Hobbit Ginger Beer, Snoop Partnership, Dutch Exports & Tissue Culture

Are you a fan of the Lord of the Rings? Or hobbits? Or Tolkien? If you are and you like your ginger beer then you will be interested in this. The Good George brewery in Waikato has been selected to brew a non-alcoholic ginger beer for the Green Dragon in Hobbiton. But the Green Dragon isn't real, I hear you say. Well, it is now. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy the Green Dragon pub was actually only the front, the rest didn't exist. And during the final instalment it was burned to the ground (I don't remember that!). But the Green Dragon has now been rebuilt as a real pub for the forthcoming The Hobbit film trilogy. Unfortunately, the pub is only open to those on the Hobbiton tour. (Source: Waikato Times).

Gladstone Hall, the former home of Australian ginger beer magnate William Starkey, is now on the market. If you have at least $2.4 million and fancy living in the Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill, you can find more information here. But I am more interested in the ginger beer itself. Starkey started brewing ginger beer in Sydney in 1838 and became so successful that he eventually had the largest ginger beer factory in the southern hemisphere. I can't seem to find anything else about Starkey's ginger beer. Can anyone help?

The Naples Beach Brewery in south Florida recently received state clearance to commercially produce alcoholic beverages. One of its new beers is a mango ginger Belgian ale. Sounds very American.

A press release has announced details of a partnership between the US rapper Snoop Lion (apparently he is sometimes known as Snoop Dogg) and Reed's Ginger Brew to raise awareness of Snoop's Mind Gardens Project in Jamaica. The project's aim is to establish organic community gardens capable of producing fresh fruit and vegetables for school-aged children. Reed's founder Chris Reed has said that he wants to give something back to Jamaica as his company's successful drinks are based on traditional Jamaican-style ginger beers.

just-food has reported on the rising demand from China for traditional English cheeses including the increasing popular dessert cheeses such as white stilton with mango and ginger. It is quite likely that the ginger in these blended cheeses came from China in the first place.

I've just been reading some interesting statistics from the Centre for the Promotion of Imports, an agency of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and known by the Dutch acronym CBI. In 2010, the Netherlands accounted for 35% of all ginger imports into the EU and was the largest EU importer. Again in 2010, 65% of total ginger exports from the EU came from the Netherlands. Some of these Dutch re-exports contributed 6.8% of total British ginger imports.

So why the Netherlands? Towards the end of the 16th century Dutch traders started dealing in spices from the East. Soon after, the Dutch East India Company was formed and this lasted for nearly two hundred years. By then the Dutch spice trade, including ginger, was so well established that it continues to this day. It may seem incredible but last year the Netherlands was the world's third biggest exporter of ginger behind China and Nigeria.

The idea of the EU exporting ginger sounds strange, doesn't it? How can a region which doesn't grow ginger (or at least not commercially) actually export it? The answer is, I don't know. I can only speculate that it could be some sort of added-value or preferential rate. Can anyone enlighten me?

just-drinks has reported a fall in the losses of Castle Brands, the New York-based spirits and wine group. A contributory factor in this improvement is the rise in sales of Gosling's Stormy Ginger Beer, up 45.5% to 74,959 cases in the last quarter. You can always rely on ginger!

A new ginger breeding facility has just opened in the Malaysian state of Sabah, according to the Borneo Post. It uses in-vitro technology to produce 500 plantlets from one parent ginger plant in a process which takes six months. It is hoped that production of disease-free stock will help Sabah meet its demand for 24,000 kg a month.

A press release on PRWeb has announced the forthcoming launch of a loose leaf ginger tea blend in time for Christmas. The Tea Spot, from Boulder in Colorado, has created a blend featuring smoked black tea from China and ginger tea from Honduras. It sounds like the ideal drink for elevenses.

Clicquot Club, Ginger Wine & Aluminium Chloride Toxicity

"Every bottle of Clicquot Club Ginger Ale is generous measure - not the skimpy bottle you are accustomed to in buying ordinary ginger ales. We believe not only in giving honest goods, but in giving honest measure. There are two generous glassfuls in every bottle - enough for two persons, or two drinks for one person. Clicquot Club Ginger Ale is made of the purest confectioners' sugar, Jamaica ginger and citric fruit flavors the earth affords - and the purest and best water. Fresh, country air sweeps through the factory, and the blending and carbonating (done under the supervision of an expert chemist) is in surroundings as clean as a model housewife's kitchen. Clicquot Club is the kind of ginger ale you would make for yourself if you had our facilities". This piece of text is taken from a newspaper advertisement published in 1911, one of a range of adverts placed by Clicquot Club across North America. I was taken not only by its quaintness but also by its complete lack of dubious and unsubstantiated claims used by advertisers until relatively recently.

The Clicquot Club Company was founded in 1881 by Henry Millis in Millis, Massachusetts. The company initially sold sparkling cider but after a few years began to focus on ginger ale which remained popular for the next 70 or so years. The steadily increasing sales of Clicquot Club Ginger Ale, made from Jamaican ginger, coincided with a sharp increase in ginger exports from Jamaica. In fact, by the 1960s, Jamaica was the third largest producer of ginger in the world after India and Sierra Leone. In 1965 Canada Dry acquired Clicquot and closed it down. It was about this time that the Jamaican ginger industry started its rapid decline from which it is still trying to recover. Were these two events linked? Was the success of Jamaican ginger a direct result of the success of Clicquot? I think that it was more than just a coincidence.

There was good news last week for ginger growers in the Indian state of Mizoram. The state government has amended its liquor prohibition law to allow growers to convert their ginger crops into wine. The change also applies to grapes, apples, passion fruit, peaches and pears. The government has acknowledged that farmers can actually earn more from converting raw crops into wine. Presumably the government will also take more in taxation.

This week's "ginger in medicine" research project is an Egyptian study entitled Role of Ginger Against the Reproductive Toxicity of Aluminium Chloride in Albino Male Rats. The study involved feeding two groups of rats aluminium chloride (AlCl3) with one of these groups also receiving a daily dose of ginger. The outcome was that the ginger feed had an ameliorating effect on the AlCl3 toxicity. I don't know much about aluminium chloride but I do know that in one form it is irritating to the skin and in another form it is used in deodorants and antiperspirants. I have also discovered a report of another Egyptian study last year but that one used grape seed extract instead of ginger. Do the Egyptians have a particular problem with aluminium chloride?

I was quite pleased yesterday when my wife discovered a rhubarb and ginger cheese. I haven't tried it yet but when I do I will publish a review on www.allthingsginger.co.uk.