Locovorism is sometimes seen as in part a reaction to globalization. But when it comes to the core sense of globalization – namely widespread trade, and availability in one part of the world of products produced in another – I have to say that I am all for it in matters of both food and wine. If I were limited to wines grown in my neighborhood, there would be worse places to live than Cincinnati – places that never dreamed of and can never hope to grow the quality of wine that until a few years ago Kinkead Ridge was raising a little way up the Ohio River or that the Skeleton Root is vinifying in Over-the-Rhine. But, in the long run, I wouldn’t be happy confined to wines from my own neighborhood even if I lived in Bordeaux, Beaune, or Napa, any more than I’d be happy in Cincinnati without citrus, spices, tea, rice, or numerous other foodstuffs that come from afar. Ever since the first recipe books were written and the earliest sense of food culture was recorded back in Roman times, globalization has been a fact of human eating, at least for those who could afford the luxury of choice and of eating well.
Don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about buying local produce. But I don’t deem it a betrayal of that principle to spice one’s table with delicacies from afar, and I happen to prefer drinking wines that for the most part travelled a long distance to reach my table. That said, if you’ll permit me to enumerate some of the points in favor of locally-raised fruits, vegetables, and meats, I think you’ll see that many similar considerations apply to the French, Austrian, Italian, German, West Coast US. or other sorts of wine that I personally favor at my table and would commend to your attention. I’ll then highlight an important and I think overlooked way in which buying locally can influence our comportment to all manner of comestibles.
One reason to buy locally is for the sake of freshness. Most modern wine is relatively stable in comparison with fresh produce or most other foodstuffs. Still, there are analogies to freshness in the vinous realm. Some wines are meant to be drunk young, but more importantly some are simply designed to showcase characteristics of fresh fruit from whatever grape varieties and place inform them. And this sort of freshness can be spoilt by improper handling of the grape, the must, the young wine, or the wine in bottle. The availability of wines that have not been overly processed (I mean by cold stabilization, heat-treatment, excessively filtration and the like) and not overly laced with preservatives (other than a minimal measure of sulfur-dioxide) yet taste fresh owes a great deal to the pioneering efforts of U.S. specialist wine importers who, beginning with Kermit Lynch in the late 1970s, not only supported growers abroad in their minimalism, but also raised public consciousness about the need to ship in refrigerated containers and store under temperature- and humidity-control.
Freshness, of course, has ramifications for both flavor and nutritional value, two more reasons for favoring local produce. The health and nutritional benefits of wine have been much discussed, and it may be that some of the former are functions only of alcohol content. But wine is still in essence a foodstuff, and if you take a look at the chemical differences among wines, I think it’s safe to hazard the guess that any tonic effects will vary enormously from wine to wine. What counts – from the standpoint of wine quality – as healthfully high levels of various anti-oxidant polyphenols or tannins; ripe (tartaric) acidity; and, in general, high dry extract (any “stuff” in a wine other than sugar, water, and alcohol), probably also counts as healthy for a human body. In a way, that’s just a guess on my part. But, on the other hand, I know very well what sorts of wines act as a tonic on me, and just like recommendations of taste, I find that my readers and audiences generally share many of the same preferences.
In matters of taste, it cannot be emphasized often or strongly enough to someone who spends his or her food-shopping hours entirely in an American grocery store that proper-tasting examples of a great many common foods simply do not exist there. For example, when was the last time (that would be “last decade”) when you sampled a grocery store strawberry or a tomato that tasted like a strawberry or a tomato? Very recently, garlic that tastes like garlic has also practically disappeared from grocery shelves; and there are bound to be further such casualties, despite the increasing sophistication about food and its sources prevailing among a small but growing subset of American consumers. I’ll have more to say about this momentarily under a slightly different aspect. But the analogies to wine are strong.
The official appellation contrôlée on a French wine (or its equivalent in other countries) not only doesn’t protect you from poor viticulture or slipshod winemaking, it also doesn’t guarantee that the wine will even taste distinctive, much less distinctively of the place and grape varieties from which it issued. It’s a notorious blemish on the French authorities that some of the most talented winemakers are refused the appellation contrôlée, most often for “lack of typicité,” while bland mediocrities sail through. The genuine tastes of ripe fruit from a given grape variety – for example the glorious floral perfume that can mark wines from Merlot or Cabernet Franc – are often exhibited by only a small percentage of the wines from these varieties made anywhere in the world. The French, incidentally, have also legally defined the baguette (and set its maximum price), and that has played a role in the decline of eating habits there nation-wide, as what looks like and is called a “baguette” gets consumed the same as in “the old days,” even though the substance in question has more in common with saw dust or American frozen dinner rolls than it does with an honest baguette.
We also buy locally to enjoy a sense of connection to – and mutual trust and support of – small-farming families whom we either personally meet at the market or their farms, or whose bona fides have been vouchsafed us by friends in the food community and whose stories give us a sense of personal identification with their produce. The same in fact is true about a significant percentage of the really excellent wines you can buy in the U.S. today, except that in most cases the transmission of trust and human-interest travels long-distance. Pick almost any growing region of the world – though certainly, there are a few big exceptions, like Bordeaux or Napa – and you’ll find that the most interesting and tastiest wines issue in limited batches from relatively small family growers who take a farmer’s and an artisan’s pride in what they produce. It’s up to merchants and journalists to transmit their stories and connect the dots to show why it is that how and where they work results in certain inimitable flavors and other virtues.
Unfortunately, this work of communication is at risk today. I’m not asking you to come up and hug me, but I can recommend some wine and food journals and some institutions (including educational ;- ) that you should support. And if you know a wine merchant who actually spends time with the growers whose wines he or she sells (and, thankfully, there are a few such in Cincinnati) you should embrace that merchant’s business model by supporting him or her (or – if they’re an importer or distributor – their retail customers), as opposed to buying wine as a commodity on the basis of price. Like claims made for the healthfulness of the local produce we consume, claims about wine, too, must rely on trust. We all know how little the official “organic certification” tells us about responsibility, sustainability, taste, or family farm origins. We don’t ask the farmers we buy from locally to prove to us their bona fides. Either we have been there and seen how they farm, or more likely someone we trust has done the necessary research. Similarly, claims on a wine label for organic origin – at least, in English, and to the extent U.S. labeling laws are followed – are rare indeed. And if you’re concerned to drink wines that are low in sulfites, do not expect the so-called sulfite warning mandated by our government to help you locate them.
Commodity v. Contingency
I think there is another very important reason to buy produce locally that may get overlooked, and I am going to argue that its implications are profound for wine as well. To make my point I’d ask you first to do a thought experiment. Suppose there were no quantifiable or intrinsic difference between the produce of local farmers sold in season and, let’s say, the strawberry or tomato proffered in the grocery store in winter. We might well still prefer to keep our hard-earned money in our communities and support local farming for its stewardship of the land. But beyond that, some of us would still have preferences – call them sentimental, if you like – for savoring fruits “in season.” To quote The Bard: “How many things by season seasoned are, to their right praise and true perfection!” In fact, we mark the passing of the seasons by such landmarks as the first green garlics, tender young asparagus, or ramps in spring; the peaches, sweet corn and tomatoes of summer; and the dark greens, hard-shelled squash and root vegetables of autumn. (And there are seasons to fishing, hunting, and butchering as well, for those of you who are not vegetarians to observe.) Some of us – taste aside – would still no more think of eating certain fruits “out of season” than we would think of celebrating Thanksgiving in the springtime or Christmas in July.
Some years there simply is no season for a given fruit or vegetable. One’s lucky if peaches ripen to anything like their full potential one year out of three. In Cincinnati – at least, until very recent times – it used to sometimes be a nail-biter whether the sun and heat would hold out long enough to properly ripen heirloom tomatoes. (Which in no way contradicts the fact that many of us consider our region a center for the revival of a “Tomato Culture” that flourished a century and more ago among family gardeners and farmers in the U.S. On the contrary, just as with wine, the best flavors often go hand in hand with marginal conditions and the risk some years of failure.) Sometimes, we wait all year for a favorite food – perhaps from a favorite farmer – only to learn that an ostensibly lower life form has devoured it first; or that it got hailed-on, frosted-out, blighted, rotted, or failed to fully ripen.
Here is what’s critical about this seasonal comportment to produce and what it has to tell us about wine. It represents a limitation we happily and voluntarily place on choice. From the standpoint of classical economic theory, it’s irrational. But asking us why we do it is a little like asking us why we do not celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving two or three times every year, if it’s such fun. The answer, in a few words, is because it’s special and we want to keep it that way. What’s more, savoring foods in season and with the sense of anticipation this brings, actually enhances their taste and our appreciation. By limiting our choices, subjecting ourselves to seasonal variation, we sharpen our awareness of the edible world’s contingency and our appreciation of its gifts.
Most modern consumers, though, are baffled by this notion. “Why limit myself if the world comes to me, and I can eat whatever I want year ‘round?” That’s certainly what the customer is thinking who enters a modern market, recipe in tow, safe in the knowledge its ingredients are at hand. “Ingredient”: that word reveals a metaphysical truth. We have here the comportment towards one’s food as a commodity (just as a recipe implies that the creative, sometimes fraught act of cooking is replicable). I purchase this because it’s a tomato, not because these particular tomatoes spoke to me in some way. One of my favorite local farmers goes into a tizzy of frustration every year because, for all of the wonderful herbs she offers, half of the folks at market come up to her, heedless of season, and ask for basil. “It doesn’t grow this time of year!” she tells them in exasperation. (And they in turn, I’m sure, think “Is this woman crazy, of course it does, I buy it in plastic boxes in the supermarket!”) But her attempts to interest such a shopper in herbs that are in season – some of which might be unfamiliar – are usually futile. For some of us, by contrast, the very notion of a shopping list comes into inevitable conflict with what makes a trip to market fun.
The worlds of food and wine offer many such contrasts of self-imposed restrictions and contingency on the one hand with rapidly growing choice and commoditization on the other. The choice to “grow organic;” to grow low-vigor and low-yielding old varieties of fruits or vegetables; or to “roll back the clock” and follow traditional methods – all are cases in point. Why limit myself? The answer presents a fundamental paradox of freedom and restraint. That paragon of creativity and freedom, the artist, must exercise self-restraint to have a medium – whether of marble, oil paint, acetate, meter, mode, or tone row. In sports, imposing rules is not part of the game: it’s what you need to do to even have a game, and so be free to play. Adrift in a sea of limitless possibility, no self-expression can take place. True savor and deliciousness must be rooted in restraint as well – even if only the self-restraint called for in setting aside specific mealtimes, or in not over-indulging. Vintners and cooks alike are playing a game of sorts, and practicing an art as well. Their options today – whether in sources of produce, or wine “treatments” – are dramatically increased. But too much choice, and too few limitations, can stifle creativity and play.
When it comes to wine, restricting consumption to only certain seasons is less common or traditional than with other produce. But commoditization happens whenever we even sort a wine by type. Instead of asking for “a Chablis,” or “a Merlot,” – as if these names were really any guarantee of a certain quality or flavor character – it makes more sense if consumers sample what their merchant or a knowledgeable wine steward – or, of course, a grower – suggests might be exciting, or synergistic with the dish in question. The “drink-with” recommendations that accompany a shopper’s recipe are couched almost without exception in terms of grape or appellation. How often, though, can we predict whatever chemical combination or catalyst will succeed in synergistically piquing our awareness of and pleasure in a given dish and wine? One has to explore a myriad of contingencies to find a memorable match. The catalyst might lie in vintage character, in wine making, in the microclimate, or in some hard to replicate quirk. And speaking of vintage character – that too is charming in and of itself: vintages don’t just come in two varieties, “good” and “bad.” Yes, sometimes we consumers suffer a poor crop or the absence of a favorite wine; but we’re lucky: it hits the grower in the pocketbook, and even many a celebrated one is only a couple of consecutive crop failures away from foreclosure.
It’s become fashionable among vintners to claim one’s wine is “minimally manipulated” or “made as naturally as possible.” Manipulation is in the eye (or nose, or judgment) of the beholder, and the bounds of “nature” are not well-defined. Certainly, though, a vintner can consciously refrain from employing particular techniques or tools. Paradoxically, such self-limitation often enhances contingency and vinous variation, in short, renders a less-limited range of results. If you select or sort your fruit less rigorously, the results will to a greater degree reflect the unique mix of berries in a given vintage or parcel. If you refrain from using cultured yeasts, the vicissitudes of fermentation will render a more diverse, perhaps capricious, array of aromas and perhaps of sweetness. If – in a cooler clime – you refrain from chaptalizing, the resultant wines will vary over a wider range of alcohol. Choose not to filter your wine and it is hostage to microbial metabolic processes and bottle variation you cannot predict. Similar considerations apply to foodstuffs generally, even if only some of them are inherently subject to specialized processing; to fermentation; or – like cheese, meat, oysters, or wine – to what the French call élevage.
Each winegrower or chef – and, more importantly, each of us as consumers – will strike a shifting balance between contingency and commodity. Few of us want to do without the nutritional and flavor advantages conveyed year-round by citrus fruits. And some food stuffs – notably grains and spices – keep in the same form year-round and are classed by most of us as staples. Furthermore, we might decide to can or freeze, dry or ferment all manner of produce, recognizing that the result will not be the same as fresh, but might have a deliciousness all their own. To do this takes the edge off of contingency, seasonality, and anticipation. But not entirely, I think. When Greg Brown sings the delicious “Canned Goods,” with its refrain “Taste a little of the summer, grandma put it up in jars,” he has in mind the distinctive anticipation and joy that can be had on a winter’s eve in Iowa. And the jars in question captured the personality of a single summer’s vegetables from a particular place, not merely “some carrots” or “some tomatoes.”
Just where one chooses to settle between the poles of contingency and commodity will define one’s ethos as much as does one’s taste. Some perceive a moral dimension to choices that favor either contingency or commodity, and those of us who practice locovorism clearly come down on the side of contingency. It’s up to us to convince our fellow consumers that thinking of foodstuffs as commodities deprives us of excitement in the kitchen, in our glasses, and around our dinner tables.