This week on Under the Radar with Callie Crossley:
More than half of all lobsters in the country come from Maine. But rising costs are driving Maine’s fishermen to transition from catching lobsters to farming shellfish.
“It’s a really, really tough time for lobstermen in Maine,” said Amy Traverso, senior food editor at Yankee Magazine. She explained that new regulations, lobsters moving north, and a lower deck price for lobsters are all factors affecting the industry.
Traverso said lobstering tends to be a multigenerational career. She pointed to the father and son owners of PenBay Farmed Scallops in Stonington, Marsden Brewer and Bob Brewer, as an example.
“Marston was a third-generation lobsterman,” she said, “and they’re farming scallops using a method that they learned by traveling to Japan. … It’s sort of a more sustainable lifestyle going out on the water to one area, as opposed to, like, heading out.”
Meanwhile, historic old grapes in Sicily and Uruguay have been reborn into new wines.
“One is this Sicilian red grape called perricone,” explained Boston Wine School founder Jonathan Alsop. “In the 1800s this used to be the most widely planted grape in all of Sicily. It got wiped out in the phylloxera epidemic in the late 1800s. And in the last few years it’s starting to claw its way back.”
Plus, there’s a new gluten-free bakery in Cambridge.
But we couldn’t stop the conversation there. Listen to this web extra about the explosion of Portuguese restaurants in Greater Boston, and how to pair wine with Chinese food and other cuisines.
It’s our food and wine roundtable, early summer edition.
GUESTS
Jonathon Alsop, founder and executive director of the Boston Wine School, author of “The Wine Lover’s Devotional”
Amy Traverso, senior food editor at Yankee Magazine, co-host of GBH’s Weekends with Yankee and author of “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook”
