Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, ann_totusek.

Food Wednesday

At Last, Sweet Blackberries Stay the Course
By DAVID KARP

PASTRY chefs have always known what to do with blackberries — add lots of sugar. During their brief summertime appearances at farm stands and local markets, these native fruits have been prized for making jams and cobblers. But if you managed to find them fresh at a supermarket and popped one in your mouth, it was usually tart and bitter.

Lately, though, blackberries have joined strawberries, raspberries and blueberries as snackable fruits available in groceries year-round, because growers have been planting varieties sweet enough to eat plain even when picked early to withstand shipping cross-country.

Annual sales of fresh blackberries have tripled in the last five years, to about 60 million pounds, according to figures from the government and marketers. Interest in the health benefits of dark fruit with antioxidants has boosted demand, the new varieties have been grown more widely, and off-season imports have surged.

Sales could grow further as advances in breeding open more areas to cultivation, extend the season and make available exquisite varieties from the West Coast. More

Appraising the Mâconnais in a Great Year
By ERIC ASIMOV

PRICE-CONSCIOUS consumers are understandably a little shy of the 2005 Burgundy vintage. Praise has been nearly unanimous, and prices have shot skyward.

While most attention has been on the reds, the whites are great, too. Still, not everybody will cheerfully drop $50 on a village-level Meursault, much less $150 for a good Corton-Charlemagne.

As ever, the Mâconnais region rides to the rescue. For decades, the Mâconnais, south of the Côte d’Or but part of Burgundy, has overflowed with inexpensive whites. The best were tangy, refreshing and satisfying. The problem was that few achieved even this modest level.

But for the last decade or two Mâconnais wines have been improving significantly. Dynamic young producers who couldn’t afford more desirable vineyard sites in Burgundy flocked to the Mâconnais, where they saw untapped potential at a reasonable price. Instead of viewing grapes as a cash crop to be transformed into wine at the local cooperative, they approach grape growing as seriously as the best Burgundian vignerons.

Even some of the most renowned Burgundy producers, like Comtes Lafon of Meursault and Anne-Claude Leflaive of Domaine Leflaive, unable to expand in the Côte d’Or, bought land in the Mâconnais. They recognized that the region was full of distinctive terroirs with much to offer. More