Free The Tastemakers by David Sax

you realize whether you want to let others grow it,” says Roberts. “Then you have to find growers who are willing to take it.”
    By the fifth year enough rice was available to do a few taste tests, so Roberts took some of the precious grains into his kitchen and cooked up a pot. “I said, ‘Wow, that’s tribute rice, and it’s beautiful!’ It had a great inkiness, and the rice wine I made was amazing.” The crop was stabilized, and slow-scale production began on a sixty-six-day yield cycle, from spring planting to fall harvest. In 2009, with a steady supply just a season away, Roberts began talking up China Black to the chefs in his vast network, initially approaching some of the most trusted and powerful tastemakers in his circle and, indeed, America—California’s Thomas Keller, New York’s David Chang, Chicago’s Charlie Trotter, New Orleans’ John Besh, Sean Brock, and others—with the promise that his next delivery was going to contain a fantastically aromatic black rice that would be a perfect fit for where their cooking was going. There was a ton of interest from the chefs, who couldn’t wait to get their hands on China Black.
    â€œThen,” Roberts recalled, with a shake of his head and a chuckle, “the seeds crashed.” The seed stock was already limited, and for some reason the facility storing the seeds accidentally sent Roberts the breeding seeds (the parents), basically the foundational DNA of the crop, that were irreplaceable. Without knowing what had happened, Roberts planted them, only later realizing he’d basically put China Black’s entire family tree into the ground, with no chance of recovery and no ability to replicate easily. “It was like slaughtering my prized breeding bull and selling it to me as steak,” Roberts said, still smarting at the monumental screwup. Everything had to start back at square one, and only now, in the spring of 2013,had Roberts gotten back to the point at which China Black could be grown as a trial on a decent enough scale to provide samples to a few chefs. Not only that, but in the past year the trials at Clemson with China Black had not gone well. “It’s probably the worst of the six varieties out here,” said Harvey, as an alligator slowly crawled into position nearby, under the oblivious herons. “The field conditions weren’t the best last year, and the plot wasn’t level.” Most of the crop hadn’t survived. The fate of China Black was resting in this little plot plus the others around the country, all of which amounted to no more than a handful of acres.
    â€œIf we get a hurricane,” Roberts said, “Hal and I will be sitting here saying, ‘Well, that was fun, let’s do it again!’ ”
    We left the farm and drove back toward Charleston, stopping for lunch at the Glass Onion, a sustainable soul food restaurant that served some of Anson Mills’s products. Over a buttermilk-battered fried chicken po’ boy, beers, and a platter of shrimp and grits, Roberts told me how he’d become the nationally recognized tastemaker of American grains.
    Glenn Roberts was born in Delaware, though his mother was originally from South Carolina, and her family included preachers and mule farmers. He mostly grew up in La Jolla, California, near San Diego. His father was both a professional singer and aerospace worker, and his mother owned restaurants in La Jolla and, later, Marin county, near San Francisco. Though Roberts grew up in the kitchens of these restaurants, with their French-speaking kitchen staff and Continental menus, he never really picked up the hang of cooking (he says he can make one dish really well, but not a meal). His mother, however, taught him what she knew about the Carolina Rice Kitchen, making traditional dishes at almost every family meal. Over the years Roberts, who is a restless and adventurous soul, has