▷S2E7 Avery Robinson Wants a Rye Revolution

Culinary historian and bakery manager Avery Robinson works with a nonprofit called Rye Revival, encouraging people to plant and enjoy more rye. Avery explains what’s special about rye for ecology, distillation, nutrition and cultural connection.

He shares Yiddish drinking sayings and thoughts on drinking as an agricultural act while he and Rose Thomas taste Balcones rye whiskey and enjoy three types of rye bread from Black Rooster Food. 

There is a bit of New York City street noise early in the interview as a result of recording with the window open on a hot day in July.

Learn more about Rye Revival at ryerevival.org
Order Black Rooster Rye Bread at blackroosterfood.com
Read The Rye Bread Marriage by Michaele Weissman

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  they toast it together with Amashka, which with some sort of liquor. And so the song from 1868 that preceded the writing of Shalom Le 'ichem's text by 50 years or so, and preceded the production of Fiddler on the Roof by nearly 100 years to the date is really all about how whiskey is there as we are making our agreements. It's there to celebrate these high points in our lives and it's also there as we celebrate the memories of those who have passed and throughout our lives we have a whiskey spirit. And these people were in central and northern Europe, eastern Europe. Rye was the most popular grain for alcohol production over there and also that it's a core to like the way that Yiddish speaking Jews and their grandchildren and great -grandchildren are dancing it today most famously through filled around the roof. So, without we say [speaking in Hebrew] [speaking in Hebrew] Welcome to Modo di Bere, the podcast about local drinks and local sayings. I'm your host, Rose Thomas Bannister. Today my guest is Avery Robinson, a culinary historian in Brooklyn who has degrees in environmental studies with a focus in sustainable food systems and culinary history. Avery is a rye revivalist who does some really interesting work that has tie -ins to food and drinks and culture and ecology. He's a really interesting person and I'm so excited to have him on the show today. Avery, welcome. - Thanks, Rose, I'm so excited to be here. This is really wonderful. - I know, I'm so excited to have you here in my apartment today in Brooklyn. We have a whole spread of rye products that I'm really excited about trying, but first tell us what is a rye revivalist? So in 2020, I started a non -profit with a bunch of farmers and grain policy folks. We're called Rye Revival. We promote rye as a climate change mitigation strategy. How is rye the grain, a climate mitigation strategy? So rye is a small grain and it is the cold hardiest of grains out there. So it can be planted late in the fall, later than anything else after once corn harvest, whether you're in New York and you're harvesting it in November or you're in Wisconsin and it's in October, it gets pretty cold afterwards. And so you can always plant rye after that harvest. And by planting it, you're preventing a lot of soil erosion by keeping roots in the ground, which keeps that soil there. So you're doing the double benefit of holding onto soil and preventing it from being eroded. But also, rye can have roots that grow up to seven feet deep. And so when you have a plant that has roots that are that deep, you're actually tapping into nutrients that other plants won't. And so it significantly reduces the nutrient and input needs of your farm. And by having roots that are so deep and having so many root hairs on those roots, you're actually taking a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it underground. And so when we talk about, like, how can we get carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere? It's like, we have this amazing tool. It's called agriculture. And we can go back to what people have been doing for thousands of years and plant rye as part of a rotation with our other crops to actually make a really generative, sustainable, and climate -friendly cropping system. In wine, we talk all the time about deep roots and nutrients and minerals, and that's a big thing with wine vines as well. So why do we need to revive rye? Why did people stop planting it? Why do we want to bring it back? People are still growing rye, especially in northern Europe and in eastern Europe. Rye is one of the most their grains that are grown there. And in the United States for many years, rye was an incredibly popular crop. We used to grow millions of bushels of rye. And over the years, rye has been disincentivized thanks to agricultural policies that are both providing subsidies for certain crops and not providing subsidies for rye. It's Rye revival, we're actually working on something right now, we're helping to get more people to have the rye insured. And it's really difficult for a farmer to grow a crop if there's no guarantee that they will make any money. And so we're working on some of these incentives. But also in the 1970s, I think was 1972, rye was delisted from the Chicago Board of Trade. And so it was no longer traded as a commodity, it was seen as like too small of a grain, too small of a crop to actually be recognized as one of the more marketable crops out there. And so as there's been a shift from rye in the agricultural incentives, there's also been a market shift, which is not recognizing rye's exciting opportunities in ways that it fits into many of the products that we are consuming these days and also reflects a lot of the history where rye used to be the American whiskey. Rye bread was among the more popular breads produced in this country. When we think of Boston brown bread, this iconic bread from New England, like the cradle of liberty area, it's corn, rye, and wheat. And so it was the indigenous American grain. It was the cold, hardiest grain rye. And then it was also wheat that makes that beautiful, fluffy bread and is also much easier to control and trace in a kitchen and so are much easier control and and understand. And so there's been a shift away from rye, but there's still bakeries like my own that are continuing to bake rye. There's still distilleries that are producing rye. There are breweries that are making rye PAs. There are people making rye malts. There is a lot of excitement around Rye but it is much smaller. I remember talking with you when we first met a little bit about that history of Rye Whiskey. As listeners of this podcast may or may not be aware, before I got into wine, I started with cocktails. So basically, I'm a musician. So I was always in bars and also sometimes working at restaurants in between playing music. And I became a cocktail creator first in the Midwest. And then when I moved to New York, where I then got really into wine and haven't done as much with cocktails in my day -to -day work. But I remember when I was first studying to become a bartender. And I got some books about cocktails. One of the historical stories that drew me to this topic, and let me know, I'm sure you know a lot about more of this than I do. But what I remember was during prohibition, the east coast made more rye whiskies and then in the Midwest, they made corn -based bourbon. But out here during prohibition, there was more need for, you know, when a place would close, a distillery would close, someone else would move in. Whereas with more space out in the Midwest, people would just lock the gates and nothing would get put in there. And so the way that I understood it was that Rye would never really caught up, you know, especially with then you have to wait for the aging so that you can start make money again. So basically the bourbon distillers could start production right away again. And there was some, this idea about Canada and they have something they call rye whiskey, but it's really a blend, which is a whole other Bollowax. But I just wondered what you can tell us about That story and the history of rye whiskey in America in general Yeah, so I'll start with the history of rye whiskey in America will move towards prohibition And so when the first pilgrims and colonists came to North America They brought with them a lot of grains. They brought with them wheat. They brought with them rye They brought with them barley and a host of others the only native grain to North America is corn And so they came here and they did not have an existing infrastructure for breweries or for malting or for disorders, and so they had to create all that themselves. So any distilled liquor in the, in what is today the United States and also in Canada, like all that came from the European traditions. And as people came here, they had a priority, and we still do this today, of what we use our grains for. So we, we love it for our baguettes, for baguettes for our pizza, for our pita or croissant, you can't do that. You can't make those in such a way with rye bread or with rye grain because rye bread is so dense. We see this in the bread in front of us, there's like no air holes, it doesn't rise. And so rye was often used for animal feed, it was used for a different type of bread. And it was also used as a flavoring agent in liquor. If you were going to make a barley whiskey, you could add rye in there and it would add a certain type of flavor to it. But you could also just make whiskey or a liquor just straight out of rye because it was growing in different regions and it was more hearty of a crop. We like to say that rye is really scrappy. You can throw it in New England like terrible, rocky soils and you will get a good crop out of it. You can throw it anywhere and rye will find a foothold. And so When a farmer was growing this they often were not growing it as the priority grain But they were using it because it was very valuable and they could make liquor out of it And as humans we really do enjoy liquor and we do enjoy beer and we enjoy these other products And so rye was the original American whiskey partially because it was so easy to grow in these new conditions that people didn't know Where would be the best land soil growing wheat, where it would be the best for growing barley and other crops. And so if they happen to have rye, and especially rye leftover, they could use that in their stills. Moving forward, as we expanded our colonization and acquisition eminent domain of North America and moved into the Midwest, where I'm also from, not from Nebraska, but I'm from Michigan, And as we moved further west, the land that we had available to us to put on undertill really expanded. And so Nebraska, in addition to being the home of the corn husks, also produces a lot of wheat, as do many of the other great plain states. And so when you had an abundance of wheat that could come out of those states as well as other places on the East Coast where they got better in growing their wheat, there was less of a focus on rye for many of these products and wheat and corn both made a really sweet whiskey They made really sweet alcohol where rye is known as having a bit more of a Backbone some bite and some spice to it And so if you're drinking a young whiskey which more often than not people were not didn't want to make a whiskey and have it sit for 15 or 20 years they wanted to consume what they wanted to sell it they were interested in having those sweeter whiskies. During prohibition, a lot of American alcohol consumers did procure their alcohol from Canada, which as you mentioned is known for Canadian rye whisky. Canadian whisky is often just known as rye whisky, and my understanding is that Canadian rye doesn't actually have to have rye in it in order to receive that designation. But most whiskey grown in Canada is rye whiskey, or most whiskey produced in Canada is rye whiskey because the grains that they're using for their whiskey are often rye because it's so cold up there that they're growing season is so much shorter and thus the cold hardy benefits of rye actually are rather well received in the Canadian agriculture and distilling public. And so in during prohibition a lot of right that came across the border whether that was from the Canadian Plains or in Detroit we had you know Walkerville across the river from the city of Detroit and people there was a whole huge smuggling ring that was a fairing Literally like on fairies Liquor from Canada to the United States. It was just across the short Detroit River and a lot of that was Canadian rye. And so a lot of the whiskey that sustained the American people, especially in the Midwest, was Canadian rye. And then you have, as prohibition trailed off and as American taste shifted, there was a concomitant shift in the whiskey and alcohols that were being produced and preferred. And a lot of those had to shifted towards clear grain spirits and so neutral flavored alcohol. So vodka started to become much more popular in the middle of the 20th century. And we also see the explosion of tequila. And we also see a shift in many more gin cocktails as well that people are enjoying. And maybe that's just they're doing like gin and tonic or vodka and tonic. But the, I wanted the neutrality, the blandness of those spirits worked in their favor in that time period. - As opposed to the aged. - As opposed to an age, but also just a flavor forward rise. So even a clear rye spirit straight off the still is gonna have a lot of flavors in it, which is why you often don't see so many rye vodkas. And so with that shift of where there was production or where there was a desire and market demand for liquor, and also with the Green Revolution and the amazing expansion of the production of wheat and other grains, rye sort of fell to the wayside because the land that people were using for rye, they realized they could just do corn and soy alternations. They could do wheat and corn alternations, something like that. And they didn't need to have rye for the ecological benefits because the Green Revolution said, look, we have fertilizers, we have pesticides, we have all these amazing agricultural technologies, these inventions that are going to radically shift and our production styles, we're going to get on the yield escalator, and we're just going to have, you know, 100, 200 bushel an acre corn. Wheat is going to go through the roof, and that's what happened thanks to Norman Borlaug and that agricultural revolution. And when that happened, we also moved away from the smaller grains, and we moved away from thinking about farmland as a ecosystem, as part of a green living entity. It was only, it became a productive entity. So tell me more about this green, you're calling it green revolution? The green, the agricultural revolution. The agricultural revolution. What time period are we talking about. That time period is starting in the 1930s but really moving into the 50s and 60s like we see that with what's happening with post -World War II access ammonia and nitrates that we had created for munitions but we're like what are we going to do with all this? Oh, it's an amazing nitrogen fertilizer. Yes, I remember hearing from a biodynamic wine advocate named Monty Walden. I should remember who he was quoting, but the quote was that this conventional agriculture treats the world, the earth with hatred and violence. And that's when I first learned about the actually ammunition starting this chemical fertilizer moment. And I found that to be so striking. Like the, in the organic and regenerative and biodynamic worlds, often the enemies from that agricultural model are the chemical companies, Monsanto, DuPont, and others who made their money and their names during World War II, producing like chemicals that became munitions. And now they're producing more that agricultural. I see. So they wanted to stay in business. I see. From growing up in Nebraska as well, when I became really interested in Italian wine and getting in touch with Italians and other Europeans who were just so proud of an array of agricultural products, whether these were lentils or the local grain or this type of buckwheat and going into different meats and cheeses and of course wine, actually it became angry because I grew up in the bread basket of the country and I felt that I had no connection to the land. I just remember these vast fields of corn and soybeans and this monoculture and I was also realizing that those were only owned by very few people. Someone who was in my life when I was a child who lost their farm and ended up having to work in a feedlot, which is, if you're listening to this in Italy and you don't know what a feedlot is, it's not a nice place for cows. It's a not nice place for cows or people. I just became inspired by just this really strong tradition, the history and the land and just this pride in the biodiversity of those places and in the culture of being farmers and it's something that I never expected to become so passionate and interested in. I thought I was just drinking wine and I wanted to be a sommelier and study those things but of course it leads to so many different kinds of cultural fields of study. So I wanted to ask you, what about the whiskey industry? What work have you done with rye whiskey? - Segwaying from your last comment, I want to acknowledge that drinking to paraphrase Wendell Berry is an agricultural act. Then when we pick up a glass of wine, that wine is not just an entity that came in a glass bottle, but it was actually something that was grown in the field, that someone tended to that crap. Someone had to intentionally plant that crap and then through many steps down the way, we have this bottle of wine, hopefully a beautiful bottle of wine, but you know, even if it's a bottle of two buck truck that is still an agricultural product. And so my work with whiskey producers and distillers, is that really when people go to a liquor store and they're confronted with all these options in front of them, and they're wondering, how can I square my values with also my desire to indulge this vice and to consume a liquor? Where can I meet in the middle? And So when I go to a liquor shop, I actually, without knowing anything about anything on any of the bottles in front of me, if there's a rye whiskey or like a rye vodka, I know that those are actually a very regenerative crop because of the way in which rye grows, because of the way in which rye is a part of an agricultural system, that people grow rye not because they're trying to make money out of it. You can make money out of rye and we can talk about that. and Rye Revival is happy to help, but like really Rye is there to help the agricultural system to help your farmland, to help heal your land and make all the other crops that you grow in that system better. And so when I see a bottle of Rye Whiskey, I know that at least 51 % of the grain in that bottle is coming from farmlands that are actually thoughtful of what is going on in their plant. And when I speak to a distillery, I try and remind them about that because the grains can tell a story. We see this with third wave coffee and how you can pick up a bag at a store or at a coffee shop. And there's a story about that farmer, about that particular finca in Costa Rica or that farm community in Ethiopia, where they're actually picking wild cherries or a community in Java and Indonesia. And so when you get to tell that story of the grain, people start to listen. And I think one of the things that Whiskey and the spirits market in general has done is really been to focus on what is the label and like why is this so exciting and who is our brand ambassador. But my environmental approach is like, "Let rye be a branded basseter." I want to know what's happening with this grain, and I think that consumers ought to be aware of this and not just be hidden behind the cell phone veil of this particular opaque bottle. And when you pick up a beautiful bottle of whiskey, there could be only a dollar's worth of grain in there between the corn, the wheat, the rye, the malted barley, the unmalted barley. There are so little money spent on the actual grains, the product that we are drinking, the one of the four components of that whiskey. So you have the grain, you have yeast, you have water, and you also have the barrel that it's aged in, and that core component that is the product of our land, we're totally neglecting that. And so if we actually open up a bottle and be like, wow, this was grown on this land, maybe there's a story about that farmer, but maybe there's just an acknowledgement that this actually is grown in this county, this region, this state, or even this country, the United States we import somewhere around 11 million pounds or bushels of rye a year, which is just a little bit over what we produce locally. And all of the stuff that we import is for production of food products. So whether that's red, or that's whiskey, or that's malted rye for use in beer and whiskey and other products. And so when we are thinking about how we can actually make a change, I mean, this is not to be an America -first situation, but this is our land that we live on here, and we want to sustain the soil beneath us, and so we get to focus on that. And that's the conversation that I have with our distilleries. And so I've connected with a handful of facilities here in New York State that have created a particular designation called Empire Rye. They created this in 2016, harkening back to American whiskey history to New York being one of the original states producing a particular type of rye whiskey. They said that this rye whiskey, either that we are producing here in New York, needs to be 75 % rye minimum, not just 51 % that is classic for rye whiskey. It needs to be rye that has grown here in the state of New York, and it is rye that has aged here in the state of New York in new American oak barrels for a minimum of four years. When they made this designation in 2016, none of the Empire rye guild members were actually producing whiskey like this. So this was a challenge to them. It was also a challenge to farmers to be able to provide enough local grain of high quality that they could use and they've done that and so now there are eight or so leaders in this Empire Rye movement. Many of them are based here in New York City, but there's also, I think, 20 or so members that are producing an Empire Rye and it's really exciting to be involved with distilleries who are actually going out of the way to find farmers because Rye doesn't exist on the commodity trading market and so you can't go to your standard grain elevator and just get the type of rye that you want. These distilleries are also bringing back particular varieties of rye for particular flavors. And so there's an experience of terroir that one can have with rye because a denko rye grown in the Hudson Valley and a denko rye grown in the um finger lakes are going to produce two different flavor rise, even if they're made from a distillery, a block away from each other that are using the same water. And so we know that about the varieties themselves. And we also know that about the terroir. And so these distilleries are trying to bring back grains. Maybe they were grains that like George Washington used, or there was the most popular rye whiskey in the 19 teens. And there were award -winning rye farmers on an island in Lake Michigan, making rows and growing rose and rye to be this protected seed stock for a rye whiskey that in the 1930s it was advertised as on a bottle of whiskey, this is rose and rye whiskey. I can't imagine a world where like before the, this current moment in the 21st century of someone being like, look, I made this bourbon And I use bloody butcher corn like to say like that's actually very particular that people are identifying a variety And so in the 1930s we see rose and rye and that was marketing cachet And so what is the value add that distillers can get by working with farmers to grow a particular type of A variety of grain and also to grow it to their specifications because again This is not As public of analogy and so working with distillers actually see them Connecting with farmers and they're building these relationships and those relationships translate to a much more devoted and engaged Customer base because they're there for that story. They're not just like anyone can go to like a store and you can buy a $20 $50 bottle of whiskey But why should I spend $50 on this one over that one? Well, there's a story there I can see the see the passion of the culinary historian in these stories, which are so great. And it makes me want to taste some rye. So you brought a rye for us today. Yeah. Okay. So this rye whiskey that I brought is a Texas rye whiskey. It's called Balcones. It's a cast -strength rye, and it is a rye whiskey where all of the grain is grown in the Belcones region of Texas, and listeners may be surprised to hear that, and you as well, that as I say, rise the cold, hardiest grain, you can grow it in every single one of the continental United States, and more rye grain is grown in Oklahoma than any other individual state. Oklahoma, being so near to Texas, one of the varieties that they grow in Oklahoma is this variety called Noble, and they grow another variety called Elban. It's just the reverse, so I'm not entirely sure which one preceded the other because I always confuse this. I need my notes. But Belcone's whiskey is grown with one of those two varieties grown in Texas, all of the grain for this whiskey is grown in Texas. And I first encountered this at a liquor shop in Jersey City When I was visiting a friend over there and I was blown away by this because I have never tasted rye whiskey That is so different from what I Generally experience and that has a very particular and more conventional rye flavor So I'm gonna pass that to you and again be aware that it's a number 26 percent proof So it may need a drop of water. We also here. That's up. Do you want a little water? At this point in the show, if cultural, linguistic, agricultural, or culinary diversity is something you value, please take a moment now to visit patreon .com /mododbere and sign up to become a supporter of the show. Your support is crucial for me to be able to continue doing this work, and I really appreciate it. Avery and I will be here when you get back. So rather than tell you what I thought was so different or exciting about this, I'll let you sort of indulge us. Well, it's got an absolutely gorgeous amber color, which just seems to be kind of vivacious and fun to me. It's a little more orange. Mm -hmm. Mm. Oh, it smells great. L 'chaim. L 'chaim. And we'll get back to that. Yes, I know. I like to start the show with some sayings, but I was so excited too. Oh, wow. There's just so much flavor. It's really expressive. It's really delicious. Now, you drink a lot more rye than I do, I think. Tell me what is so special about this one. So most of the time when people are drinking rye the the conventional notes that a flavor that go along with it are like spice. It's like a black pepper clove type of spice. This and there's many of those other sweet spices that are there. I've had some ryes that have like much heavier vanilla tones. And this rye what I think is nuts about what I am nuts about this rye and what I think is crazy about this rye in particular is that it comes with such heavy chocolate notes. Like I'm drinking this and it's almost like I'm having like an oatmeal stout. The finish is it's so sweet. It's like mmm yes. Oh I can't wait to try it with this fruit bread. Yeah and so the fact that rye can give such a diversity of flavors that like I'm getting a lot of dark chocolate on this, but I'm also getting some toffee in there. There's even like a bit of coffee in terms of like the experience of walking into a coffee roasting shop and you're just suffused with that amazing smell. Like I'm getting whatever the translation of that into terpenes and and esternes uh in like on my palate and I love that and I also love that like this rye I think is only four years old and so this is an incredibly flavorful robust spirit that is so young and I imagine people would pay a lot of money to have like an 18 -year age scotch that could give the complexity of this and many people who love a super smoky beverage would also love something like this. Yes. There is a variety in the world of rye whiskey. And a lot of that has to do with what is the percentage of rye in a product. So there are different varieties. There is a Manangahila style rye, which is a much more rye heavy. And that's the one that is popularized by products that came out of the Manangahila Valley in Central and Southwestern Pennsylvania, and the most famous of those that is still around today is the oldest, the longest -lasting distillery in the country, which is Old Overholt, and they make a rye whiskey. It's often bartender's favorite. It's a great mixing whiskey, and that goes to the Mahila style, which is somewhere between 80 to 90 % rye, and then the remainder being malted barley. There's also a Maryland style of rye, which includes a lot of actually corn in there, so it gets to be a little bit sweeter, a little bit softer. And so you'll have somewhere between about 55 % to 65 % rye, about 30 % corn, and then the remainder is malted barley. There are a few places that will do a 100 % rye. There's a distillery in Alberta, which is the source, if I'm not mistaken, of whistlepigs rye, and at least whistlepigs not farmstock rye, and they do 100 % rye, no malted rye, and they have a particular enzyme that allows it to process and get, and the flavors are able to expand in a way during distillation that you can only get when you include a certain amount of maltose in there. And then there are companies that make bottles that use a 51 % rye. MGP, which is a large liquor producing facility in Indiana, historically has been the source for a lot of what's known as the 95 .5 rye, 95 % rye, 5 % malted barley, which is bullet. I believe believe it's also Redemption Rye, it's Pin Hook and Penelope and a lot of Rye labels that are not actually their own distilleries. And so people would source this juice, as we call it in the industry, from Indiana, and then they will mix it with their own water, they'll slap a label on it, and that'll be that. MGP is getting out of that business of sourcing a lot of juice to other labels, they're focusing now and having their own brands, but for those who grew up drinking or still do, like a bullet rye, that's probably the most popular rye in the country right now, and it's all coming from Indiana, and they make great rye over there, and that's a 95 .5. So depending on what you like in your whiskey, there could be different proportions and percentages, and there's many different styles, and there are new rye whiskey labels and brands coming out all the time. And it's difficult to know about them because it takes up to like two or four years depending on the aging of this whiskey. - So rye revolution is underway. We just have to wait for the barrels to be ready. I, as I'm drinking this, I'm finding the chocolate, as you're saying, but also this wonderful fruitiness. And there's a bitterness to it, a beautiful bitterness. And you are talking about coffee and chocolate, which have a sweet, maybe fruity and bitter component as well, that whole triangle. But I'm also finding a bitterness that reminds me of warm wood, actually, in this. And I'm just, as you're speaking about so beautifully about all the interconnected things, I do think this would be a great whiskey for Scotch drinkers to expand into is definitely speaking with Scotch drinkers and, you know, being someone who really enjoys Scotch myself. I mean, my dad placed the bagpipes for goodness sakes. I think that, you know, speaking about all those little, those differences, not just, okay, we have this, this bourbon and this is what not to knock on bourbon, but, you know, there are these terroir differences and these regional differences in the styles and the aging and the, you know, this is closer to the sea and those kinds of things. So I think someone who has developed an interest in that could also find an interest in the rye. And I'm also thinking about Amaro, vermouth drinkers, people who are a fan of these flavors from Italy and elsewhere, with that kind of herbal bitterness that this is what's staying on my tongue as I'm finishing and defining that to be so interesting. And also for wine drinkers as well, who are wine nerds interested in this terroir and the biodiversity and everything. I had no idea there were so many types of rye and so many different styles. I was just kind of pleased with myself that I knew about rye at all, you know, other than just thinking about how it played in cocktails. So I'm so excited to know about this. And this is really nice. It's so complex and expressive, but also smooth and really balanced, and I think really good for a wine drinker to be able to find those depths of flavor and those kind of layers in your nose and your mouth. So yeah, this is a great sipping whiskey, as oftentimes in spirits people will like differentiate between a sipping versus like something that you want to use for a cocktail. And I would say historically, Rye has been known for cocktails. Actually, Rye was one of the leading components of the cocktail renaissance of the late 90s, 2000 aughts, as people were going back into the American cocktail canon, and they were looking at what are the different spirits out there, what are the different products out there, and what are their combinations that we can use to bring people back into bars and we can have fun. And so these bartenders, Qua Mixologists, really leaned hard into Rai and are definitely among the people that were pushing distilleries and through distribution companies to actually get more Rai to market. Because years ago, there were a handful of American Rai's, there were a lot of Canadian Rai relatively speaking, and Old overhaul and like written house. They were really like holding down the fort. That has been the classic standby And if you want to have a Manhattan, like that's that's what you need. Yeah, I agree that like slightly spicy It's not gonna get overtaken by the sweetness of that vermouth or by the other components of a cocktail that the rye actually gets to stand Strong in a way that like a cocktail made with a sweet bourbon sometimes has like an alcoholic note to it, but it doesn't necessarily carry the flavor of a lot of those cocktail quality bourbons, which is to say like a sipping bourbon versus the cocktail quality. And the fact that this is also like 126 proof, but it's like, I don't feel an incredible warmth in my body from like, oh my God, I'm actually getting drunk here at like two o 'clock in an afternoon on a work day. You're working. You're working. We're working hard here. Yeah. Cheers. I mean, I'm actually going to add a little ice cube to this. Yeah, let's, while we've got the whiskey out here, I believe you have a local saying for us. Yes. So you had mentioned that I was a culinary historian. In fact, I did my degree in Jewish and American culinary history, and I would say probably the most famous Jewish American culinary drink or drinking scene or phrase comes from Fidel on the Roof. And so Fidel on the Roof, this 1967 play based on a series of Yiddish stories by Shalom Aleichem, which were written in the early 20th century. If you haven't seen it, you really ought to. There's an amazing documentary that essentially says, "There has been a fiddler on the roof production every single day since 1967. Anywhere around the world, you will find at least one fiddler on the roof production going on that day." It is a universally appreciated play. And one of the songs called "Le Chaim," which is Yiddish forward to life, but it's also the token Yiddish and Hebrew Jewish cheers. And so when I reached out to a friend of mine who is a Yiddish instructor who happened to be in the Yiddish production of "Fiddle on the Roof," he said, "To my query of what's your favorite Yiddish saying?" And he was the bartender in that production. So he like really led this song and he says, "Mach a kois," which literally translates to make a cup. But if you were to mach in the koise and in the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, in the song "Lachayim," they say, "Davka aggroisa." Mach the koise, davka aggroisa, give me a shot, make it for sure a large one. Oh, I love that. I love that. Here, teach this to me. I want to learn it. So, mach the koise. Mach the koise. Mach the koise. Mach the koise, make a cup. And if you were, you know, going for your country club pour, you go, "Dafka aggroysa." "Dafka aggroysa." So it rhymes. "Macht aggroysa, dafka aggroysa." "Macht aggroysa, dafka aggroysa." Yes. Oh, all right. I love this. Let's enjoy ourselves. That's great. And then just on that theme of, like, Yiddish drinking, there was a popular song that was published in 1868 by a Yiddishist, an intellectual named Michael Gordon, and he wrote this song called "Mashka." Mashka is conventionally translated as whiskey, but it really just means liquor. It could be schnapps, it could be vodka, it could be a whiskey, it could be a slivovitz, like a plum, or other fruit brandy. But he wrote the song Dimashka. And one of the lines in the song, which is about how this person exists thanks to whiskey, is "Zulib der Mashka is der Sirech Geschlossen," which translates roughly to "It is an account of the whiskey that the match, the match meaning of his mother and father, was sealed. And so we see this in the scene in the Chaim, in Fiddler on the Roof. As Reb Tavia and Laser Wolfe are agreeing on the bridal match, they toast it together with a masjga, which with some sort of liquor. And so this song from 1868 that preceded the writing of Shalom Lechem's text by 50 years or so and proceeded the production of Fiddler on the Roof by nearly 100 years to the date is really all about how Whiskey is there as we are making our agreements. It's there to celebrate these high points in our lives and it's also there as we celebrate the memories of those who have passed and throughout our lives we have a Whiskey spirit. And these people were in Central and northern Europe, eastern Europe, rye was the most popular grain for alcohol production over there. And we see this today, like Belvedere makes a beautiful Polish vodka made only out of rye. One of the most popular vodka varieties in the United States is Stolichnaya from Latvia, and that is a about 40 % rye vodka. We still see this today that rye Mai is very popular in the liquor production in central, eastern, northern Europe, and also that it's a core to the way that Yiddish -speaking Jews and their grandchildren and great -grandchildren are experiencing it today, most famously, through "Fiddler on the Roof." So with that, we say, "Lachayim tu leif," "Mach na koisa," "Mach na koisa," "Davka groisa," "Davka groisa." [Music] Besides advocating people to farm more rye and use more rye in their distillates and purchase rye whiskey, put it in cocktails, you also have a lot to do with rye bread and I want to know all about that and I want the whole, the story of how you got into this and how you ended up making bread. But I think I first I, I might really like to taste it. So don't tell me what you have here. Please eat. There are three varieties of rye in front of you. The one in the middle of the table is Baltic rye. It's a Latvian root maize. It is 100 % rye sourdough bread. It takes three days to make this bread. There's a little bit of caraway that we chop up coarsely and put in our starter. So we have a starter and then we also have a scald and it takes a while to make this bread and then after it's baked we still need to wait 24 hours until we can slice into it because rye through its own proclivities just needs to wait. Closer to you we have what we call our fruit and nut bread and that one takes the same base rye without the caraway, adds in dried apricots. It adds prunes and raisins and also hazelnuts and it's a delicious, fun, sweet bread. I call that my breakfast through dessert because on its own, or even with a little bit of butter, it can fill in every meal and snack you would want during the day. Close to me is what we call our Baltic Blonde and Latvian Salads. Saltsgemais, a sweet and sour rye bread and it is made with more white rye flour, so less whole grain rye, and it's also made with a not fermented rye malt. So both the root mice, the Baltic rye, and the fruit and nut are made with a fermented rye malt, which lowers the pH and changes some of that acidity and that flavor that you're getting out of there. This one is not fermented and it has more protein and less fiber because it has less whole grain and more white rye flour. They're all amazing. We have a beautiful spread in front of us that you put together. There is a really lovely butter. There's sliced fresh tomatoes, because it's July, late July. And there's, you know, just the season for that. We have some great manchego and also some sliced red onion. And these breads are really good with everything. They belong, of course, with like smoked salted, pickled fish, like a hair ring or like locks. And they also go incredibly well with charcuterie, but like here, like please ask us into states, as we say, eat in good health. - What should I start with, Avery? - So I feel like the move is to start with the classic root rice, the Baltic rye right here in the middle. Just have it a bit as is, and then also add a little butter. I think it's the way to do it. - I mean, I'm smelling it. Oh, it's, it's, mm. It's super delicious. I feel the caraway, but it's not overpowering or anything. I'm gonna add some butter So I grew up in a world to try where rye bread, notably deli rye bread, did not include caraway So it was only when I left my parents house and was like out in the world that I actually understood that most people when they experience rye bread, think of it actually as the flavor of caraway. One of the things that I'm trying to do with this bread here, the black rooster food is the name of the company, is introduce people to rye that is not a wheat and bread. This is 100 percent rye. The deli rye that I grew up on was maybe 20 percent rye. I go to a grocery store, it's maybe 3 percent rye. nor a groyser. This is a lot of rye. A lot of rye. Nor a groyser. What does that mean? Oh, no. Macht a groyser. Oh, yes. More. More. Yes. Extra. A lot. Make it a lot of rye. Make it a big. Make it a big. So, it's really, it is dense, but it's not heavy, I find. It's, it's, I'm trying to figure out what to even compare it to. In your instructions for the black rooster, you say don't use a serrated knife. It's something that slices in a different way. There's something kind of fruity about it for sure. And it has like just a lot more depth of flavor. I think it's really good. - Yeah, so a lot of that fruitiness is coming from that fermented malt syrup. And it's also one of the reasons that it actually goes very well with a salty cheese, salted butter, but also like salted fish and salted meat because that you have that balance of flavor there, contrasting, but also supportive flavors. It's a Manchego here, I'm going to try it with that. Oh, that's delicious. Yeah, it's a kin. In Yiddish literature, there's a lot of conversation about people who would wake up in the morning and they would go to work or go to school by having a slice of bread that they would rub with the herring on it so they would get the oil and maybe they would put some butter on it if they didn't have herring and just like a little bit of raw onion. Ooh, that's right. Should I try that with the blonde bread with that? Sure. Yeah. And I think it's just like, it's something to speak of of like, this is the day -to -day bread. This is the Pen Quotidian of Eastern and Northern Europeans. And they of course ate wheat and bread, but that was their celebration bread. But day in and day out, this is what sustained them. This is what nourished Eastern Northern Europeans for centuries, if not millennia. And that's something that we're trying to hear. It's like actually create nourishing traditional bread. I'm absolutely loving this bread just with the onion. I wish I had some, I wish I had some pickled herring. What's wrong with me? Next time. Oh, this is delicious. Just the thinly sliced red onion is perfect. The fiber is really good for human health, especially for digestion. It's anti -carcinogenic. There's been a few studies coming out of Northern Europe that show that it actually reduces rates of prostate, breast, and I forget the third type of cancer that was shown in the study. It also is much lower on the glycemic index. And so for people who are diabetic or just don't want to have the spikes in blood sugar that come from eating many different other grains or many of different other foods that actually consuming rye because it is so dense, it actually digests much slower, and so the sugar is much more evenly released throughout the day. And because it's rye, and the way in which rye is grown, the way it was rye is processed, I've heard from a number of people that have been told they shouldn't eat gluten, they need to avoid wheat, that many people who actually have been told that and avoid that in their daily lives can eat this and have no ill effect. This is delicious. I haven't tried the fruit bread the fruit the fruity nut bread yet, but I am definitely really feeling the Butter and red onion combo. It's really nice. Now. Let me try this Which I try the fruit bread on its own and then maybe yeah try it on its own if you need to do some Munchaco because I really love the sweet fruit bread with a balance of a cheese especially as I love this with like a really briny feta It smells so nice. This is really beautiful bread. Yeah, I like to joke that there's jewels in it And you can see that with the apricot with the prunes and the raisins and the hazelnut like the contrast of that And that's like does it added protein? There's added fiber because of the dried fruit because of those nuts and that's this is this is delicious Now go back just a little bit. You've been telling me because you know, I want to make sure, you know, if you're straight up celiac, there is gluten in rice. I was one of the sourdough, I was part of the sourdough craze during the COVID. I had an amazing time. I've got to take you over there and show you my flower library. And actually, I was really interested in learning how to do gluten -free baking at that time. And I was actually trying to figure out how to make a gluten -free version of fry using, it was just very hard to replicate. And so I was using grains like teff and exploring what I enjoyed about gluten -free baking. It was quite a challenge because with no gluten at all, you really have to put a lot of different things in there to try to mimic that elasticity and rise that you can get from a gluten -bread gluten. It really is an amazing substance. With my gluten -less baking, which I was also doing, I was really getting into some of these darker breads and these pumpernickel recipes, and my husband really enjoyed them in particular. What I enjoyed about it was the fruitiness, it was this interest, this complexity. And so something I liked about gluten -free baking is there would be all these different kinds of aromas like olives and sweet notes and fruit, and I really got into using teff. So it actually was something that brought me into diversity of grains in general. So I think that Rather than being a closed door. There can be a lot of interest, but of course we're we're talking about something that is Hopefully easier to digest for people, which is great. Even if you don't have any kind of health problems It's also really good for a teeth health because it's such a dense bread that it's actually really good for helping Children, but anyone help align their teeth. Oh Eat too many very soft foods in the past couple hundred years, especially as our production methods have changed and access to, and abundant access to cooking has changed. And so we're able to soften a lot of our foods. And so with that are the way in which our teeth are growing has changed. But there's evidence that shows that eating rye has piezoelectric benefits to your, to your jaw and to your teeth. And it helps keep them straight and otherwise straighten them because it's giving them a workout. Oh, that's marvelous. Avery, you have to try the fruit bread with the Manchego. It's an amazing combination. I'm really excited about it. Yeah, salty Manchego cheese. And so you and I met as I was doing a like an ancillary bread demo to a whiskey demonstration just to help people understand what was happening in that whiskey and why it was different out of the things on the shelf. I came with the whole package of rye berries, the seeds that are the fruit of that grain that we use to make whiskey, that we use to make bread, and talking about how this is a really great counterpoint to that whiskey. Also, as an alternative to what you can bring to your charcuterie platter, if you wanted to do a wine and cheese tasting. You slice up this bread. It slices up very easily with a sharp straight edge knife. It allows you to focus on everything else, but it complements because there's actually like a little bit of flavor there. That is, we're talking about with this manchego with these onions, with this butter, it actually like amplifies the bread. But the bread is definitely not overpowering any of this. And I was really excited to try this wonderful fruity complex, chocolatey, bitter, herbal whiskey with the bread with the fruit and the nuts in it. It's a nice experience, I have to say. I think this is nice kind of in between a bread and a cracker almost. It's not big and fluffy. It is something that I think supports your charcuterie elements really well, but it's not quite as crunchy and hard as a cracker. It's very sturdy and it keeps for a long time, doesn't it? Keeps for a very long time. Four weeks on the counter in the plastic bag, four months in a refrigerator, four years in a freezer. Yeah, but no, it lasts for a while. But also you can slice it up thin and toast it as a cracker. So this way you can have bread. And also if you wanted to have a cracker, if you wanted to have that crunch, just put it in a toaster or like put it on a baking sheet in the oven type of situation. It's so nice. I mentioned this in another interview, which was I think episode eight and nine of this podcast with Lindsay Spear, who has a language collective called Culture Without Borders. You might have a word for bread in your language, but you have a certain bread in mind, usually when you're a speaker of that language, that is your mental image. And somehow we started talking about James Baldwin, and if you look up James Baldwin bread quote, he was talking, I believe, in the fire next time about all of these really big problems in the world. And to me, he seems to pause because he's talking about pleasure as something that's important, as important as all of the other things that he speaks about. But it's kind of fun because I felt like he was saying, and another thing, this bread that we've been eating. And he's sort of talking, I think, about this kind of chemical bland bread. And he's like, we have to be eating good bread. This is really important. And I don't know if that was an American experience that I had, but I know that he spent all this time in Paris. And it's his complete fantasy. I have no, you as a culinary historian could probably help me to figure out how I could research this. But I had this vision of just James Baldwin arriving in Paris and having some amazing bread and, you know, maybe having been eating the wonders of food science bread up to that point and just thinking, oh my God, what have I been missing? I have to to tell everyone. And James Baldwin was writing in the mid 20th century, and he was traveling the world then realizing that this is a bit of an extrapolation assumption on my side. But like, on my part, but like, in America, the most exciting thing on bread was wonder bread. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. That's not bread. It is, there's wheat that has been bleached and enriched and loaded up with all these things. And my bread company, actually we are blackers to food, we trace our origin back to an experience of Wonder Bread. So this company was founded by Yanis Mungalis, who came to the United States as a refugee from Latvia after World War II. His family was sponsored by a church and a community in central Pennsylvania. And they moved there and as they were settling and his mother brought back some wonder bread from the grocery store because that was in the bread aisle and that was there. Not only did the family have no idea what to do with this, but like the dog that was there wouldn't even eat the bread and at which point his mother started contracting with a nearby farmer to sell her 100 pounds of rye flour so that she could make rye bread to sustain the family. And that was the origin of John, John's introduction to rye bread in America was through his mother's kitchen in the same way that he was introduced to it as a child in Latvia before the war. And this company was founded about 15 years ago or so with him and his brother and a friend who were trying to bring that rye bread experience to this country because We've spent decades moving away from nutritious breads. Thank God that there was a sourdough movement in San Francisco and Los Angeles 40 years ago that started to bud this up and provide the basis for where we are today. And in the pandemic, when there was the explosion through social media. But thinking of true honest bread in what James Baldwin was looking for, in what John grew up on, and in which many of us have only come to experience now through social media, but also through a handful of like artisan bakeries or farmers markets. Like this here is a bread that speaks to that. We are not trying to be fancy. This is a bread of the people. This is a day -to -day bread, and it's bread that is meant to nourish you and nourish your environment. And it's also a bread that speaks to this history and culture. And it pairs well with whiskey and so many other good things. It's beautiful. I love it. Now, how did you meet John and how did you start this relationship with the Black Rooster Bread Company? So I met John during the pandemic. I was connected with him while I was working on Rye Revival. One of the folks who started Rye Revival had been introduced to John's Bread probably about a decade or so prior. Whenever she spoke about Rye in that interim decade, She was always talking about John's bread. I met her at a Jewish food conference in 2019 and she had brought John's bread and she was just like in between sessions. She was Sharing this bread and talking about why rye is so great and I was totally hooked So that's how I got connected with her and eventually we started rye revival with some other farmers and other folks And then in the pandemic John realized he needed a ham because he's in his 80s and was running this business but was also retired and he wanted to spend time with his grandkids and all these other things. We connected and he realized my history and my passion for food, for food as culture, food as nourishment, food as identity and also food as something that people can connect to beyond that. And I say that because like farmers to actually look and be like, okay, look, here's my product in this bottle. Here's my product in that grain. When rye's not part of the commodity chain, you can actually do that. And so John realized my passion, my knowledge and excitement for this and invited me to join him on this crazy journey. And yeah, it's been a fun thing. I'm learning all about Latvian life and culture. His wife is actually publishing a book the rye bread marriage, which is about the two of them getting together. And it's a story of love. It's a story of identity. It's a story of finding each other through bread and falling in love with the man who's fallen in love with bread. And like here I am literally in the epilogue talking about Rye's next steps. Oh, I have to have them on the podcast. That sounds so wonderful. They sound so wonderful. And Michael has written books about coffee before finding God in the cup and has spent a lot of time researching and writing about food for decades. - Oh, what a beautiful thing. That's so great. So tell me more about The Black Rooster Company. Where can people buy your products? How much bread are you making? - So we bake our bread. It's handmade in Coney Island in South Brooklyn. And we sell our products at a handful of grocery stores, you can find them on our website, blackroosterfood .com. Most of those grocery stores are here in New York. They're also in the Boston area and in D .C. We're always open to new stores carrying our product, and you can also buy our bread on their website. We can ship you a full loaf of bread, which for the Baltic rye and the Baltic blind, the root mice and the sadske mice, that's a full five pound loaf. And for the fruit and nut it's a two and a half pound of and we can shift you that we can also ship samplers Which are much more manageable size pieces and a great way to introduce anywhere in the United States It's heavy bread. It's dense bread it'll last you a while and We also make sure that all of our employees and most of them are immigrants from the former Soviet Union And also Latin America who are baking a bread some of them are refugees all of them get paid a good wage and that every farmer that are getting respect and recognition for their rye because not everyone's doing rye and we really appreciate what they're doing and bringing forward here. And it's a wonderful small business. We produce a couple hundred loaves a week. The bakery that makes our bread for us makes thousands of loaves of rye bread, but these are the only three that they make that are 100 % rye. they're a great bakery if you grew up on any Russian or Soviet breads as they're often known like a Burdinsky rye or a Riga rye which is rye with a little bit of wheat in there then you may be familiar with that type of bread and they sell that all around the East Coast as well a black rooster food yeah We're certified kosher, there's a little bit of honey in the fruit and nut, but otherwise the bread is vegan. What is that website again where people couldn't try this? Blackroosterfood .com. The logo is a black rooster, which is Janis Mungailis, founder of John. His last name is Mungailis, which translates into English from Latvian as black rooster. Lovely. So nothing to do with the Chianti classical Simple but still very very lovely simple to me. That's fantastic. Well, I love this bread I hope everybody goes and get some it really is delicious and And I just love listening to you to you talk about all of this I think you can see why if it's into everything that I'm doing with motor duperi Where we're interested in local drinks and local sayings But why because it's really all about biodiversity all different types of biodiversity And I'd just love you to speak to, besides to me, the inherent beauty, which could also be a reason. Why is biodiversity important? Biodiversity speaks to the resilience that we're trying to build and encourage and maintain in our systems so that we can continue to be here as a community, as a people that celebrates these cultures, these identities, and these foods for generations. And that allows us to bring aspects of these foods so that, you know, we have hundreds of varieties of heirloom tomatoes. It would be such a sad world if we only had one. But you can't have hundreds of varieties of heirloom tomatoes unless you have many different types of pollinators, unless you have, there's all these tiny insects, there are slightly larger bugs that consume them, there are the animals, and all of these allow for us to have a healthy and resilient natural environment so that that environment can continue to thrive so that we can actually, you know, if we need down the line, we can discover new opportunities and resources for disease prevention, for antibiotic development, but really also to better understand the world that we live in, because we are one creature as a part of a much broader system. And so recognizing that Rai is a part of the system, it has a particular environment that it thrives in, and it has many other environments that it tolerates. But in all of these environments, that it is dependent upon the interactions with other things that in the soil, that there are bacteria and microbes and microrese fungal spores that are allowing this rye to absorb nutrients, that this rye is that bringing carbon dioxide from the air, translating it and transforming it into its root system so that you have carbon in the ground that you need to have a healthy environment in order for this to work effectively. Rye is a piece of that puzzle. And many people, speaking to the broader biodiversity, many people have been using rye for millennia. It is integral to many different cultures and identities. And so this is an opportunity for us to lean into that and actually move a little bit slower and to think and reflect more on how Rai and those cultures have succeeded and stayed strong for generations and how we can adapt and not replicate but be inspired by or translate what's happening elsewhere. And so here in Moda De Bitta, I gave a blessing in Yiddish for how we can drink a glass and also a little bit of a story behind that. And it works well, the translation. It won't give every meaning that is part of that phrase of the Chaim Urmachta Koise. But it's enough for us to understand that in the same way that rai is a part of this whole biological system. And so we get to understand rai as a bread and as a drink, as a plant. And that plant exists in conversation with other plants. It exists in conversation with farmers and also exists in conversation with birds and bugs and water and air. And when we are eating rye, we become much more conscious of that largely because we're not eating air. We actually are aware of this bite that is happening with this rye bread, that there is a chew there. I like to think of rye as being a much more thoughtful grain. I love all grains. I love the Teff Rye wheat bread that Mark Furstenberg makes at Bread First in DC. And Teff is the warmest grain out there. Rye's the cold hardiest. Teff is the heat hardiest. And both of those get to be in conversation with each other in that loaf. And all small grains get to be in conversation. And also larger grains too. And we get to, as we think about Rye, it gives us an opportunity to think about the food system much more broadly and to toast to that and to toast of ways that we can be doing this better, we can be doing this smarter and that we can be doing so in a way that we don't feel bad about our decisions. That's a really wonderful thing. - Thank you so much, Avery. And thank you to all of our listeners. Wherever you go and whatever you like to drink, drink. Always remember to enjoy your life and never stop learning. The podcast was composed by Ercilia Prosperi and performed by the band O. You can purchase their recordings at oumusic .bandcamp .com.  

Music composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou: www.oumusic.bandcamp.com

Produced, recorded and edited by Rose Thomas Bannister

Audio assistance by Steve Silverstein

Video version by Giulia Àlvarez-Katz