Where are you right now?” a friend asks me via WhatsApp. I sit outside a café and send him a photo of the bottle on the table in front of me. On the label in red letters is not only the brand of the mineral water, but also the area in which the source is located.
It’s not just here in the Vosges that people want to know where the water they drink comes from. This applies to all of France. Because there, unlike here, the origin of the food plays an enormous role. “Terroir“ is what our neighbors call it. The word has also made it into German: “The totality of natural factors and cultural influences that influence a wine or similar. give it its character,” says the Duden. However, that is a bit short-sighted, because the obsession with origin and production method runs almost throughout the entire French consumer behavioras can be seen in any of the huge supermarkets.
In the fruit and vegetable department, French products are advertised larger and more prominently – such as artichokes and carrots from Brittany or tomatoes and peaches from Provence. If you order a “Saucisse de Morteau”, a smoked sausage from the town of the same name, at the meat counter Franche-Comtéthen the saleswoman puts a small piece of paper in the bag. It not only contains tips for preparation, but also points out the fact that it is a product with a protected geographical indication. Next door, in the cheese selection, you can even choose by production location. The Saint-Nectaire from Auvergne is available in two qualities: as “Saint-Nectaire fermier” it is made on the farm from raw milk, as “Saint-Nectaire laitier” in the dairy with pasteurized milk.
The focus on regional products, it seems, is based on the empirical experience that the goods with the shortest route are often the freshest and best. And even away from the large supermarkets, a certain pride in regional culinary specialties can be sensed, for example in the form of the brownish-orange signs along the motorway. While here they usually refer to architectural highlights, in France they also like to draw attention to a growing region, a processing technique or the microclimate that enables the production of world-famous wines.
Of course there is also the other thing: industrially produced foods with questionable contents can also be found on the shelves in France. Here, too, there are hardly any bakers or butchers left, and the traditional markets have been replaced across the board by the full-range retailers described on the outskirts of the settlement. Next to the gas stations you can Pizza from the vending machine and in some places the “French tacos” are the gastronomic highlight – the French version of the Pomm kebab. A lustful and healthy diet is not only linked to factors such as income, education and availability in Germany.
And yet you can’t help but get the impression that food and its origins play a bigger role in the neighboring country and that “le terroir” at least offers a kind of map that you can use as a guide.
The cook
Johannes J. Arens is a journalist and author. He studied design in Maastricht and cultural anthropology in Bonn. In the kitchens, he is particularly interested in the tension between tradition and innovation as well as the connection between food, politics and society. He is the editor of the food magazine “Intermediate passageand initiator of the “Food Reading Festival Cologne”. In the Freitag He writes the monthly column “The Chef”
