Why does a single spontaneous genetic mutation in a Styrian pumpkin field — sometime in the nineteenth century — matter enough to trigger diplomatic rows, European Parliament debates, and a forensic investigation involving rare earth element fingerprinting? How did an oil so dark it looks like used engine oil become both a peasant medicine worth its weight in gold and a gourmet product evaluated by specialist juries? And why are there now two legally protected “Styrian pumpkin seed oils” from two different countries, both called Styrian?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Austria and the green gold of Styria — the hull-less pumpkin, the fraud, the Slovenian oil war, and a landscape that wrote itself into a genome…
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