Vidalia Celebrates the Sweet Onion
Who knew there wasn’t one already, Road Trips Foodies, but Friday (April 29, 2011) is the grand opening of the Vidalia Onion Museum, 100 Vidalia Sweet Onion Drive, Vidalia, Georgia.
Exhibits illuminate the sweet onion’s economic, cultural and culinary significance by walking visitors through a variety of topics from when and how Vidalia onions were discovered to where Vidalias can be grown and what makes them so very sweet and special.
Of course, the opening coincides with the Vidalia Onion Festival, held Thursday (April 28, 2011) through Sunday (May 1, 2011) at the Vidalia Regional Airport, 2921 Airport Road, Vidalia, Georgia. A highlight is the Vidalia Onion Culinary Extravaganza on Thursday at Southeastern Technical College (tickets required).
In case you didn’t know, a Vidalia onion is a sweet onion grown in a production area defined by law in Georgia and by the United States Code of Federal Regulations. These onions were first grown near Vidalia, Georgia, in the early 1930s. They are unusually sweet due to the low amount of sulfur in the soil in that area.
Georgia’s state legislature passed the “Vidalia Onion Act of 1986” which authorized a trademark for “Vidalia Onions” and limits the production area to Georgia or any subset as defined by the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture, according to Wikipedia. The current definition includes these 13 counties (Emanuel, Candler, Treutlen, Bulloch, Wheeler, Montgomery, Evans, Tattnall, Toombs, Telfair, Jeff Davis, Appling, and Bacon) plus portions of these seven counties (Jenkins, Screven, Laurens, Dodge, Pierce, Wayne, and Long).
The Vidalia onion was named Georgia’s official state vegetable in 1990.
