Bryce Lundberg is elated, which is saying a lot for a California farmer these days.
"Hop on in," he says, wading into eight acres of ragged stalks, their seed tassels turning russet in the desert sun.
Lundberg, 54, soon is chest-high in quinoa, a crop that is thriving in an unexpected place: on a patch of mediocre soil that lies below sea level in the scorching-hot Imperial Valley in California, more than 4,500 miles removed and some 10,000 feet down in elevation from its native range in South America's Andes Mountains.
If the harvest proves profitable here, California could dominate yet another niche crop, as the grain-like seed graduates from health-craze fad to a popular ingredient in energy bars, cereals and even drinks. Acreage dedicated to quinoa may reach into the thousands in the next two years in California, a state that already is a hub for quinoa imported from South America. That's about where kale was in 2007 before it took off.
Grows on marginal land, is good for you, and tastes good. What's not to like?
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Quinoa Whiskey? Modified Crop List Spurs Distilleries To Try Alternative Grains
By definition, whiskey is a grain spirit. And until now, that "grain" has been limited by federal law to four specific crops: corn, wheat, rye and barley. So when Darek Bell, founder of Corsair Distillery in Nashville, Tenn., wanted to start experimenting with alternatives, there wasn't really a playbook to follow. "We started looking at a whole lot of grains that were coming out of sort of the health food movement, the green movement," Bell said. "We're thinking, 'What would it taste like to distill this?'"
Bell and Corsair settled on quinoa — partly, Bell said, because of its distinct flavor and partly because of the perceived health benefits (none of which, unfortunately, can really withstand the distillation process). The distillery has been producing and distributing quinoa whiskey since 2011. Other spirits and liquor companies have been using quinoa in their products; FAIR, a French distillery, launched quinoa vodka in 2012, while several craft breweries, like Altiplano and Aqotango, use quinoa in their beers.
With a grain profile of 20 percent quinoa and 80 percent malted barley, Corsair's product is a spirit with a distinctly earthy and nutty flavor that may not immediately register on the palate as "whiskey." And until recently, the federal government didn't recognize it as whiskey either, due to its limited definition of "grains."
At first, the Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, also known as the TTB, wanted Corsair to classify the product as a quinoa rum (despite the fact that it contained no fermented cane product). Then, they suggested it be labeled as a "neutral spirit" — a clear liquid distilled from a grain-based mash that holds a high content of ethanol — which didn't really describe the crafted and aged spirit in Corsair's barrels. "Supposedly [a representative from the TTB] called the USDA, [which] said 'Yes, these are in fact grains' and gave us the go-ahead," Bell said.
Then, in early December, the TTB took a step to officially include quinoa as a whiskey grain. On Dec. 3, the TTB outlined a new definition for what crops count as grains as part of a 132-page list of updated recommendations for the labeling of wine, beer and spirits. Per the new TTB proposal, the list of whiskey grains now includes "cereal grains and the seeds of the pseudocereals amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa." And this is a big deal for craft distillers like Bell.
Related: Is Quinoa California's Next Niche Crop?
So Tell Me Again, How Do You Pronounce "Quinoa"?
Why Whisky Tastes Better When Diluted With Water
Canadian Whisky's Long-Awaited Comeback
Endless West Wants to Make Artificial Whiskey — But Who Will Drink It?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @06:47AM
just how drought tolerant the grain is. California's water situation isn't going to get better anytime soon, even if it gets above average rainfall for the next few years. (Only scanned the article so I might have missed that bit if it was mentioned.)
(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Friday May 13 2016, @06:06PM
There's a certain amount of water in the Imperial Valley that goes toward agriculture. Maybe it's too much, but that discussion goes off-topic...
Where that water gets used is an interesting discussion, though. For instance, is it good use of desert water to grow alfalfa for use in Saudi Arabian dairies? The shipping costs alone would suggest there is inefficiency and misappropriation of scarce water, but apparently the market forces are there. So, against that backdrop, does increasing quinoa acreage make sense? The shipping costs would certainly be much lower, as most of that stuff gets eaten in California already. The relative yield, in dollars per acre, would be interesting to compare with other crops currently grown in the area.
As far as drought tolerance goes, maybe the best way to express that would be by quantifying the effect if there wasn't enough water available to keep everything watered. For instance, in the avocado industry, farmers lost trees when the water supply was reduced. Quinoa just wouldn't be planted, or one year's crop would be impacted. Or, in the bigger picture, water would have to be prioritized between alfalfa and quinoa, based on expected financial impact.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:39PM
Yeah, my first thought was that it must be pretty water hungry if California farmers want to grow it.
Some quick searches suggest it's about as thirsty as growing corn. Could be worse (California already grows a lot of crops that are).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @07:16AM
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Control,_Regulate_and_Tax_Adult_Use_of_Marijuana_Initiative_%282016%29 [ballotpedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:29PM
Legal or not, they already grow marijuana.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @07:42AM
Fricking SJW grains! Why can't we just drink rye, like my white supremecist grandad used to do!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 13 2016, @07:46AM
This is something I've been thinking about a lot for the last 20 years (yes, since elementary school).
Rather than quinoa, which is a trendy flash in the pan, it would make more sense IMO to grow fonio, teff, sorghum, and tepary beans. I have a very bad feeling about the water situation in the near future; it's not just lack of rainfall, but persistent, unsustainable consumptive use of aquifer water. We need to get desalinization on line yesterday, powered by solar or nukes. And we need to stop essentially using the soil for dirt-o-ponics and choking it with high-NPK fertilizers because the topsoil's gone; the teparies would be very helpful in fixing some nitrogen.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:29AM
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 13 2016, @08:50AM
Okay, wiseacre, for consumption in the US it tends to be hipster chow. The wealthy white contingent has an incredible talent for taking something known to native groups for hundreds to thousands of years and adding their own pumpkin-spice-and-Ugg-boots veneer of privilege to it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @09:05AM
Yeah that. Plus it tastes good as well. But mainly the other thing, that's why my wife and I buy it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @10:32AM
Who wants quinoa when lentils are similar and taste way better?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @11:23AM
Different texture, different flavor. Quinoa is more neutral, and you can use it as a base with many other things like pasta sauce or instead of bulgur wheat in tabouleh. Lentils tend to become mushy, which works fine for dal or in soups, but doesn't work in the sorts of dishes quinoa does.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 13 2016, @12:46PM
I could probably put both quinoa and lentils in a curry, but I would use rice instead of quinoa.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:36PM
Quinoa curry is gastronomical miscegenation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @11:40AM
I don't know about fonio or tepary beans, but you can get teff and sorghum in stores like Fairways or WholeFoods. If anything, they are trendier than quinoa, which is so 2013. Are any of those foods mutually exclusive, though? Why can't the mix of foods available to us in stores, and grown by farms in our own countries, include them all?
I like having more nutritious food generally available. When I was a kid we were fed Wonder Bread and Kraft Mac & Cheese and everything was drenched in High Fructose Corn Syrup. Now every store has Omega-3 rich bread with sunflower seeds, amaranth, and many other good things besides. Mac & Cheese comes in whole wheat, organic, gluten-free, and you-name-it. High Fructose Corn Syrup has gone the way of the dodo and you can choose between regular sugar, raw sugar, coconut sugar, Splenda, Nutrasweet, stevia, agave syrup, and monkfruit sugar. There is an element of silliness to it, like "gluten-free" tea and that sort of thing, but the general trend is good.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday May 13 2016, @12:49PM
Too many of these things have flax in the, which I'm allergic to.
Is flax even digestible?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:25AM
Flaxseed meal is edible, but has the highest phytoestrogen content of any foodstuff (3x as much as soy, and seems to have more bioavailability). Phytoestrogen can cause birth defects in male infants, and is a thyroid inhibitor. If you want to be both feminized and fat, by all means eat flaxseed.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:22AM
Tho I find it hilarious that livestock fodder and mill waste are being sold at high prices as trendy food.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:53PM
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:36PM
That is is aggressively over-hyped like all other "superfoods"?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @07:49PM
What about the people like myself who have zero interest in the nutritional or "political" qualities of the food? It could have the nutritional value of water and the controversy of blood diamonds, and I'd eat it because it tastes good, which is the reason I eat everything I eat.
Disclaimer: 300+ POUND american.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @03:52PM
Crop diversity is good.
It will improve human nutrition, make cuisine more interesting, formerly unarable land might become arable, and it adds security against devastation by crop diseases. (If the wheat gets hit one year, there will be other grains to use -plus- (dare I say it) the new crops will become better studied and can provide genes to put into the old crops.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Friday May 13 2016, @04:36PM
Disagree. At least without a lot of seasoning. Unlike corn or rice which you can just cook and eat with some reasonable flavor, quinoa tastes like cardboard when you cook it like that. Which is fine as long as people accept this and learn how to season it without huge amounts of salt and sugar.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday May 13 2016, @10:01PM
Guess you have never tried cracked wheat, rolled or cut oats, or rice without any seasoning.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:26AM
All of which are quite tasty to a supertaster. To normal humans, probably not so much.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday May 15 2016, @01:37AM
Wheat, no. Oats, sure, and that's why it wasn't in my comparison list. Rice I would say tastes fine without seasoning, although a little bit of salt goes a long way. A little bit of salt definitely does not fix quinoa.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?