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  • From: "Roger Doiron" <roger@kitchengardeners.org>
  • To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] currants...and what to do with them
  • Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 13:49:05 -0400

Hello,
 
I'm new to this list and am looking forward to participating.  For those of you who are interested in currants, I'd like to point out a couple of resources for you.  Last week, there was an article in the NY Times about how some NY farmers are looking to turn currants into a cash crop that could keep some farms on the landscape and keep farmers out of bankruptcy court. 
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/nyregion/16CURR.html?ex=1067394629&ei=1&en=bf5d73f4f00fa488    Alternatively, you can read the article without the pictures below.
 
For a more international flavor, you can check out the page we've recently posted at the Kitchen Gardeners International site about a Frenchman who makes wine from his home-grown currants.  See: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/bernard.html
 
Enjoy!
 
Roger Doiron
Scarborough, ME
Zone 5b
 
---------------
 
New York's Own Idaho Potato?

October 16, 2003
 By LISA W. FODERARO

CLINTON, N.Y. - Greg Quinn thinks he has seen the future,
and it is black currants. Millions of them, actually.
Enough to save the ailing agricultural industry in New York
State, enough to improve the health of the entire nation,
enough to give weekend homeowners in the Hudson Valley a
tax break and a sense of purpose.

It's a tall order, but Mr. Quinn, a 53-year-old gentleman
farmer here in the fertile hills of Dutchess County,
believes the black currant is up to the task. "It's this
miraculous little berry that nobody knows about," he said
from his 1835 farmhouse, after pouring black currant juice
into a long-stemmed glass.

The reason black currants never made it to the big time of
the berry world here, as they did in Europe, is simple:
they were banned nationwide for most of the last century.
New York State, where black currants once thrived, declared
them a public nuisance in 1911 and outlawed their planting,
cultivation, sale and transport.

The concern was the role of black currants in carrying a
disease that afflicted white pine trees, called white pine
blister rust. But once Mr. Quinn got it into his head that
black currants were destined to grow on his 135 acres, the
ban was all but history.

"He said, `We've got to do something,' " recalled J.
Stephen Casscles, counsel to State Senator William J.
Larkin Jr., who wrote the bill that overturned the ban last
summer. "He came up here, and he would talk to anybody who
would listen."

In fact, others were already taking a second look at this
curiously forbidden fruit in recent years. There were
academics at Cornell University who were questioning the
scientific foundation of the original ban (it turned out to
be more than shaky) and fruit growers who were looking into
alternative crops.

But everyone agrees that Mr. Quinn's singular enthusiasm
for the black currant kept the pressure on. Now, through
his company, Au Currant Enterprises, he is trying to
interest farmers and consumers alike in the fruit.

"This plan would get me expelled from every business school
in the country," he said, ambling alongside rows of young
black currant bushes on his property, their small green
leaves edged in crimson. "I have no supply and no market.
What an idea!"

But he has already identified 65 food products that use
black currants, including juice, jams, candy, yogurt, ice
cream and cereal, products he discovered while attending
international currant conferences in Finland and Poland in
the last two years. He even has a working name for a
carbonated black currant drink aimed at teenagers: Electric
Currant.

Mr. Quinn is particularly captivated by the health benefits
of certain black currant varieties, with twice the
antioxidant power of blueberries, four times the vitamin C
content of oranges and twice the potassium content of
bananas.

Last summer he made his own black currant juice - a subtly
sweet, deep purple nectar - using some of the 700 hundred
pounds of currants he harvested in July, after both houses
of the State Legislature voted unanimously to allow black
currant production.

A onetime restaurateur who worked for a food importer, Mr.
Quinn is compiling 300 recipes that call for currants,
including venison with black currants and summer pudding
with red currants. (Through the decades, red currants,
which were not considered a culprit in white pine blister
rust, could be grown in certain districts in New York.)

Mr. Quinn has also registered the name New York Currants
with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, hoping
that currants will do for New York what potatoes did for
Idaho.

And he helped obtain $80,000 in grant money for the Cornell
Cooperative Extension to commission a study of the market
potential for black currants. The study, conducted by an
independent agricultural consulting firm, the Hale Group,
predicted that currants could become a $20 million business
in New York State and a $1 billion business nationwide.

"That's huge," said Mr. Quinn, his bushy eyebrows rising at
the thought. "It validated what I always believed from a
marketing standpoint: that this little berry had too much
going for it."

On the supply end, Mr. Quinn is busy, as well. In early
October, he planted 2,000 cuttings with the intention of
selling the plants to farmers and homeowners next year. He
has also set up a management company able to handle all
aspects of currant cultivation for owners of second homes
interested in reaping an agricultural tax break, along with
a few juicy berries.

"I'm talking to six people in Dutchess - wealthy weekenders
and retirees relocating here," Mr. Quinn said. "Virtually
everybody who comes up here would like to do something with
their land."

That is how it began for him. Tired of the bustle of
Manhattan, Mr. Quinn and his fiancée, Carolyn Blackwood,
bought Walnut Grove Farm four years ago. At first, Mr.
Quinn was content to savor the rural life: the undulating
fields and thickets of pine (where, yes, black currants
grew wild), the spring-fed pond out back and the barn with
the three bulls the couple inherited.

Then he got restless. "I wanted to get my hands in the
dirt, to create something," he said.

Soon after, he was visiting a local winery when the
conversation turned to black currants. The vintner was
lamenting that he had to import black currants from Canada
to make cassis, a liqueur. "He said he wished he had a
local supplier," Mr. Quinn recalled. "I said, `Ding!' "

The challenge of the ban seemed to fuel his interest,
allowing him to bring his marketing, culinary and
horticultural skills to the fray. Mr. Quinn once worked as
a landscape designer and appeared on Fox television as the
"Garden Guy." He still contributes to a weekly radio
program on gardening, and he teaches courses at the New
York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

Mr. Quinn teamed up with Steven A. McKay, an educator with
Cornell Cooperative Extension in Columbia County and an
expert on currants and gooseberries. Mr. McKay had himself
been examining the ban and talking to state officials about
whether it still made sense.

In the early 20th century, it was recognized that black
currants served as an intermediate host of blister rust and
were thought to pose a serious threat to white pines. But
over the years, research showed that the disease occurred
primarily when the currants were near the trees and also in
moist areas.

"It was a lack of understanding of the life cycle and the
ecology of the disease," Mr. McKay said of the earlier
scientific data. "We've now developed better ways to grow
currants to avoid spread of the disease."

Since the 1970's, after new black currant varieties that
were immune to the disease became available, state
officials did not pursue farmers who were growing resistant
varieties within special "fruiting districts," Mr. McKay
said. Only a handful of farmers grew the resistant
varieties, though, in part because the berries had been
forgotten after years of banishment.

The new law allows immune varieties to be grown anywhere in
the state. It also permits the production of varieties
susceptible to the disease - varieties prized for their
flavor and color - in designated areas. Restrictions on
black currant production have been lifted across most of
the United States, Mr. McKay said.

Like cranberries, black currants, which are the size of
peas, are generally not eaten raw. "It's puckering," Mr.
Quinn said, in his one concession to imperfection. "I
actually like the taste of it, but maybe 3 percent of the
population will."

In Mr. Quinn's estimation, if currants ascend to
agricultural greatness, and profitability, they could even
help check the housing sprawl that is lapping closer and
closer to his Hudson Valley hideaway. "You never bulldoze
100 houses and make a farm," he said. "You bulldoze a farm
and make 100 houses. When it's gone, it's gone forever."


  • [NAFEX] currants...and what to do with them, Roger Doiron, 10/20/2003

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