Filtered/Unfiltered

Fruits from the Garden Filtered/Unfiltered wine : this is a topic that brings lots of debates, questions and images, and speaking of images, I think that this picture of simple fruits and vegetables picked in a garden, as well as the following pictures, can make a good symbolic illustration of another duality, the one opposing the natural/real wines (often summed up as "unfiltered") with the technical/industrial wines that swamp the market. These fruits and vegetables above have in common with their wine equivalents the fact that weren't pushed or sprayed, and they riped quietly on the tree or on the ground and they reflect the vintage and the occasional accidents that mother nature brougt onto them, like scars, insect bites or drought-induced small size. If you're used to what the supermarket selects for you, the first bite may be a surprise, like some can very acidic (that's why you can keep them through the winter), but there's the taste, and at the end you feel that you ate something real and good for you.
Speaking of fruit or vegetable species, here is another small digression that I would like to make about an odd "French paradox" : I learned recently that not only are our modern commercial vegetable species very limited in number, but also that the European Union and the French Administration prevent BY LAW farmers or gardeners to sell seeds from ancient fruit- or vegetable species not "registered in the catalog" of the French Agricultural Administration. How strange as it sounds, France is keeping a catalog (?!) of a limited number of fruit/vegetable species that you can buy/sell the seeds of... Really amazing. Just search for "carotte" (carrot) in the aforementioned catalog and you will find only 64 varieties listed when there are some 400 ancient varieties in France. The GNIS is the French agricultural body which is responsible for this Orwellian catalog. Here is a link (in french) to a page with figures about the autorized species). It seems quite counterproductive for France, considering its supposed love for quality food products to prevent ancient, minor or nearly-extinct vegetable seeds species to be sold, but this is what it does, and continuing such a short-sighted policy could lead to the loss of these ancient species that are part of the agricultural heritage of the continent. Imagine a country where the only wines available would be Gallo's or Castel's (the French for Gallo), that's something similar that the French Agricultural Administration is putting in place on the vegetable/fruit front, as only a handfull of selected and commercial seeds are de facto allowed and promoted... A militant group of French seed-farmers named Kokopelli also notes in one its article about the history of this catalog that the US and Canada don't have such a catalog by law and that seed companies there sell a huge number of non-hybrid seed species, most of them ancient (non-clones) varieties (the details about North America are in the text in red, last third of the page). About the American seeds companies, see also this page by Jack of Fork & Bottle.