Rachel Mahoney

After just a few days of settling into France, the most romantic country in the world, I quickly fell in love and didn’t want to leave…Two weeks just didn’t feel like enough. Looking back, this has been an incredible learning experience. I got out of my comfort zone, overcame challenges, met some great people, learned […]

If you’ve been following along my posts, we’ve discussed the French gastronomic meal, terroir, wine tasting, and Burgundy cheeses, but there is one more theme that I haven’t discussed in detail; French Patrimoine. Patrimoine, or patrimony, is the idea of having a shared heritage and is a fundamental component of French culture and identity. The […]

How does the way one approaches food reflect our culture? In 2010, the United Nations Center for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added French Gastronomy to their list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” The gastronomic meal is a French social tradition for celebrating important events. It is characterized by all the aspects surrounding […]

Hello all! For this post, I want to give a basic overview of cheesemaking and discuss how microorganisms are involved. Then, I will introduce my two favorites from the trip. For a basic definition, cheese is a dairy product that is made by curdling the casein proteins within milk and removing the whey. This process […]

What does it mean to be a Burgundy Wine? The concept of terroir is the most essential component when it comes to understanding what’s special about a Burgundy wine. So, what is terroir? (Pronounced tehr-waa) It can be defined as the micro-conditions provided by the environment in which the grapes are grown, that contribute to […]

Hello and welcome to my first post! I’m Rachel, and for the next two weeks, I will be in France studying the microbiology and culture of cheese and wine! I would first like to take this opportunity to thank SEBS International Programs who was one of the donors that made this trip possible for me. I […]