller operators, it is still strictly a do-it-yourself job, while large projects such as that of Bethesda Row in Washington call in a third player: "Up to Acres", a company that has made rooftop farming its core business. And elsewhere? Washington has given the cue to Seattle, where the Urban Farm Company operates, but also to Boston with its Green City Growers or Los Angeles with Farmscape. Not forgetting New York and Chicago with Gotham Green, soon to hit the news if it is true that the company is on the verge of developing a project for producing tons of vegetables (10 million lettuces, for instance) on a yearly basis! Neither are the States an isolated case: at all latitudes, from Tokyo to Caracas via Toronto, you will find people who have converted an otherwise unutilized rooftop into an efficient metropolitan vegetable garden, with increasingly tangible advantages for both restaurant budgets and the ecosystem^[13]. At this point, the same question hovers on everyone’s lips. But is the resulting produce really of high quality? It would appear to be... Or could it be owing to a lack of alternatives or availability that the starred Gramercy Tavern in New York, to name just one, has turned to Gotham Green of Queens for its supplies? We are more inclined to think the quality factor is what dictates the choice. Along with a growing street cred in the eyes of those who care about the future of our planet.

References

1. ^{^} famous chefs (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} implement the idea of between-the-aisle farming (www.fastcoexist.com)
3. ^{^} Infarm (infarm.de)
4. ^{^} the world population will grow exponentially (www.verticalfarm.com)
5. ^{^} cases already featured on Fine Dining Lovers of Singapore (www.finedininglovers.com)
6. ^{^} Chicago (www.finedininglovers.com)
7. ^{^} evaluating the pros and cons (www.comitatoscientifico-expo2015.org)
8. ^{^} farm to table (www.finedininglovers.com)
9. ^{^} Abc Kitchen (www.abckitchennyc.com)
10. ^{^} Rosemary's (rosemarysnyc.com)
11. ^{^} Waldorf Astoria, an authentic garden of Eden in the heart of the Big Apple (www.waldorfnewyork.com)
12. ^{^} report published by Restaurant Hospitality (restaurant-hospitality.com)
13. ^{^} tangible advantages for both restaurant budgets and the ecosystem (environment.nationalgeographic.com)

I certainly never dreamed of coming across the terms bee ambassador or bee enthusiast. And yet, both of them were frequently and proudly being bandied about at the Indigenous Terra Madre event in India^[1]. At the 140 tribe gathering organized by Slow Food^[2] there was a huge number of beekeepers from all over the word and North East India itself, where the congress was held, is an area internationally acclaimed as being a knowledge centre for beekeeping.

During the festival, there were plenty of opportunities to taste indigenous honey – almost every time we happened to be holding a bamboo spoon - but none were so mind blowing as the taste workshop dedicated to honey, which witnessed the participation of producers from four different tribes, three from North East India (Garo Hills, East Khasi Hills, Nagaland) and one from the most southerly point of Tamil Nadu.

Honey from the Rocks of Nagaland

Nagaland is one of the Indian states with the highest honey consumption – a little under 200 grams against a National average of about 10 grams^[3]. It is here that the Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission^[4] was founded in 2007 with the precise objective of uniting all beekeeping communities, increasing the production of honey and facilitating more organized forms of trade than those of village markets.

The 16 tribes inhabiting these lush green hills have always lived happily alongside the bees, which have found their ideal habitat and a paradise for buzzing creatures in the scarcely populated forests where pesticides are practically unheard of.

The numbers are frankly quite impressive: 12,000 beekeepers, 40,000 bee colonies. A heritage of knowhow which, nonetheless, has yet to be classified or even made safe. Not only in terms of hygiene: rock bees, for instance are a species living in the rocks whose honey is collected by men who sometimes need to climb to considerable heights, using their bare hands without any form of protection.

Bitter and therapeutic honey

This “rock” honey has a flavour that is much more bitter than any other type of honey we have ever tasted, quite different from the tangy variety produced by the Stingless Bee, or the sour type coming from the colonies living underground. Their almost medicinal aftertastes indicate the therapeutic properties of these varieties in a way that makes our “teaspoon of honey for a cold” look quite ineffectual.

In this part of the world, honey is rubbed onto snake bites, used to cure conjunctivitis (even though the method explained to us was not quite clear) and recommended to sufferers of gastritis and constipation: to understand its importance for these tribes, suffice it to say that, before proceeding to extract it, beekeepers carry out a purification ceremony.

Rare Honeys and Biodiversity

In the meantime, our foray into the world of beekeeping takes us to the opposite end of the country, to the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve^[5], as we taste a teaspoonful of Kurinji honey from the eponymous flower: an extremely delicate blue blossom which blooms every twelve years and from which the bees produce an intensely sweet, black-coloured honey.

However, the tasting of rare honey is not only a question of foodie hedonism. For a good many years now, the diminishing bee population has been associated with the decline of biodiversity^[6]: pollution, the extension of single crop farming and the loss of plant species are just some of the reasons why the number of bees is decreasing and causing a chain effect. Bearing in mind that there are about 22,000 bee species on our planet, the purchase of a jar of this sweet yellow substance from our supermarket seems to be such a restricted and restricting thing to do.

From India to Mexico

At the end of the congress, up on stage goes Leonardo Duran Olguín, Coordinator of the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative^[7] on the Sierra Norte in Mexico. He has no honey for us to taste, nothing but words and images to recount the honey of “pitsilnekmej”, a species whose communities live in the mancuernas, hives inside clay pots. When the honey of these bees is extracted, it is then put back inside the mancuernas and left to ferment for months, until it becomes an acidic product used by the indigenous communities as food and medicine, but practically impossible to trade.

As he talks, a Moroccan gentleman sitting next to me, fidgets on his chair: there is no translation available in French, the language he speaks, and he is unable to fully understand the explanation in English. I do what I can to describe to him how honey is obtained from the pitsilnekmej (taking great care to avoid pronouncing the name) and he compares it with the methods he uses for his own bees, the mellifera sahariana which manages to survive extreme desert temperatures. Finally, we are both worn out by this three-way linguistic exercise – and by the excessive gesticulation we Mediterranean people are prone to.

“Merci”, he thanks me at the end “Even if it is difficult to set them up, we ought to have more meetings like this. A worldwide réseau des apiculteurs (beekeepers’ network) is what we need. We all understand the language of bees”.

References

1. ^{^} Indigenous Terra Madre event in India (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} organized by Slow Food (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} a little under 200 grams against a National average of about 10 grams (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
4. ^{^} Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission (nbhm.in)
5. ^{^} Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (www.nbnaturepark.com)
6. ^{^} associated with the decline of biodiversity (news.bbc.co.uk)
7. ^{^} Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative (www.tosepan.com)

A selection of images of RGB wallpaper series^[1] by Carnovsky, a Milan-based art duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla.

RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”: it creates surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus. The technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color, mixing up the colors: through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) itìs possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed.

The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three levels.  In each image three layers live together, as well as three worlds that could belong to a specific animal kingdom or to an anatomical part.

References

1. ^{^} RGB wallpaper series (www.carnovsky.com)

This week we kicked things off with a special announcement: Italian chef Andrea Miacola won the Benelux semi-final in the S.Pellegrino Young Chef 2016^[1].

This prestigious contest is a global talent search to find the best young chef in the world.

Learn all about Miacola's winning signature dish and who he battled for the win. Take a look^[2].

The Buzz About Bees

Have you ever heard of the terms 'bee ambassador' or 'bee enthusiast'? Neither had we until we participated in a special event held in India dedicated to beekeepers from around the world.

It was a fun occasion to sample honey from different parts of the subcontinent and discover hidden gems from exotic locales that span the globe.

Read all about our sweet adventure^[3].

In the blog

This week in the blog we brought you 7 tasty uses for stale bread^[4], 49 drinks to try during your travels^[5] and a peek inside a newly opened French cheese store^[6] in NYC.

References

1. ^{^} S.Pellegrino Young Chef 2016 (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} Take a look (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} Read all about our sweet adventure (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} 7 tasty uses for stale bread (www.finedininglovers.com)
5. ^{^} 49 drinks to try during your travels (www.finedininglovers.com)
6. ^{^} French cheese store (www.finedininglovers.com)

Argentina may have lost the world cup final but they are well and truly winning when it comes to wine, and Mendoza is continuing to make it’s mark in some exciting new ways.

From the classic malbec to the resurgence of cabernet franc and the bonarda grape, both new and old school wineries are at the forefront of a new boom in premium winemaking, and there is no better place than the foothills of the Andes to explore the wonderful world of wine, but with so many good bodegas to choose from (over 1200), it can be hard to know where to start…

Av Belgrano 1194, 5500.

Wine is complex beast, altitude, age of vine, type of oak barrel and grade of toast, the soil, yield, blend, climate, and the humble grape, all contribute to give each wine it’s own character and identity. If like me you know a good wine when you taste it, but you don’t know what makes a wine great, then your first stop should be the Vines of Mendoza tasting room, where you can sample an array of excellent wines and learn some insider tips from the experts.

As Emilcé, my wine guide explains, whilst pouring the first glass of torrontés (a varietal of wine solely produced in Argentina) from their Recuerdo range. “It’s all about memory”…

“When you smell and taste a wine it stirs memories, the smell of yeast might remind you of your grandmother baking bread, or if your a horseman (or a belt fanatic), you might detect hints of leather, It’s all about personal association."

The torrontés has hints of melon, honey, pineapple, peaches and jasmine. It’s fragrant, smooth and citrusy. It reminds me of sitting by a river on a summers day.

We glide through a malbec: Petit Fleur 2010, produced by Monteviejo and world renowned winemaker Marcelo Pelleriti, (with hints of blackberries, overripe black olives and a touch of spice, gained from 12 months in French oak). A Las Perdices 2011 Bonarda Reserva (with oaky smokiness, higher tannins, dark caramel chocolate, and dare i say, a hint of leather?). A 2010 Gran Cabernet Franc. (Lots of red and green pepperiness, not as full bodied as the malbec, earthy, with a dash of cloves and a long, smooth, aftertaste. It reminds me of christmas). And a 2011 Gran Pinot Noir from Pulenta wines (half way between a torrontés and a malbec, fresh and lighter bodied, with a hint of sweet chocolate).

Achaval Ferrer - Calle Cobos 2601, Pedriel (5509)

Taste buds prepped it’s time to explore the terroir. Achaval Ferrer, located in Luján de Cuyo, 45 minutes drive from Mendoza through stretching vineyards, is, in relative terms, the new boy on the block. The winery started in 1998 and has quickly established itself as a leader in the new wave of Argentinean winemakers, under the guide of winemakers Roberto Cipresso and Santiago Achaval.

Oozing elegance and sophistication they specialise in 4 distinct Malbecs and their Quimera blend, (a blend of malbec, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and a splash of petit verdon) all of which have received high ratings from renowned wine connoisseur; Robert Parker.

“To us the plant is 90% of the wine, the age of the vines are key to the process”, Felipe, my guide tells me. (They only use old vines, 90-114 years old, the older the vines, the more terroir you taste).

“We cut our clusters a lot (up to 80%, the norm is no more than 50%) in order to create wines that have more depth and a unique expression, malbec needs to suffer, to stress, to feel the heat, the cold. It has to work hard to pull the nutrients and water from the ground, so you can taste the roughness of the soil, the terroir, the clay”.

Wines to try: Quimera 2009, Finca Mirador 2011, Finca Altimira 2009.

Nieto Senetiner - Guardia Vieja, Mendoza

A short drive from Achaval Ferrer in Vistalba, Nieto Senetiner is a picturesque colonial vineyard, and one of the oldest and most well known wineries in Argentina.

Established by Italian immigrants in 1888, they now produce an immense 16 million litres of wine a year, and in the past 10 years have turned their attention to creating some interesting sparkling wines, made from pinot noir, (a grape usually reserved for reds, which gives their bubbly a slightly sweeter and less stringent taste than some of the more traditional chardonnay bubbly,) and it's one of the only vineyards where you can taste a malbec rosé, made in acacia barrels.

It’s also not too shabby a place to stop and enjoy a lunchtime assado or some traditional empanadas Argentinas along with your favourite wine, made by their excellent in house chef, and served on the veranda of the elegant Villa Blanca, overlooking the grounds of their ripening vineyards.

Wines to try: Brut Nature Extra Brut, Gran Cuve Extra Brut, Malbec Rose.

Carmelo Patti - San Martin 2614, Mayor Drummond, Lujan de Cuyo

Google "Carmelo Patti" and the word legend appears a lot, and as soon as you arrive at his charming little bodega, located in the garage of his home in the small town of Mayor Drummond you’ll see why. Carmelo’s passion for this work is infectious, and his reputation as an expert winemaker is second to none.

“Hola Como Estas, entrar por favour!” He shouts with a big smile. Carmelo personally greets and shows all his guests around himself, and is as well known for his hospitality and love of life as his excellent wines.

He is a traditional grass-roots, old school, winemaker, everything is natural, there is no management of temperature or humidity. "There’s no need to change the temperature in my garage, everything is perfecto!” he says, and once you taste his wines, you’ll tend to agree.

His converted garage has 6 concrete fermenting tanks and 2 manual presses, paint is pealing off the walls, there is wine on the floor, and it’s cluttered with hoses and barrels. It’s untidy, simple, and like his wines, authentically perfect.

Wines to try: Cabernet Sauvignon, Gran Assemblage, Malbec

Diamandes - Clodomiro Silva S/N Vista Flores Tunuyan

The newly built Diamandes (a pun on the words Diamond and Andes) winery would make the perfect setting for the next bond villain’s hideout. “Designed with a minimalist concept” by architects Mario Yanzón and Eliana and set a stones throw from the Andean mountains in Valle de Uco, it’s a place where attention to detail is everything.

From the steel diamond sculpture that points to the centre of winery overlooking the King Arthuresque round table in the heart of the bottling room, and lights that project diamonds on the floor of the sparkling steel fermenting tanks, a tour through this modern, gadget filled, wine fortress won't fail to impress.

Run by the French Bonnie family the focus is to produce “Argentinian wines with a french touch”. With a philosophy to build something from the ground up, the first vines were planted in 1999. This is a fresh, a high-tech, modern bodega, with an eye on the future, though they are already producing wines of note, with their Gran Reserve 2008 Vintage receiving 92 points from Robert Parker.

Wine to try: Viernes, Gran Reserve 2008 Vintage, Perlita Malbec 2010.

Gimenez Rilli

1200 metres above sea level and 12 mins drive west of Diamandes is the boutique bodega of the Gimenez Riili brothers, who come from 3 generations of Mendoza winemakers, dating back to when their grandfather planted the first family vineyard in 1945.

Pablo (Gimenez Rilli), who is also one half of the Vines of Mendoza project tells me; “My family started out producing table wines but when the crash of 1980 came we moved from Maipu to Valle de Uco and began making premium, low yield, high concentration wines… We have young vines but because of the terroir and the altitude we get great complexity from them”.

This is a quintessentially classic bodega, set amongst barren, rocky vineyards overlooking the Valle de Uco. Jeff Lewis, my personal guide takes me on an encyclopaedic journey through some of their finest grapes, trying them in three stages; in tank fermentation (they harvested 2 weeks ago) and barrelled, before retiring to the veranda to sample the finished product. “It’s like a person, you can meet them at one stage in their life, but if you meet them at three different stages of their life you understand them much better”. How very true.

Wines to try: Syrah, Cabernet Franc (straight from the Barrel) Malbec 2011, Cabernet Franc 2012.