“Waiter, There’s a Person in My Soup!”

Billing itself as a “spa theme park,” the Yunessun Resort in Japan’s Hakone prefecture—an hour and a half bullet train ride from Tokyo—offers bathers the option of soaking in a pool filled with red wine. Several times each day, the bath is replenished by a stream of red wine from a giant wine bottle suspended over the pool. Traditional bathhouses and hot springs (known as “onsen” in Japanese), are a centuries-old tradition in Japan, but the offerings at Yunessun are decidedly, gastronomically, modern. Additional bath choices include a Sake Spa, Coffee Spa, Green Tea Spa and a pepper-water filled Ramen Noodle Spa. More than just colored water, these baths are filled with the actual beverage or soup.

How often can cork bark be harvested from cork oak trees?

A. Every year, just like grapes

B. Once every 50 years

C. Once every 3 years

D. Once every 9 years

Cork oak trees can be harvested for the first time for cork bark after about 25 years. Thereafter, the tree bark is harvested every 9 years. A cork tree will be “stripped,” on average, sixteen times in its 150 to 200 life. There is a saying in Portugal (where most of the world’s cork oak forests exist) that: Nature got it wrong–there should be a cork harvest every year, but women should have babies just once every nine years.

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Percentage of British respondents in a recent survey who thought that terroir referred to a small breed of dog. Another 30% said terroir was a type of French horror film. Reassuringly, 34% of those surveyed… Continue reading

“Waiter, There’s a Person in My Soup!”

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