Chat with Duncan Macintosh--Part 3

Native Tinawon

Duncan and I talked about what can be done to preserve the traditional rice varieties, like the tinawon in the Ifugao region.

“You know,” he begins, “there’s been a recent discussion: is rice like wine? There’s this winemaker called Beaujolais Nouveau in France and they’ve made a business making the freshest wine around—it’s a marketing gimmick. Instead of aging it, they bottle the wine and sell it immediately all over the world. It’s all about marketing and entrepreneurial skill.”

“What if you took that idea and multiplied it all over the world? Wine lovers talk about how the unique soil and climactic condition creates the wine variety. What about rice boutiques? What if rice were marketed the same way?”

I told him about a business in the U.S. that is exporting the Ifugao tinawon and selling it as a boutique rice there.

“That’s great, but if you really want longevity in the market,” Duncan said, “you’ve got to sell it to the affluent middle class in Asia. Get it known there where you have tens of millions of rice critics—people that really know rice and eat it with every meal. They’re sick of the same old rice they’ve always eaten and they want something new. That’s where you’ve got to market it.”

It made me happy to know that I had been spending time watching a business doing just that, though their market is mostly American. He is right though—the ideal people to go after are the nouveau riche in China—an up and coming force that might be eating up all the rice, but potentially able to save the native varieties as well.