When Carolina Gold edged toward extinction in the early-20th century, a victim of crossbreeding and the rage for new, modern rice varieties, Carolina Gold rice wine disappeared along with it. They also subjected the rice to the same treatment that’s been afforded every grain known to man: They turned it into alcohol.Īlmost nothing is known about the production methods of South Carolina rice wine-there’s little to no documented history of the stuff, and to cap off the obscurity, the crop itself eventually fell out of favor. Enslaved Africans grew Carolina Gold in their subsistence gardens, using the nutty, chewy rice to pad dishes of trapped game, fish and entrails salvaged from hog butchering sessions. It was served three times a day in 18th-century plantation households in the form of breads, waffles, soups, fritters, bean salads and seafood stews. Uptown at The Ordinary, fellow Beard winner Mike Lata turned the rice into pudding and served it after lobster.īut in the days when Carolina Gold was central to the economies of South Carolina and Georgia, creating enormous fortunes for landholders and shaping a slave trade that would forever scar two continents, the long-grain rice wasn’t treated so fastidiously. So venerated is it in contemporary Lowcountry cooking that James Beard award winning Charleston chef Sean Brock famously scooped it into a bowl and included it on a $75 tasting menu. Carolina Gold rice, a lost-and-found Southern food, has come to stand for all that’s true and good about pre-industrial flavors.
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