An urban bee keeper,in Red Hook section of Brooklyn has found her bees have a strange problem. The forager bees were arriving back at the hive with mysterious stripes of color.
Where there should have been a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade of Robitussin.
A fellow beekeeper sent samples of the red substance that the bees were producing to an apiculturalist who works for New York State, and that expert, acting as a kind of forensic foodie, found the samples riddled with Red Dye No. 40, the same dye used in the maraschino cherry juice.
What a strange example of Terroir, the taste of place, than the red overly sweet metallic tasting honey given by the bees that frequent the vats at the nearby maraschino cherry processing plant nearby.
Terroir, the “taste of place.” Originally used by the French to describe the way that local conditions such as soil and climate manifest themselves in the flavor of a wine, the terroir concept has since been extended to discussions of many foods that are dependent on place for their uniqueness. France long ago mapped its terroir into a network of regions that produce distinctive wines, cheeses, meats, and other foods, and other nations in Europe followed suit. America is finally catching up, and terroir is a fast-rising buzzword in the food world.
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