Latest news with #growers
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
Four robust but elegant wines from Sicily
With its warm sunny climate, ripening grapes in Sicily was never a problem. Finding buyers willing to pay a premium for quality grapes was more challenging. Traditionally, Sicilian wines were destined for bulk blends, vermouths and cheap fortified wines. But times are changing; Sicily now produces some excellent wines – both red and white – using its range of fascinating indigenous grape varieties. Nero d'Avola is the most widely planted grape variety in Sicily, itself one of the largest wine regions of Italy. It thrives in the hot sunny weather, producing a variety of wine styles. At a time when we all wanted bigger, more powerful wines, growers of Nero d'Avola in Sicily were more than happy to oblige. Most of the wines were 14 per cent abv (alcohol by volume), usually more, with masses of ultra-ripe dark fruits, plenty of oak and layers of tannin too. These robust wines are perfect with winter stews or summer barbecues. However, they can also be overwhelming and lacking in subtlety. More recently, growers fortunate to have vineyards close to the cooling sea breezes or at altitude have been able to produce lighter, more elegant wines that still have plenty of fruit and concentration. Some even produce rosé and sparkling rosé wines with very attractive, delicate fruits. The best, most elegant wines seem to come from the limestone soils of the Noto Valley in south-eastern Sicily. One grower I talked to argued that the original home of Nero was not Avola, but neighbouring Pachino. Today, four lighter wines are made from Nero Avola. Look out too for Donnafugatta, Fuedi di Arancia and Tenuta la Favola. READ MORE Nero d'Avola 2024, Sicilia,€8.99 Light stewed plum fruits with a rounded tannin-free finish. Pizza, pasta or polpette. From Aldi Mandrarossa Nero d'Avola Costadune 13.5%, €17-€18 Medium-bodied with light tannins, plums, dark cherries and a touch of spice. Perfect with pizza, sfincione and tomato-based pasta dishes. From 1601 Kinsale; Redmonds, D6; Sweeney's, D3; Baggot Street Wines; Blackrock Cellar; Fire Castle, Kildare. Zisola Noto Rosso 2021 13%, €28 Medium-bodied with ripe dark fruits, a touch of oak, and a refreshing note. Try it with pasta alla norma. McHughs off-licence, D5; Avoca; BaRossa Wines, D4; Delgany Cottage; Pinto Wines, D9; Sweeneys D3 Occhipinti Siccagno 2021, IGT Terre Siciliano, Organic 13%,€48.00 Fresh, smooth, pure red fruits with a dusting of earthy tannins. A very seductive wine from one of the legendary producers of the region. Drink alongside firm cheeses, arancini, or caponata. From Barossa Wines, D4; Redmonds, D6; Le L'Atitude51 Shop, Cork.
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bridgestone Halts Liberia Rubber Purchases After Prices Raised
Firestone Liberia LLC has halted rubber purchases from farmers after the government raised the price paid to growers. The Liberia National Rubber Pricing Committee set farmers' pay at $574.06 per ton of cup lumps or slabs on Tuesday, 15.3% higher than the rate Firestone currently pays. It was the committee's first decision since the government constituted it last month to review prices every four weeks.
BBC News
03-06-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
UK weather: Thunderstorms and heavy rain mark end of record-breaking spring
After the warmest and sunniest spring on record for the United Kingdom, meteorological summer has started rather wet, windy and heavy rain on Tuesday morning gradually clears away, the rest of the week is looking distinctly unsettled with showers and thunderstorms for many of will also be around 2 to 4C below average for early June so it will feel very different to conditions we had throughout will at least be welcomed by gardeners and growers after a long dry period in May. Why has the weather turned wet? The reason for the change in weather is down to the jet stream - a fast wind high in the atmosphere - shifting position and alternating the pressure pattern in the weather associated with high pressure has been replaced by areas of low pressure - unsettled weather - moving in from the and windy weather on Tuesday morning makes way for sunny spells and showers, which will be most frequent in northern and western parts of the showers are being blown in on a brisk westerly wind. There's also the possibility of a few of the showers being heavy and thundery at Wednesday night and Thursday morning, there could be more persistent thundery rain across England and temperatures will range from 10C in northern Scotland to 19C in south-east average in June is around 15 to 20C so it will be cooler than average for many of us. Any sign of sunny weather? The outlook into the weekend remains rather mixed with further sunny spells and beyond, if you are checking for your local weather on the BBC Weather app, you might see the shower symbol featuring quite a Atlantic influence and low pressure is likely to continue into next week with the wettest weather towards northern and western areas of the UK. Some brighter and slightly warmer conditions are more likely around mid-week, especially in southern may start to increase by mid-week too. As for the rest of summer, in their latest three monthly outlook, the Met Office suggest that summer overall will be hotter with a greater chance of heatwaves.
SBS Australia
16-05-2025
- General
- SBS Australia
Home-grown coffee is Tibor's passion, precision-roasted by flamethrower
It's one reason local growers are busy planting, as ................ explains. That's the sound of a gas-powered flame thrower firing into a rotating concrete mixer. But it's not concrete that's going round and round - it's coffee beans. Born in Yugoslavia, Hungarian migrant Tibor Pinci has developed his own unique way of roasting green coffee beans at his small plantation in the hills above Coffs Harbour in Northern New South Wales. He knows from the sound of the beans popping exactly when to stop - a few seconds too long, and the batch is spoiled. 'We call it an open roaster. So that one, tumbling it, and of course you go with the flame in there, and that involves a lot of precision, because it can be just overdone or underdone in a few seconds.' There are around 500 coffee growers in Australia, many of them in northern New South Wales and Queensland. As global coffee prices soar, small plantations like Tibor's are multiplying. He describes his as a 'hobby farm', but he's still producing 500 kilograms of roasted coffee a year. A baker by profession, his first attempts at growing coffee plants weren't encouraging when they lived in Sydney. 'So coffee starts growing, comes winter, they die. So it happened about three times before I find out they don't like frost. So in the end, I got about a thousand little seedlings, and I brought it up here to Coffs, because my wife is from Coffs, so my mother-in-law is here. And I said, just look after them, water them once a week, and should be all right. So months later, we came back, and the trees were like a couple of foot tall.' The process is quite laborious. 'I handpick all my cherries when they're beautifully ripe. We dry the cherries as well, because we're making the coffee berry tea out of that one, then the beans get dried and then before I roast, they get hulled it means the white shell comes off to get the green bean and then the green bean can be roasted.' Tibor's customers say they love the full aroma of his coffee with no bitterness. At Southern Cross University in Lismore, researchers are trying to figure that out. Professor Tobias Kretzschmar says coffee growing is not new to Australia 'As far as I'm aware, coffee arrived pretty much with the first fleet and there's been attempts since to establish an industry and it's been thriving in the last 20 to 30 years.' While producers are happy with the quality of the coffee, he says to make the industry more sustainable, they're researching other varieties of coffee bush more suited to Australia. 'The problem they're having is they put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment. Keeps growing. It's one of the older varieties that's not dwarfing like the new ones, meaning every couple of years the growers will have to prune it. The tree is stressed, won't produce the next year. So a lot of work and yield losses affiliated with the old varieties.' He says a key part of their research is finding out what makes Australian coffee different. That's where his colleague, Dr Ben Liu comes in: 'So we're doing analysis on coffee, trying to understand the flavour and the taste of coffee. At the same time, trying to actually create a chemical fingerprint for our coffee. That means when you have a good cup of coffee or bad cup of coffee, you don't know what's going on there. If you can do a chemical analysis, you know what's in there. So next time you can keep producing a good cup of coffee.' He says coffees grown in Queensland and New South Wales have their own individual flavour characteristics. 'Can be a big difference from farm to farm. Just for example, some of the farms produce coffee. in the far north of Queensland. They produce more traditional coffee flavour, like a cocoa and nutty, those coffee flavour. Here, in the subtropical area in northern New South Wales or southeast Queensland, our coffee tend to actually smell and taste more like fruity and juicy.' At Tibor's farm, nothing is wasted. He sells roasted beans online and at the Sunday morning market in Coffs Harbour. And he makes tea from the dried berries, and flour from the hull of the beans, all full of healthy antioxidants. As for the flavour - Tibor simply knows what his customers like: 'The coffee what we have here is just completely different from the ordinary big roasters, and that probably involves our climate, firstly, that we've got an amazing climate, gives a beautiful bean and of course the precision roasting with the little flame thrower. '
Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Chelsea Flower Show 2025: 23 gardens to look out for
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is upon us again — starting on Tuesday, and kicking off the British summer. We've had a fabulous spring and growers will worry (they always worry — it shows how much they care) that perhaps it's been too fabulous and their mollycoddled plants will have finished flowering come showtime. These are, however, horticultural magicians so they will no doubt have a plan B (not to mention C, D and E) up their soil-spattered sleeves. The number of large show gardens is down this year, with just six in total. Part of the brief these days is that the gardens should have a legacy and live on after the show, so most are transported and adapted to a new home. That's
