Pigs vs. Cows and the Origins of Fermentation

I've read far too many things about the origin of wine not to wonder why you guys still hang out with me. The theories are amazing, though! The most classic coming from good ol' Mesopotamia, where some fortunate tribe stumbled upon a berry bush, filled their baskets heavily, then discovered over the week that the juice at the bottom of the baskets had become delightfully fizzy. After experimenting with the magic of this, they found that if they crushed the berries, gathered the juice, covered it and let it sit, they would have a safe beverage to drink that rewarded them with a buzz––but that's not why they knew it was important. Between beer and wine (beer being discovered in a similar fashion––neither was "invented"), they almost single-handedly caused the agricultural revolution. However, as my oft-quoted fermentation guru Sandor Katz once told us, animals were well-aware of fermentation before they started walking upright, and those people who discovered how to intentionally make wine, were well of aware of it, too.

I have some theories, and they lie in the difference between pigs and cows.

Fermentation is a necessary part of our digestion. Like pigs and dogs, humans are monogastrics, or single-stomached creatures. Cows and lamb for example (called ruminants), have four stomach compartments, mostly for fermentation. That is to say, they do their own fermentation inside of their stomachs, whereas humans do their fermentation before or while they consume. However, both creatures require it to digest their food, and draw out all the microbial life (the enzymes, vitamins, etc.) that contribute to your immune system and digestion, as well as microbial diversity. It's why we salivate, and why we put vinegar on our salads, and why we like yogurt: fermentation helps to break down the food and provide the nutrients we cannot obtain through food alone. Although pigs are great foragers, there is a reason they like their food disgusting.

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We had a great deal of bruised tomatoes and squash last year that we couldn't give to our shareholders, so we put them in our slop for the pigs. However, put a raw butternut squash on my plate and I'll laugh at you. so will pigs. I discovered that if I packed them in a bucket, covered it with water, and let it sit for a few days, all of the sudden I was feeding the pigs lobster! They loved the freshly fermented squash, fought over them, and devoured them. They love things to be cooked, fermented or rotting, because they, like humans, require a balance of fermented and raw food in their diets.

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Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions writes that, “The enzymes in raw food, particularly raw fermented food, help to start the process of digestion and reduce the body’s need to produce digestive enzymes.” then goes on to say, “A diet composed exclusively of cooked food puts a severe strain on the pancreas, drawing down its reserves, so to speak. If the pancreas is consistently over-stimulated to produce enzymes that ought to be in foods, the result over time will be inhibited function.”

These ancient tribes were well aware of this "inhibited function" and fermented out of necessity. Things like kimchi, kefir, yogurt, pickles, coffee (yep, fermented), and chocolate (fermentation's getting cooler, right?) all have ancient origins, preservative, and biological practicality.

So when I talk about wanting to come to Kentucky and make wine, I don't mean some gimmicky grape wine, I mean anything I can ferment––my motivation is health; my motivation is the same thing that motivated Mesopotamians to start fermenting their own beverages: necessity. It should be mentioned that although most of what you find in the grocery store is legally allowed to call itself wine, it's negligibly related to it. A lot of those wines (non-natural wines) are made more like soda than wine (or "pop" depending on where you're from), and albeit tasty, they lack the beneficial qualities of fermentation. (Sally Fallon also has one of my favorite quotes about mass-produced fruits and vegetables, "Some commercially raised oranges have been found to contain no Vitamin-C," which you can apply to anything commercially raised or produced. Especially wine). My advice is make your own fermented anything. If you eat a lot of cooked food, drink more fermented fruit, eat more fermented food––even pickles!––but make them yourself for best results, or buy them locally.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 2

Welcome to Friday and another edition of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, running water, twitter or bagels. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now––beyond the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? Almost definitely. Ready? Wunderbar.

Part 2: Natural Wines

In last week's post I gave a shout-out to September Wines, the shop I helped manage for nearly 4 years. Their selection is made up of small-production, organic, biodynamic, and sustainably produced wines and it's where I was introduced to the subject of this week's posting: natural wines. Isn't all wine natural? Well, the most concise answer is... sorta. A lot can be done to remove wine from its natural state. In the same way that root beer was originally made from the fermented roots of Sassafras; the vast majority of wine these days is made more like Barq's than actual root beer. Make root beer someday, it's a very different monster, with health and medicinal qualities I doubt A&W strives to exploit. 

So defining natural wine is simply defining wine itself. Wine, in its essence, is fermented grape juice. It's the combination of grape sugars being consumed by yeast, the byproduct of which is alcoholic fermentation. Under the right circumstances, this results in the fermented beverage we call wine. Famed fermentation enthusiast Sandor Katz once said that fermentation is simply choosing what we want to happen to something. All living things will either rot or ferment––from our perspective, become either compost or preserved nutrients––we're just choosing their destiny. Natural wines are as close to that natural process as possible, without excessive filtration, use of industrial yeasts, sulfides or chemicals. This applies to both growing and vinification. Back then however, I had no idea what natural wines were, or why they tasted better than other wines, I just appreciated that they did.

I had booked a trip to France for the upcoming fall and a friend at Domaine Select had suggested I visit their new champagne producer. He was biodynamic, "right up my alley," he said, and made the appointment.

No wines taste quite like natural wines, and I was rendered endlessly curious because of it. When the opportunity arose to visit one of these biodynamic producers, I leapt at it, hoping to get to the bottom of what made these wines tick. That autumn I met a dude who offered me a more tangible understanding of biodynamics, and a better understanding of how sensitive of an agricultural product wine is. Unexpectedly, like my first experiences with natural wine, this compounded my curiosity infinitely. Next week, we'll tell the story of Bertrand Gautherot's many effects on my world, and how he helped perpetuate my growing love-affair with natural wines; a love-affair that started innocently enough, until one day I found myself living in a barn, more sober than I'd ever been. Ironically, all thanks to wine.

Happy Friday!

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 1

Friends! You've made it to Friday! Congratulations and welcome to the first installment of "How I Came to Live in a Barn."

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to move from the grime of New York City to the dirt of Bugtussle, Kentucky, each piece of the story utterly invaluable to the next. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, by that I mean, beyond the blaug of course. Shall we begin? Wunderbar.

Part 1. September Wines

September is a petite boutique wine shop in Manhattan's Lower East Side, specializing in small-production, organic, biodynamic and sustainably-produced wines. It gets its name from the harvest month of the Northern Hemisphere, and the fact that September is a pretty excellent month in general. The shop rests in a corner spot, its windows towering over the thoroughfare of Ludlow and Stanton with its facade illuminated by a brilliant set of interior light fixtures, ones of which I must have been asked about ten dozen times during my 4 year run as assistant manager there. Minimum.

I spent a healthy percentage of my 20's in that shop either tasting, talking about, or selling wine with all my might. My appreciation for the stuff grew exponentially in that time. What I liked about September was that the wines we brought in were a group effort. We tried to bring in wines upon which we all agreed. September is a store with neighborhood sensibilities whose selection has always been based on quality, not branding. The results of this method were that there ended-up being very few big-name brands in the store, but rather a constantly revolving selection of lesser-known gems that consistently happen to beat the brands in every category from taste to value.

Certain patterns emerged not only in the wines we carried, but in the wines I enjoyed personally. My preferences became increasingly centered around a specific style of wines that were unpolished and unashamed of it. Wine had never wowed me like these wines wowed me, and I realized that most of the wines I was falling for were unfiltered, organic, biodynamic or something like it. It was a trend I couldn't ignore if I were going to get my hands on more of them. Wines like the Hilberg Vareij, or Emile Heredia's "G" gamay for example, exemplified this and everything I liked about wine, and I drank a lot of bottles of them in appreciation. There was something alive about them––healthy even. Sometimes they seemed almost effervescent––other times they actually were. I wasn't particularly organically-minded at the time, but the quality of the experience was thoroughly undeniable, and helped make a valid case for why I should be.

The style of wine I'm talking about, we call "natural wine" for lack of a more appropriate term. Natural is a vague and untrustworthy label in reference to food, but it's remarkably specific in reference to wine; you can't fake a natural wine, they taste like nothing else in the world. If and when Yellow Tail decides to produce a "natural" wine (!!!), it will still taste like Yellow Tail, and that's how you'll know it's not natural.

We carried a number of natural wines at the shop, and more so as we all became increasingly enraptured with their genius. Truthfully, I liked wine before September, and before these, but I never obsessed over it. Natural wines consumed me and in next Friday's post, I'll explain how they changed my world, for this week however, I wanted to salute the place that introduced me to them: here's to September Wines - where oh where would I be without you? Parish the thought.

Cheers.

PHOTO BY TYLER MAGYAR