Field Guide to Fermentation
Mark LaGasee
Hollarn Vineyard
Andrew Heitz
Activation Foods
Aaron Coe
Coe Cellars
Scott Collier
Holloran Vineyard
Community participation is essential to the preservation of fermentation. When focusing on geographic settings for this field guide most important asset was community. Within this community are avid fermentators, vitners and brewers. When looking at these participants in Cascadia, they all connect and spread the knowledge of fermentation through their passion for the products they create. These interviews are part of my transmedia narrations, which help weave together the story of femerentation through several different media lenses. For more transmedia narratives vist the Transmedia page.
Below were six questions that were fielded regarding participation and fermentation:
1. How do you define fermentation?
2. Speak to a little bit of your relationship with Fermentation? How did you start? Where has it evolved too?
3. What is your favorite part of your fermentation process/Least favorite part?
4. Who are you inspired by in the world of fermentation?
5. What is your favorite fermented food/drink (that is not something you make)
6. Any advice for future fermenters?
Community Participation: People & Passion
1. Fermentation is the metabolic process yeast and bacteria use to convert carbohydrates to alcohols, gases, and acids.
2. My Dad used to make wine at home using concentrated Concord grape juice. It was horrible, I'm sure, but I was always fascinated by the gurgling carboys kept near the wood stove in the basement. After completing a B.S. in Biology I spent several years working in natural food stores where eventually I had to opportunity to manage a department that included wine, which I knew little about. After several more years of tasting and learning about wine from an academic standpoint I had the opportunity to work a harvest. I fell in love with the work and shortly thereafter completed the Winemaking and Vineyard Management program at the Northwest Viticulture Center in Salem. I am now the Winemaker at Holloran Vineyard Wines.
3. Favorite part = the beginning of primary fermentation. The aromatics are just wonderful and unlike anything in the finished product.
Least favorite part = that for wine production, unlike beer and other food-related fermentation, we're able to ferment only once per year.
4. Russ Rainey, founder of Evesham Wood Winery and Barney Watson, my instructor at the Northwest Viticulture Center.
5. Sauerkraut.
6. Something I try to remind myself of each vintage is that we're not really making anything that wouldn't make itself in nature. Our job is not as much wine "maker" as it is wine "shepherd." I don't mean to diminish the importance of training, technique, and good cellar practice, but rather point out that it is just as important to recognize when to do nothing as it is when to do something.
1. The battle of yeast and sugar to morph into alcohol.
2. My relationship would be the nurse that makes sure the yeast stay healthy to combat sugar. And after primary to maintain a clean palatable product.
I stated by my interest in food, which lead to my interest in wine. Which lead to me spamming my resume out trying to work in a winery. I got a response to help with a bottling. I worked hard and continued to bug the winemaker to have me back.
3. Favorite: watching and smelling a native "100% wild yeast " fermentation take off.
Least favorite: when everything is complete and has to be bottled/labeled
4. Aubert De Villaine, Elmer T Lee, Jay Somers, John Paul, Mark LeGasse
5. Kentucky bourbon
6. Always be open to new ideas. There are lifetimes of knowledge to be had.
1. Fermentation is the result of a culture of yeast consuming a food source (usually a form of sugar) producing two primary by-products, carbon dioxide and alcohol. Humans are usually after the latter.
2. My love affair with wine started in the early nineties when I began my restaurant career. But it wasn't til 2010 that my love turned obsession, and I decided I would try my hand at making wine. The last restaurant I worked at was Genoa in SE Portland. I was there for 6 years, both as a server, and running the wine program. After a month long trip to Italy, I left the restaurant business to get into wholesale distribution with an expertise in Italian wines. That led to an interest in trying to make a little for fun, which has now sunk its teeth into me, passing a point that I no longer can return.
3. Favorite part would be smelling all of the delicate esters that primary fermentation gives off after a clean and healthy ferment. As you may suspect, my least favorite part would be if the yeast were stressed from lack of nutrients, and started metabolizing things such as sulphur which can lead to volatile acidities, hydrogen sulphide, monocaptains, dicaptains, and eventually vinegar. That's no bueno.
4. That's a tough one. Probably Peter Dow of Cavatappi winery in Washington. I was astonished at how varietally correct his "Molly's Cuvée" of Sangiovese was. It tastes more like a chianti than any other domestic Sangiovese I've ever tried. I wanted to know how he did this. So much so, that it led me to making wine. I even found out where he sourced his grapes from, and acquired the same fruit for my production. I am now putting my fourth vintage to barrel, and my second vintage, the 2012, just won a gold medal at the Northwest Food and Wine Festival.
5. Being Scottish, Welsh and Norwegian, I like WAY too many fermented things. For food, oddly enough, I would probably say kimchi. If done right, it's extraordinary. For drink, my favorite wine of all time is probably a Barbaresco with a good amount of age on it. It's one of those few wines, similar to Sangiovese in a way, that possesses the ability to be both masculine and feminine at the same time. Strong and assertive, yet elegant and full of finesse. Sort of a ballerina with cankles, if you will... And far less brawny and tannic than a Barolo.
6. If you are thinking of dabbling in the magic of fermentation, do a little reading and research and try to do it the best you can. Somewhere between the delicate nuances of this challenging art, lies the difference between Two Buck Chuck and Chateau Lafite.
1. Fermentation, in the sense that I use the word, refers to microbial action whereby microbes and enzymes convert proteins, starches, carbohydrates, phytochemicals and other compounds into products like organic acids, carbon dioxide and alcohols. However, not being a scientist and preferring not to relate my experience in those terms or on that level, I more generally see fermentation as food preservation and the process of creating bioavailable superfoods.
2. Having grown up in a culinary household with an Italian grandmother who lived with us, and in a culturally diverse area (South central AK) I was surrounded by a rich and ferments. From a young age I was exposed to and was familiar with Asian ferments like, kimchi, poke, miso, etc., as well as Western ferments like fine cheese, wine, beer, sauerkraut, pickles, dry cured meats etc. I suppose without even knowing it I practiced fermentation from a very young age by brining salmon, which was part of our preservation process when we went fishing each year.
The summer after my freshman year of college in Chicago I began working at a small artisan cheese shop. I worked with small, local farmstead cheesemakers in developing and improving on their recipes and aging processes while there and even practiced some rudimentary affineur or cheese ripening. An in depth study of Ecomarxism and journalism and living at intentional communities when I moved to Eugene brought the concepts of health, sustainability and stewardship to my idea of food.
My professional fermentation experience in Eugene began with cheesemaking at Fern's Edge Goat Dairy. Getting to see the inner workings of a farmstead in motion imbued me with respect for the
other live and healing food practices like sprouting.
In 2012, I was asked my dear friend and business partner, Christina Sasser, to help start Activation Foods with her partner Elric Centers, a new live food business. I have since taken over operations in Eugene and continued our production of live cultured, healing superfoods.My focus at the moment with my fermentation practice has been mostly working with the jun mothers and lacto-ferments and experimenting by using these ferments as transporters for herbal medicine.
3. The entire process of working with a culture from initial brew or production to tasting the final creation is a fascinating meditation. Understanding that by engaging in fermentation we are communing with our sacred microbe friends brings a new awareness to life and requires presence, attention and nurturing throughout the entire process. My most heinous part of any and all fermentation processes is bottling.
4. I certainly admire and have been influenced by many famous people involved with fermenting food. Sally Fallon, Bill Molison, and Sandor Katz are a few off the top of my head. But I'm personally much more inspired and aspire to be like my close friends, family and community that keep these cultures. Jerry Smith, who started Herbal Junction in Eugene and introduced the West to Jun, is a huge inspiration for me. His herbalism and fermentation practices are infused with such incredible depth and artfulness. My friend Brian Strong, who owns Botonical Symbiosis in Eugene, my dear friend Christina Sasser also come to mind as supportive family here in Oregon for health, vibrancy and ferments.
5. I'm excited about soon working with the koji culture in making miso, which is something that has been on my backburner for a long time. I love koji in all forms, however.
6. Explore everything, listen for what calls to you and know your cultures intimately.
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