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The Compass: The Understory: Life in the Soil: Life in soil: Tasting the earth in France

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Life in soil: Tasting the earth in France

28/09/2022 GMT

The Understory: Life in the Soil

BBC World Service - The Compass, The Understory: Life in the Soil, Life in soil: Tasting the earth in France

How a healthy soil teeming with fungi and microbes can enhance the flavour of food

How a healthy soil teeming with fungi and microbes can enhance the flavour of food and drink

Writer and environmentalist Isabelle Legeron is in France to see how cultivating a healthy soil, teeming with fungi and microbes, can enhance the flavour profile of food and drink - from cheese to coffee to wine. She explores the fundamental role soil plays in the notion of “terroir’ - the conviction that the natural environment in which plants are grown, can be experienced in the taste and texture of the food and drink made from them.
 
Isabelle speaks to a cast of soil microbiologists, land managers and taste experts - Lydia and Claude Bourguignon (France), Anne Biklé (USA), the Le Puy vineyard in Bordeaux, Barry Smith (UK), Darek Trowbridge (USA) and Hans-Peter Schmidt (Switzerland).

Presenter: Isabelle Legeron
Producer: Sasha Edye-Lindner
A Cast Iron Production for BBC World Service

(Photo: A vineyard)

The Compass: The Understory: Life in the Soil

Isabelle Legeron explores the thrilling complexity of soil.

Passionate and knowledgeable, a soil expert and "terroir-ist", Isabelle Legeron brings the earth to life. Leaving stones unturned, she revels in the thrilling complexity of this seemingly static, crumbly mass beneath our feet. She maps the rise and fall of our understanding of soil to her own life, growing up on a farm in Cognac, at a time when nitrogen fertiliser promised food for the world. Today it's the challenge of our time with increasing tracts of dead soil across over cultivated regions of the planet. She considers soil on other planets, forest soils, rock soils, the character of soils and how this seemingly same earth gives each of us a powerful sense of our own identity.

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