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It is often said that Americans have been spoiled by an inexpensive and abundant food supply. The Green Revolution, which began in Mexico in the 1940s applied more sophisticated methods of crop development and turned countries like Mexico and India, which faced population starvation, into wheat and rice exporting countries; they have not faced starvation threats since that revolution took place. Similar improvements were achieved in the American farming system. The father of the Green Revolution was Norman Borlaug, a Minnesota Ph.D. graduate in Agriculture, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his seminal work in saving much of the world from the starvation threats created by population expansion and inefficient farming practices. Although his methods have been criticized for excessive use of chemicals and single crop farming methods, the impact of his work was dramatic in improving the crop yields/acre. India for example, which faced population starvation in the 1960s, adopted these methods and became (and still is) a net rice exporting country, by increasing its per acre yield of rice by 10 fold.

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From the NYT comes suggestions for wines, twenty five of them costing $10 or less. These wines were compiled and tested by Eric Asimov, the wine guru for the NYT. Most are non-California wines that come from all over the World. Whether you can find them or not is of course an issue of paramount importance. To illustrate their number one wine for under $10… “Our No. 1 wine, the 2002 Padre Pedro from Casa Cadaval in the Ribatejo region of Portugal, is a case in point. This wine indeed had personality, with cherry fruit, spice and smoke flavors and enough tannin to give it structure. Alas, the Padre Pedro may be hard to find now, because Casa Cadaval has changed importers since this vintage. But in general Portugal is an excellent source for good, inexpensive wines, especially those from the Douro and those, like the Padre Pedro, from the Ribatejo region.” So go to your local wine store head for the portugal wine section and check it out. California wines are way down the list because they are generally more expensive. The surprise entry on the list was a wine from Uruguay…..”Probably the biggest surprise in our tasting was the 2006 Domaine Monte de Luz from Uruguay, which is sort of the Toledo Mud Hens of the major winemaking leagues.” Perhaps the depth and quality of your local wine store will be found by determining if they have a Uruguay wine section. I plan to check this out with my own wine store, perhaps as early as tonight.

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