Chickens

5th December 2021

(music)

Liz: Hello, and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel, we are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, and also making things. This is a podcast about domestic history, and we normally start by talking about things that we have been making and/or baking, so what have you been up to?

Liz: Started a new cross-stitch project

Hazel: Oh?

Liz: It’s quite big

Hazel: Go on

Liz: I counted about 160 x 240 stitches, is what I’m doing

Hazel: Ok. Yeah yeah yeah

Liz: This feels really dorky to say. I’m making Mothra vs Godzilla

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Because I love Mothra and Godzilla, and I wanted to do a big cross-stitch, and I have a lot of green

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Just, for some reason, at the moment I have a lot of green thread and yarn, and I know green is not a creative colour

Hazel: It is known

Liz: But…it is. Haven’t you seen Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared?

Hazel: I have, I have

Liz: So yeah, I’m doing that, and I’m also using my leftover green to make Nick a new scarf, because they need a smart scarf, that isn’t a pink entrelac one

Hazel: Ooh, cosy

Liz: What have you been up to? Anything green?

Hazel: I wish. I’m also one of those people that just picks up…if I impulse buy any kind of craft related thing, it’s probably green, because that’s my favourite colour, but no, I didn’t make anything green, or anything on such an epic scale as Mothra vs Godzilla, which I can’t wait to see. I made an apple cake

Liz: I will send you a progress pic

Hazel: Excellent. I made an apple cake

Liz: Oooh

Hazel: Yeah, but I didn’t get to eat it, because it was for my neighbour because she lent me loads of books for my course. But I made it, and it was nice. I use a Kentish apple cake recipe, which is the go-to one we normally use, and it is very good, and moist

Liz: Never had an apple cake

Hazel: It is good

Liz: I mean it sounds like it’s good, but I only started liking cooked apples during lockdown

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: I don’t know if having covid did something to my tastebuds, and now I like cooked apple. I might have to try apple cake

Hazel: Maybe? Yeah, I will send you the recipe, it’s good. I find they don’t tend to go mushy? There’s still a bit of texture

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: But it’s quite a soft cake in general, and it’s also a really nice pudding if you have it hot with ice-cream or custard

Liz: Oh, that does sound good

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: I cannot have enough custard, honestly

Hazel: I’m not a custard person. I don’t actually like it. I just say it because apparently everyone else in this country likes custard

Liz: I will forgive you, ‘cause it means that there is more custard for the rest of us

Hazel: That is true, and you are welcome to it

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: So, shall we go on to the main topic?

Liz: I think we should. I believe it’s your turn

Hazel: It is, and I am gonna talk about Gallus gallus

Liz: I know this one

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: That’s chickens

Hazel: It is! It is the chicken. I am gonna talk about domestic chicken and poultry-keeping through the ages

Liz: Ooh

Hazel: ‘Cause being a food and domestic history podcast, I feel like this covers both aspects

Liz: Fair

Hazel: And it is a very domestic thing

Liz: And also chickens are great

Hazel: And also chickens are great

(both laugh)

Hazel: They are the most winning of animals. They’re just…you can just watch them all day

(both laugh)

Hazel: They’re so funny. So we have three chickens in our back garden at the moment, but we’re having to keep them in their run all the time at the moment, because bird flu is here again, so they can’t have any contact with wild birds, but they have quite a big run, so they’re ok, and they’ve got lost of things that they can jump on and scratch around, and general enrichment

Liz: Do they have names?

Hazel: They do have names. They are Frodo, Gandalf, and Sam

Liz: Excellent

Hazel: I mean, they’re all female chickens, but Frodo

Liz: Still excellent names

Hazel: (laughs) Yeah, one of them has a white ring of feathers around its neck, so that one’s Gandalf

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: Because it’s wearing a cloak! But they are extremely nervous chickens. I’ve started getting them to be a bit less nervous, because I normally take some…if I’m feeding them or collecting eggs I normally take some weeds or something in, because they like to peck at the foliage and stuff, so now, instead of just running away, when I come close to the run and they can see I’ve got something, they’ll come up, and then when I go into the run they’ll run away, then when I put the down they’ll come back. So we’re making progress. So, yeah, as you can see, chicken keeping, domestic chicken keeping, remains very very popular to this day, and throughout history it’s been really really common just to have chickens at home, pretty much everywhere, depending on what period and where you are, as I will explain, not everyone had chickens to start with. But because they will basically eat anything, so you can feed them on all of your household scraps, and they’ll just forage around, so they’re quite low-cost to keep

Liz: Yeah, that sounds quite handy

Hazel: Yeah, and you can also eat them, if you want to. So, yeah, they’re pretty handy to have around, and fairly low-intensive time to take care of. So, the progenitor, the ancestor, of the modern domestic chicken

Liz: The ur-chicken

Hazel: (laughs) As you could call it, is Gallus gallus, the red jungle fowl, native to south-east Asia. So, I’m dipping a little bit into the domestication module that we did for this. So, as part of our archaeology degree, Liz and I took a class on the domestication of plants and animals, and it was very interesting

Liz: One of my favourites honestly

Hazel: So the chicken…sorry?

Liz: One of my favourite honestly

Hazel: Yeah, it was cool. I wrote a whole essay on cannabis, it was great

(both laugh)

Hazel: Which is also one of the oldest of domesticated plants, but anyway, that is not the topic of this episode. Gallus gallus being the ancestor of all domestic chickens. Not the only progenitor. It’s thought that it also cross-bred with other types of wild birds, other types of jungle fowl, but the common ancestor of pretty much every modern chicken breed is thought to be the red jungle fowl, and there is controversy in the chicken fandom

Liz: Ok

Hazel: About when and where the red jungle fowl was domesticated. So, everyone’s going with sometime in prehistory.

Liz: (inaudible)

Hazel: It’s thought to be one of the earliest domesticated animals. Go on

Liz: It’s just so vague. Some point before we started writing stuff down, there was chicken

Hazel: (laughing) I mean, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna give you some dates in a minute, but everyone just agrees it was prehistory and leaves it at that, which I think is what it will come down to in the end, to be honest

Liz: I mean it’s like the hunt for the world’s oldest banana, it’s like “this one’s a little bit older mate” “yeah it’s pretty old”

Hazel: (laughs) I know. And then a couple decades later someone finds one that is marginally older, and everyone’s like “ooh”

(both laugh)

Hazel: So, there’s a few options as to when the chicken was domesticated, but it’s thought to be one of the oldest domesticated birds, well, animals in general, along with ducks and geese, which are also part of domestic poultry keeping, and they are thought to be domesticated through the commencal pathway of domestication, which is when animals are just kind of hanging around, and they notice there’s food where the people are, and they come and get some of the food, and nothing bad happens, so they kind of just keep coming back, and then eventually domestication happens

Liz: The cat route

Hazel: Yeah. So people notice this is happening, so they put food out for the animals, so maybe they come back again, and we can eat them

(both laugh)

Hazel: But, yeah, gradually people start breeding, and domestication happens, and so there’s a few theories for when this took place. There’s a possible domestication event in Thailand, possibly ancient China as well, and also the Indus Valley, in Mohenjo-daro, and there’s actually a fantastic article that I found about this, by a Japanese professor called Masaki Eda, and they were looking at several ideas around this. So, the sites in China where they’d found what they thought to be chicken bones dating back to around 10,000 years ago, this is kind of a controversial one, because it later came out that a lot of them were native pheasant bone

Liz: Wow

Hazel: And I’m sure you know the difficulty in identifying ancient bones

Liz: Oh, for sure

Hazel: Being your particular thing

Liz: I mean, that was my dissertation

Hazel: (laughs) So, they were looking at morphological differences during domestication, trying to work out

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: What sites were these found at, is this evidence for domestication? So, there’s one in China, potentially, there’s a lot of evidence for early chickens, as we know them, in ancient China, but then it was thought that perhaps the Indus Valley site in Mohenjo-daro was older. This other study I’ve found is kind of challenging that, but it doesn’t really give any idea of what…it says it’s kind of difficult to tell, really. You can’t reliably identify which one of these is the oldest domestic chicken, so I think it’s probably one of these “it kind of happened around the same-ish time just about everywhere in this area”

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: But, anyway, somewhere in south-east Asia around this time, chickens became domesticated, and from there it’s thought that they spread through towards, through middle Asia, and then through into Africa and Europe in around the 8th century BC, potentially, and it seems like they kind of took hold fairly early, and pretty quickly, and then from there spread around the world, and there’s evidence in the Viking sagas, where it says that when the Vikings colonised Iceland in the 10th century they took chickens with them. There’s evidence that, during the Polynesian colonisation age, they took chickens with them, so

Liz: I guess it’s a good colonising animal, I feel like

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: ‘Cause it’s small, it produces food on the way rather than just when you kill it

Hazel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they’re pretty handy, and it’s thought that at the beginning of domestication they weren’t really kept for their eggs, they were more kept for meat, because the red jungle fowl doesn’t lay many eggs. Early chicken breeds didn’t really lay that many eggs

Liz: Oh right

Hazel: And none at all in winter, because chickens are affected by the loss of daylight in winter, so they lay less to no eggs

Liz: Are you telling me that chickens have seasonal affective disorder?

Hazel: No, that’s not what I’m telling you, but you can say it like that if you want

Liz: Ok. I got very concerned for a moment

Hazel: (laughs) They seem alright, but they just don’t have the energy to lay eggs. I dunno, I’ve never asked a chicken if it feels sad in the winter

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: I would feel very bad if that was the case, and I would probably try and hug them and bring them inside, and they would not like that

Liz: You never know until you try

Hazel: (laughs) So, the egg-laying output of chickens is something that’s developed over the years, but certainly by the mediaeval period, as you can tell by a lot of recipes from the time, they use eggs

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: So they’re being kept for their eggs later on. And speaking of the mediaeval period, they’re quite…chickens end up having quite a personality, you know. They can be quite symbolic of certain things. Obviously cock-fighting is a big deal, and the mediaeval period being a very thrifty one as well, lots of peasant families would obviously keep chickens. Would keep other animals as well, but chickens are one of the cheapest ones to keep, so lots of people would have a few chickens. They were kind of seen as the women’s area to take care of, was the poultry, and there are various different kinds. So, you just need the one cockerel, really, because they fight, but you’ve probably heard of capons?

Liz: I have, I’ve eaten them

Hazel: Oh really? I have not. How was it?

Liz: Little bit more flavourful that a regular chicken

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: But not as full on as your ducks and geese

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Just a meatier chicken

Hazel: Ok, yeah, so capons are castrated male chickens, which, obviously people back in the day are not going to just get rid of a male chicken, because you don’t waste things

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: So that was a way you could keep them without having cocks fighting all the time. So yeah, you have hens, you have capons, and you have cocks, and you have pullets, which are the young, pre-laying animals, and I wanted to talk a little bit quickly about the Chanticleer story

Liz: I don’t think I know this

Hazel: So, it’s most famous for being the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but it is actually an older story. It comes from a series of tales in Old French about Renart the fox

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Who is this character in European folklore who’s like the classic wily fox, and it’s a lot of underdog stories, and in fact the English version is Reynard, which is Sussex dialect for a fox

Liz: Fox the fox

Hazel: Yeah, Fox the fox. Or Master Reynard, which, yeah, in some of the rural areas still gets used, which is nice, so that made its way into English dialect as well. So, the tale of Chanticleer, I’ll try not to go on too much, but basically, there’s an old peasant woman, and she lives with her two daughters. They’re not very well off, but they have this little flock of chickens that they keep in the cottage, and the cockerel is a very foppish, really beautiful cockerel. He’s very proud of his beauty, and he has many wives that he presides over, and he has his favourite wife, who’s called Pertelote, and his name is Chanticleer. Chanticleer is a bit of an empty-headed bird. He has a dream that he is going to be captured and die, and he wakes up in the middle of the night, and wakes up his favourite wife, and she’s like “it was just a dream, go back to bed.” Anyway, then he meets the fox, Reynard, and the fox is very courteous, and flatters Chanticleer, and tells him that his father was a great singer, and that if Chanticleer would only shut his eyes and stand on his tiptoes, and stretch out his neck, and crow, he could see if the son sang as beautifully as the father

Liz: Oh dear

Hazel: And I’m sure you can guess what happens next

Liz: Gobby cockerel is executed?

Hazel: Not quite! So, the fox grabs Chanticleer by the throat and starts to run away with him, but Pertalote, the wife, starts screaming, and then all the chickens start wailing and clucking, and the woman and her daughters wake up, and they set the dogs out, and they all start running after the fox, who’s running away with Chanticleer in his mouth. And then, Chanticleer, having a bit of a brainwave, starts to flatter the fox, telling them that he’s so much faster, he’s got time to turn around and taunt his pursuers, which he does, and of course as soon as he opens his mouth Chanticleer jumps out and flutters up to a tree

(both laugh)

Hazel: So the moral of the story is that flattery has got them both in a bit of a sticky situation

Liz: I like that

Hazel: Yeah (laughs) Chanticleer does get away in most versions of the story that I found, so there you go. So yeah, I like that, and I think Chanticleer seems to be a bit of a mediaeval nickname for cockerels, and a bit of a symbol of vanity and empty-headedness, but, interestingly, in this story is a reference to a peasants’ rebellion of 1381, which is how they can kind of date the story

Liz: That’s wild

Hazel: I know! So, Chaucer says that the wailing of the chickens doesn’t make half as much noise as Jack Straw and his men, who was the leader of the peasant rebellion

(both laugh)

Hazel: So, there you go, that is how chickens relate to the peasant rebellion of 1381

Liz: Beautiful

Hazel: Yeah, so at this point chickens are being kept around the world, although geese and ducks are also very popular fowl to keep, and they are migratory, so they are native to a lot more of the world. They’ve been found in middens in America in prehistory, and kind of across the world as well. So those would also be kept…I don’t have as much information on those, because then it kind of gets into its own thing, so that’s potentially for a later episode

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: But those, being wild as well, were frequently hunted, as well as kept in domestic versions. Geese for their feathers as well, for goose quills. But not swans, because, even though swans were birds that were eaten, they are a lot more of a high-class bird. So, we get to the 19th century, I’m gonna skip ahead a bit

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: Because it’s pretty much just people keeping chickens at home. They are also on farms, but they’re not really to such a big scale. Chicken, pretty much before the 1950s, was a fairly expensive meat, because they are egg providers as well, so you don’t really, at that stage, you don’t wanna kill your chickens unless a) it’s a special occasion, or b) they’ve reached the end of their egg-laying life, because you’re not going to get more eggs. So chickens were a fairly expensive meat, and kind of a special occasion thing, until quite recently. My parents remember when they were young in the 1960s chicken being…well, I don’t know about my dad, but my mum, who lived in a rural area, chicken was, that was what you had at Christmas, or on a special occasion. Lost my train of thought here. Oh yeah, 19th century. There was a bit of an explosion in breeds of chicken because, at this point, and this has been going on through the 18th century as well, you get rich people having poultry as well, and actually there’s a bit in Pride and Prejudice where they talk about Charlotte Lucas being compensated for her marriage to Mr Collins by enjoying her nice house and her poultry, and everything that comes with it

Liz: Ah yes, we’re in the original cottagecore movement at this sort of time, aren’t we

Hazel: Yeah. So, you get, much like you get a lot of variety in vegetables and roses and stuff being developed at this time, you get the…you know those paintings of just really square cows and pigs?

Liz: Oh yeah

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: Love those

Hazel: They’re great. So, yeah, you get a lot of different breeds emerging in the 19th century, because if you create a new breed of something you can have it named after you, or after where you live, so lots of rich people had gardeners, or if it was a gentleman farmer they had managers, who would develop new breeds, and show farming was a thing as well at this point, so chickens would be competitive, and you get pure breeds and that sort of thing coming out, and this is before they were being developed for industrial purpose, so there’s a lot of variety, and there’s a lot of breeds that have crossover value, so they’re not just for laying eggs, or they’re not just for meat, they’re good for both, because that’s what you want when you’re doing cottage stuff. But you also get a lot of fancy breeds, and I am going to have so much fun putting pictures on the twitter for this one, because oh there are so many fancy breeds of chicken

Liz: There are some wild-looking chickens out there

Hazel: It’s great. It’s great. And a lot of them do date from the 19th century, because the Victorians were wild about this kind of thing

Liz: When the Victorians did something, they did it

Hazel: Absolutely

Liz: The one good thing I’ll say about them

Hazel: (laughs) I mean, I love a bantam. There are quite a lot of really beautiful breeds that were crossbred with asian domestic chickens, I think silkies are?

Liz: Yeah, you get them in China a lot, don’t you, silkies

Hazel: Yeah. Ok, they’re not actually a crossbreed, they are an asian breed, cool. Yeah, so they are, you know, it’s not just the Victorians, this fancy chicken breeding is going on all over the world as well, of course, because people like to domesticate. Silkies are so lovely, they’re so fluffy. I’m just looking at pictures of silkies now, sorry, I am getting rather off topic

Liz: But there will be pictures of chickens on the twitter

Hazel: There will be indeed, watch that space. But silkies are quite popular as a fancy breed in the west, but people don’t tend to like to eat them, because they have dark meat, and we’re not used to that for chicken

Liz: Don’t they have black skin as well?

Hazel: I think so. But they are quite popular for food in Asia, of course, which apparently tastes the same, it’s just dark. What other breeds can I think of? I’ve forgotten the name, but the ones that have pompoms on their heads

Liz: I know the ones you mean, ‘cause I’ve seen pictures of them wearing little 80s headbands to keep the feathers out of their faces

Hazel: Yes, so they are fantastic. The speckled Sussex I think deserves an honorary mention, that is a particularly handsome chicken

Liz: Well you would say that

Hazel: I would, I would, not that I’m biassed at all. But it also is a world famous chicken, they were often imported through colonialisation, I think, and have ended up in various parts of the world. So yeah, lots and lots of different kinds of chicken, which drops off in popularity going into the 20th century, when industrialisation of animal farming started to get big, and variety doesn’t work very well with that, they want a few breeds that lend themselves well to this kind of industrial farming

Liz: Yeah, you want the high-output ones

Hazel: Yeah, pretty much, and that’s where you get chickens being developed for just this particular purpose, and so a lot of the funny fancy breeds were almost lost, but they are coming back now as a big thing, people are into their pedigree chickens, which I love, good for them. If you’ve ever been to a country show, and gone to the chicken show tent, it is amazing

Liz: I’ve never been to a country show

Hazel: I will take you to a country show, that is a promise

Liz: Yes!

Hazel: There is also sheep competitions, and they’re great

Liz: Do you get to touch the sheep though?

Hazel: I don’t know, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been to one

Liz: ‘Cause I love touching sheep and feeling the lanolin on the fluff, far more than is reasonable

Hazel: Ah (laughs)

Liz: That feeling of a nice greasy sheep

Hazel: Liz Blake, 2021

Liz: We need to make merch that just says that

Hazel: We do. So, yeah, I guess that’s kind of a…I’ll keep it short, I’m gonna say I’ll call it there. A lot of the breeds are coming back, because of backyard chicken keeping becoming a lot more popular, and actually in lockdown a lot of people all over the world have got very much into this. In lots of parts of the world people never got out of it, of course, are still many many places where everyone still has chickens

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: And they just wander around and do the thing that they are best suited to, which is just hoovering up whatever they can find, but yeah, I guess in the west it’s not as usual to see that, although our neighbours a few doors down did have chickens once, and there’s a patch of grass next to the bus stop where you would occasionally see them wandering around, where they’d escaped from the garden, which was great

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: But I did worry about them with the road right there

Liz: There’s a grassy area near us

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: And every time you go on the local Nextdoor, Spotted facebook pages, whatever, there’s always someone complaining that this one specific chicken has attacked them, or their child, or their dog

Hazel: What?

Liz: There’s just this menacing chicken wandering around, apparently

Hazel: (laughs) Wow. Is it…does it belong to someone, or is it just there?

Liz: I mean, presumably? But it’s just kind of there

Hazel: I like the idea that it’s feral

Liz: I mean it might be

Hazel: Just gone into Rambo mode

Liz: ‘Cause as far as I’m aware no-one has ever claimed responsibility for The Red Bank Chicken

Hazel: (laughs) It’s definitely a cryptid

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: But yeah, it’s definitely become popular in lockdown, for a lot of people, and now lots of people have chickens! But, of course, it does represent a biosecurity risk sometimes, you’ve got to do your research, but, yeah, would recommend, chickens are great. That is it

Liz: I like that, that’s a solid conclusion

Hazel: There is something about them that’s just very domestic. It’s cosy

Liz: I think I know what you mean? There’s just that association in the British psyche, I think, of chickens and little old ladies in cottages

Hazel: (laughs) Yeah. So, what is our local larder today?

Liz: I thought, since it’s starting to get cold, that I would talk about ice wine

Hazel: Ok, that sounds cool. Oh, can I just add before you do that, ‘cause it’s just come back to me, the reason I got on to chickens as a topic is I was looking through jobs on the Royal College of Occupational Therapy website, just to see what’s out there, and one of the jobs was a wellbeing through chickens manager, where they take chickens

Liz: I mean, that sounds very you

Hazel: I know. But they just take chickens into workplaces and stuff and cheer people up

Liz: Therapy chickens!

Hazel: Yeah, it was a chicken therapy charity

Liz: Amazing

Hazel: And I was very sad that I was not yet qualified. So yeah, tell me about ice wine

Liz: So ice wine is probably one of the rarest kinds of wine, from what I’m reading

Hazel: Ok. I’ve certainly never seen any

Liz: It’s a kind of dessert wine, made with grapes which have frozen on the vine

Hazel: Oh! That’s very specific

Liz: Yeah, legally you can only call it ice wine if they’ve frozen on the vine

Hazel: Wow

Liz: ‘Cause there are places that freeze the grapes once they’ve been harvested, but that’s not ice wine, not properly

Hazel: Oh, it’s artificial freezing

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: Ok, what

Liz: Yeah, they call is cryoextraction

Hazel: (laughs) What does it, what does it do to the taste? Is it meant to make it better, or…

Liz: So basically the water freezes, and the sugars in the grape don’t

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: So it produces a sweeter wine

Hazel: Ah

Liz: So it’s generally done with grapes like riesling

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Which is already a relatively sweet, semi-sweet white wine

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Your standard riesling, but having it as ice wine turns it into a proper dessert wine

Hazel: Oh, wow

Liz: So by law, in Canada you can only call it an ice wine if it’s been harvested at -8C, in Germany -7C

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But it’s risky, because obviously if you leave the grapes on the vine too long waiting for that first frost, they’re gonna rot

Hazel: Yeah, ‘cause the ripening of grapes and the first frost are not too close. I guess it depends on the variety of grape, maybe

Liz: Yeah, it depends on geography and variety, but

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Not generally that close to each other, and you also have…so there’s a thing called noble rot, which I will talk about more when we do a wine episode, which will be at some point, but it’s a fungus which can affect wine grapes, which can create a more concentrated, sweeter wine

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But ice wine doesn’t have this fungus. I didn’t quite understand the reason why it can’t, but it can’t, so if you leave it too long you also have more of a risk of that fungus stopping it being able to do what ice wine does

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Yeah, like I said, it is difficult to time it right. There’s thought to have only been six 19th century ice wine vintages, just because it’s that unlikely to actually happen

Hazel: Wow

Liz: Which is probably why you now get people doing it artificially, with this cryoextraction

Hazel: Yeah, I can see

Liz: Which is basically just a fancy name for freezing the grapes yourself before you get the juice out

Hazel: I can see why it’s so rare. I…I feel like…would climate change have an effect on that, because we don’t get the first frost until quite late now

Liz: Climate change is having an effect. So, it’s mostly produced in Germany and Canada

Hazel: Right

Liz: And ice wine makers in both are basically, they’ve really been struggling to actually get the temperatures in time

Hazel: Yeah, that makes sense

Liz: ‘Cause, yeah, it sounds like in the 19th century it was more of a freak quite exciting things, rather than something you could expect

Hazel: Ok, so you couldn’t really plan a whole business based on it

Liz: No. It did get a little bit easier because they developed technology for getting more juice out of the grapes, so the vintage could last longer, and you have places like, there’s wineries in Niagara, in Canada, which have a bit more luck than some of the more traditional farms these days, ‘cause it’s big in Canada because it was taken over by German immigrants in the 70s

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: And obviously Canada gets quite cold

Hazel: Yeah. I guess that makes sense, that that would be a central European thing, ‘cause it can get quite hot in the summer, but then quite cold in the winter

Liz: Yeah. Although there is one ice wine producer in Hokkaido, in Japan

Hazel: Oh right

Liz: Which, it’s an area of Hokkaido that has a lot of ski resorts, so obviously it gets cold

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: But they make such a small amount of their ice wine that you can only buy it from basically the local train station

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: So if you want to go hyper-local larder, Hokkaido ice wine

Hazel: Hokkaido train station

Liz: Yeah, Furano station in central Hokkaido. I think that’s the most local that we’ve gone so far

Hazel: Yeah, that is incredibly specific, I love it

Liz: Yeah, so it’s spreading a bit in The States now with, the same stipulations that are used in Germany show up in Michigan. So, there’s places around Lake Erie which produce ice wine now which, again, the grapes have to be naturally frozen. That’s it, really, it’s a sweet wine made with grapes which naturally freeze on the vine. I don’t have a lot to say, I just think it’s cool

Hazel: I am glad that I now know about that. It must be quite expensive

Liz: Yeah, it’s definitely a more luxury thing

Hazel: Ok, so possibly

Liz: Just because it’s somewhat rarer

Hazel: Possibly some time before either of us would ever get a chance to taste the ice wine, but if enough people donate to the podcast

Liz: (laughs) If you support the patreon enough, we will go to Hokkaido

Hazel: We will go and buy ice wine from the train station. I love the ever-increasing list of ridiculous things

Liz: Yeah, the cheapest ice wine I’ve been able to find is $30 for a 375ml bottle

Hazel: Ok

Liz: So it’s not ridiculously expensive, but that’s also the cheapest ice wine

Hazel: Yeah, it’s not as expensive as I thought it would be, but also that’s still expensive

Liz: Yeah. So yeah, like Hazel said, we have a podcast. We have a podcast…

Hazel: Really?!

Liz: Yeah! Which has a patreon, patreon.com/breadandthread, where you can get access

Hazel: I would never trust us with a podcast

Liz: Where you can get access to monthly recipes, December’s one is going to be Danish-style sugar cookies

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: As well as a discord server, where we chat about things that we’re making and cooking. Join it, and follow one patron’s exciting adventure to try and make a caterpillar cake

Hazel: (gasps) We also have a twitter, at breadandthread, where you can find information about things that we talk about during the episodes, pictures, and links, and teasers for upcoming episodes, and general things that are going on with us. We also have an email address, breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com, where you can send us anything you like, any comments on the podcast, your favourite breed of chicken and why, or any suggestions you have for future episodes

Liz: We also have a tumblr, where we post similar things to the twitter, as well as reblogging various history things that we come across, and a youtube where we are uploading old episodes, because I have been told that some people prefer their podcasts on youtube than on things like spotify. So, thank you for listening, and we will see you next time

(end music)