Local Serendipitous Take: Great local natural brews, olive oil, in a cute tasting room in a Natural…read moreFood store, run by a nice local family.
One fine Saturday, after having finished shopping at the wonderful Templeton Farmers Market just a few blocks away, I decided at random to drive down Main St. to see if anything was interesting. Our eyes where caught by the pop-market & plants in front of this warehouse-like building and we stopped to look. As we literally wandered into the main shop past all the plants outside, I spied this interesting wood paneled nook with a full bar & bottles in the corner.
It had a serene look and this nice lady greeted me. It turns out that she was one of the owners. I was curious about at first the olive oil and then when she pointed out their wines & ciders, I was even more interested.
I tasted the oil & I think two brews. The Olive Oil was herbaceous & good, but I had already bought three Gold Award winning local EVOO's from local farms and another Templeton winner was at the Farmers Market. One can only use so much EVOO before it gets old.
While they had bottled EVOO in a nice bottle with a cork, they also had a big tank of it, to fill your own bottle which I liked.
While their brews tend to be on the dry side per the owner, there was one that was to my taste and I bought a bottle.
During the conversation, I heard all kinds of nice things about organic, but since alcohol is inherently not that great for you, I only listened causally..until the term Biodynamic came up. I had no clue as to what it was, but it sounded healthy at the time.
When I finally came home to look it up at home on Google, I found out that it was kind of a takeoff on pseudo-science, namely, the more well know Homeopathy. As far as I can tell, this was sort of the same thing, but for farming and first thought of in the 1920's, which was in a time when the older pseudoscience, Homeopathy [late 1800's] saw a resurgence in the US.
Let us think that in these eras, we did not have a clue about alot of things, especially in medical science. In those days, if your equivalent of a PCP wanted to give you turpentine to drink and you then threw up, I am sure you would possibly latch onto basically magic potion with almost nothing or nothing in it.
The placebo effect is naturally so strong that you can have lots of benefit from even blessed water, or even quite a few side effects, like nausea & vomiting. People are terrible test subjects even when the later rigorous formulation of double-blinded Placebo controlled studies became the standard. How do I know? I used to help run some of these studies on some blockbuster medications in Hawaii. Since Hawaii had all kinds of interesting cross-cultural themes, I also found out that the most popular Chemotherapy drug in Japan was sold at doctor's offices [where they made a profit] and it was a placebo....& there was nothing "Homeopathic" about it. It was a culturally specific thing that involved confidence in their doctor, that invoked a placebo response, but ultimately they still typically died from cancer all the same...except for rare spontaneous remissions which do happen regardless of treatment.
Oddly enough, I used to buy wine from another vineyard that used crystals to enhance their crops. While I thought it another myth, they still made excellent tasting wine, and I did not have to join a cult to drink it.
While the Biodynamic stuff and some other stuff on their website is IMHO rather out there, they do a very nice job of caring for what they do, and creating stuff that has less junk, that one does not need, or can have a reaction to Sulfites.
On the other hand, some things can give one pause, like statements like they use natural yeast, and let things sit around for awhile.....or use Clay Amphoras sometimes or Oak Barrels at other times.
As someone who is a retired science researcher & has a hobby of making DIY Cider, Probiotic Veges, Natto, and much more, I tend to be really careful with how I make stuff & have had all kinds of run ins with stuff which grows, where I do not want it to. The air contains countless spores or active bacteria, fungus, mold, viruses, etc...and quite a few times they decide to grow where I do not want them. In many cases, the short-term natural preservative is either the rampant growth of your culture or a byproduct like Lactic Acid....or to some degree, the yeast/alcohol mix itself. Longer preservation times involve more complex efforts like canning.
In any case, if you want products that have less interventions and still feel comfortable with their techniques, it is worth a try. If you have health conditions that involve the GI or immune system, maybe consult an MD before using such products, since some may contain active cultures for all I know.
