Tuesday 21 August 2018

Mind Your Own Onions


The French phrase 'occupe-toi de tes oignons' means 'mind your own business'. This French company, Nature d'Origine, seems to have been occupying itself with Australian onions.


Normally I buy onions at the market direct from a local producer, but I'd run out and did a quick supermarket shop for onions and other basics after we got back from Switzerland. I just picked up the onions that looked the nicest off the shelf. Imagine my surprise when Simon pointed out that the country of origin was marked as Australia on the label.

Nature d'Origine specialise in onions, garlic and shallots. They are based in Champagne and grow their own as well as import garlic from Argentina and onions from Australia (Tasmania) and New Zealand to tide them over the seasonal gap. Nature d'Origine is a division of Agri-Condiments (€50M turnover), which itself was taken over by Maître Prunille (€250M turnover and Europe's largest dried fruit producer) earlier this year.

2 comments:

chm said...

I understand that the shallots I buy in Arlington (Virginia) are imported from France. Since they’re sold in bulk (en vrac), I have no idea what is their actual country of origin. Has Nature d’Origine anything to do with them? Who knows?

Sheila said...

Almost all the apples at our supermarket this time of year are from New Zealand.

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