Speaker 1:
Time to pick up some advertisements.

Dan Pashman:
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Dan Pashman:
This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people and we're coming to you live from the Fire, Flower, and Fork Festival in Richmond, Virginia.

Dan Pashman:
Thank you all so much for that lovely welcome. We're here at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. We're calling today's episode "Virginia Is For Wine and Cheese Lovers", and I'm going to have two different guests in this episode and they're joined together because they're each doing a lot of interesting experimentation and innovation, both in their own ways using science and technology. One with wine, one with cheese, to do some really exciting work here in the Richmond area and we're going to focus on the cheese first. Vegan cheese, that is. Joining me now is the founder of UnMoo Foods. UnMoo as in not moo. He's originally from Lynchburg, Virginia. He moved here to Richmond in 2007 to attend Virginia Commonwealth University. He moved to Richmond then and he's been here ever since. Please welcome Josh Kadrich.

Dan Pashman:
Hey Josh, welcome.

Josh Kadrich:
Hey, thanks for having me, Dan.

Dan Pashman:
So Josh, I think of you, I mean I know now you're working in food, but in my mind you're not like a foodie artisan first and foremost. You're more like a science nerd who ended up in food like a mad scientist who ended up making food.

Josh Kadrich:
Capital nerd for sure.

Dan Pashman:
So like tell me about young Josh.

Josh Kadrich:
Oh my gosh, young Josh was a special little character. He was the one that was running around the neighborhood catching grass snakes and like wondering why certain plants grew next to other plants. When I went out with my friends, we were like playing Crocodile Hunter out in the woods instead of like riding bikes and play other games. So it started really young. I was super fascinated by nature and that continued on through childhood and into high school. I started volunteering with different conservation organizations, dipping my foot into politics when it came to environmental activism and then got to VCU, kept on the ecology train, kind of always wanted to grow up and save the rainforest.

Josh Kadrich:
That was the plan, you know, learn everything about nature and I can say the Amazon. So I came in and I was taking Barrier Island ecology and kind of got deviated and ended up working for the Obama campaign back in 2008. That went on for a while, I ended up working at a lab maybe four or five years ago.

Dan Pashman:
You were working in a lab equipment calibration company?

Josh Kadrich:
It's as boring as it sounds for sure.

Dan Pashman:
So how did you get into making vegan cheese? Are you vegan?

Josh Kadrich:
I am not vegan. I am primarily plant based. I grew up in Lynchburg. We're a meat and potato kind of a family, 100%. And at the end of the day what got me into it, I love cheese. I love cheese. Cheese doesn't love me back. We don't have a good relationship.

Dan Pashman:
So you're lactose intolerant.

Josh Kadrich:
Super lactose intolerant. I was trying to avoid that part. So you know, I go to the farmer's market every Saturday with my boyfriend and he would spend half of our budget on goat cheese and I was like, "Well you know, I'm not working in the lab anymore. I'm kind of bored. Let me see if I can science at this. Let me see if I can make you cheese." And so I did. I started playing with different enzymes, different acidification practices and I started making him goat cheese so I could buy more kale.

Josh Kadrich:
And I got jealous cause he was eating all these delicious soft cheeses I was making. I couldn't really gorge on the way I wanted. And so I start playing with cashews. Cashews were kind of like the nut that was super popular among the vegan cheese makers. And so I started, I was like, Hey, can I science this for me?

Dan Pashman:
What is it about cashews? Why is that the nut?

Josh Kadrich:
They're delicious.

Dan Pashman:
No, but I mean like there's a scientific explanation for why vegan cheese makers are using cashews as opposed to any other nut?

Josh Kadrich:
They're relatively bland. They don't have like a super sort of flavor. Like if you were to eat a Brazil nut, you would eat that and go, "Oh yeah, there's funk in there. It's like a sour beer." Or if you're to eat like an almond, it tastes like an almond. It's got that like essential oil forward flavor.

Josh Kadrich:
Whereas if you eat a cashew, if it's fresh enough, it should be just sweet and buttery and what do we want as a base of a milk other than something that is sweet and buttery. Most of the cashews I got weren't that great in the beginning. It was definitely a hunt to find the right cashew and we did. They're really sweet. They're really benign. They've made us a great cream. Also, they happen to be surprisingly sustainable if you go for the right supply chain. So if you are looking at the fairly traded cashews and they're coming from a farmers who are well taken care of and shellers are well taken care of and you compare that to an almond that's grown in California, you'll find that the almonds suck up all the water.

Josh Kadrich:
You find that the almonds require migratory beekeeping practices where bees are trucked up and down the West coast and then that's how they spread colony collapse disorder all over the rest of the country. So there's a lot of environmental negatives that come with other nuts that have not yet come with cashews. Like they don't require a lot of pesticides. They're in this impermeable show in regions that don't have a whole lot of natural pest. So they're good.

Dan Pashman:
Tell me about the early days of the experimentation. Your early attempts to make a vegan cheese.

Josh Kadrich:
They were foul. So nuts unfortunately do not ferment the same way that milk does. There's a lot of complicated stuff happening in milk. If it's unpasteurized, it has a lot of its own microbial ecology going on in there. So the first ones were terrible. They didn't smell good, they didn't smell like cheese. They were perhaps acidic and tart, like sour milk. But other than that, they smelled like the towel you left in the back of your car for three weeks in the summertime.

Josh Kadrich:
But one day the cheese tasted good. You keep going at it, you're making notes. You're like, "Oh, well my temperature was at this point at this point in the fermentation and that the pH was here. And I added this much salt" and so you're making notes and you're tweaking and you're noticing that when you ferment at a temperature closer to 70 degrees, suddenly tastes a lot butterier than perhaps if you're closer to 90 degrees. So it was a lot of trial and error fueled by like really, really late nights scouring the internet and food journals to understand what I was doing because I had no idea.

Dan Pashman:
So you then move forward and start to actually turn it into a business. You refine, you recipe test, you make it better and better. You get FDA approval, you open a business, you go to the farmer's market for the first time.

Josh Kadrich:
Our first one was Williamsburg, the place is Colonial Williamsburg.

Dan Pashman:
What was the response?

Josh Kadrich:
Mixed, and it still is and I think it always will be. There is so much psychology involved in food that I was completely unaware of. Williamsburg, you're a special place. Much more conservative than Richmond. Many, many, fewer vegans. Me and my boyfriend show up to sell them vegan cheese. And so we would have these like families walking through feeling like their entire identity had been challenged. And so we would go and you know, you'd see like this little family and a couple of them would try and you'd see them looking at each other like, "Oh wow, I didn't expect that to be edible."

Dan Pashman:
"Darla, do you realize you're eating gay cheese?"

Josh Kadrich:
Dan, you have no idea. And then like the only take one and then they would look at, they'd be like, "It's not good." And then all of them would fall in line, agree that it wasn't good and then leave. Even if they had just been sitting there enjoying it. And then the people that we didn't tell it was plant-based first would try it and love it when we said, "Hey cashews." "Oh yeah, I tasted them." So it was very much about the setup. So we'd have like these really weird experiences in Williamsburg and then we would come to Richmond and test it out. Everyone loved it. I'd go to a vegan event. I thought I was a cult leader. It was wild. "I knew. We've been watching an Instagram for months." I'm like, "Hi, I'm just making cheese in my friend's kitchen, thanks." All this psychology, how you build people up and what they're going to expect when they go to try it.

Josh Kadrich:
And at the end of the day I have learned just like, "Hey, you want to try some cheese? Cool, it's made from plants."

Dan Pashman:
And what's been the biggest sort of scientific challenge?

Josh Kadrich:
Texture. Meltability. How do I get it to shred and actually like feel good in your mouth and not feel like jello or plaster or paste? So there's like this chemistry element where I'm looking at like, all right, what temperature do I work with this random tapioca starch and like what kind of mechanical shear or like think your blender, your beaters or whatever, can I apply to this starch without breaking it down so that the ultimate cheese is still firm without being gummy.

Dan Pashman:
So what are the products that you're making today?

Josh Kadrich:
So on the market right now, we've got a really cool line of meltable cheeses and butters, so we've got Notz, which is our flagship product. Totally delicious. In between a mozzarella and a Havarti.

Dan Pashman:
Notz like N-O-T-Z like mozzarella. Notz, mozz. Get it? It's an audio medium here, Josh. So since they can't see the words spelled out, I'm just trying to, I know the jokes aren't as funny once they're explained, but I'm just trying to explain the puns.

Josh Kadrich:
Thanks Dan, I understand now. Yes. So Notz, funny story. Totally was trying to make mozzarella in the beginning. I was making these little like weird looking balls of cheese that we'd have to like pull and stretch, just like a mozzarella. They didn't sit on the shelf well. They were weird to grate. You couldn't get good slices out of them. And six months after I started making them, the cheese didn't taste like mozzarella at all. We had gotten the fermentation down so much that it was buttery and havarti-like. So we kept with Notz because I kind of decided at that point that naming is garbage unless it's actually what you call it. So like who am I to say that something is an imitation mozzarella. Mozzarella is a thing. Like it already exists. I don't need to make an imitation mozzarella. I can make something that's completely different, equally as delicious and I don't have to call it mozzarella to get people to buy it. I just got to get them to try it so that they'll buy it.

Dan Pashman:
Well that gets to one of the amazing questions Josh, because like so often when there are vegan and vegetarian versions of foods, they're sold to us as like "You're not going to be able to tell the difference." It's a replacement for this other thing, whether it's meat or dairy or what have you, and I guess it's probably mostly a marketing question, but it's also like a philosophical question, like what is this thing? What is the essence of the thing? And I kind of like your approach because like I feel like there's so many good vegetarian and vegan foods out there and when someone tells me that this is going to taste the same as the quote unquote real thing. I'm sorry I've never experienced that. But I tasted your cheese and it was delicious.

Josh Kadrich:
Thank you.

Dan Pashman:
What has the reaction been from cheese makers?

Josh Kadrich:
Varied. So a few months ago I went to the American Cheese Society conference. It was here in Richmond. I had to kind of sneak in. They didn't invite me. So at the American Cheese Society conference, day one, they have a conversation of plant based versus dairy, the industry in the future. And it was weird cause it was, you know, it's at the conference but it was a room full of marketers and the marketers, real worried about dairy free cheese, like, "They've already taken 0.02% of the market and they are coming for us."

Josh Kadrich:
But once I met actual cheese makers, people who geek out the way I do, who are like, "Oh wow, look at how much diacetyl you got out of that curd." Or, "How long did you age that? It smells like a sock, it's great." You know, like those people. Those were my people. And we're sitting there breaking it down with all of these cheese makers who were fascinated because A, I didn't call it mozzarella, but that I'm taking the time to culture and age and introduce an artistry rather than imitation, it resonated with them.

Dan Pashman:
You're also making Nutter.

Josh Kadrich:
We are.

Dan Pashman:
Which is butter, but not.

Josh Kadrich:
So we raised the fat content, we culture the crap out of it so it's super lactic and very aromatic. You can laminate with it so you can make actual croissant. You can bake with it and make brownies. It's awesome.

Dan Pashman:
So what's next? Where are you going from here? What's next for UnMoo?

Josh Kadrich:
Bries and blues. I encourage you all to check out our Instagram.

Dan Pashman:
You said, you said you're not trying to make an exact cheese. I think people might hear that and think, wait a second. So is it bries and blues or it's not? What like what are you saying?

Josh Kadrich:
Consider me called out. Whites and blues. So the mold is what gives it the color, right? So when you're talking about cheese making and the acidification process that gives cheese its characteristic tang and food preservation capabilities, you're talking about bacteria. When you start talking about whites and blues and bloomy rinded cheeses, you're talking about yeasts, you're talking about fungus. So we are going to be taking the same fungus's that give you like a blue Stilton or a white brie or Camembert and we're going to throw them at our cashew based cheeses.

Dan Pashman:
So we can call it brie and blue esque.

Josh Kadrich:
Brie-ish.

Dan Pashman:
Got it. Well it all tastes great, Josh, and congratulations on how everything's going.

Dan Pashman:
Josh Kadrish is the founder of UnMoo foods. Find him at a farmer's market around Virginia or, as of now, order online. As of this week, Josh is shipping around the country. Go to unmoofoods.com. Follow UnMoo foods on Instagram. Big hand for Josh Kadrich.

Dan Pashman:
A bit more on Josh's Notz. It did not have the same deep richness that dairy cheese has, but I really loved the flavor. It was very savory and something I would have been happy to eat on crackers all day long. As for vegan cheese as a whole, so far there's been more investment and focus on meat substitutes, but a lot of the chains that have rolled out faux burgers recently have been criticized for still serving them with real cheese. So maybe soon Burger King will offer the Impossible Whopper with Notz.

Dan Pashman:
Coming up from cheese to wine. In Virginia wine making, there are not many rules, which means the wines they're making are pretty different. We'll hear all about it. Plus what are sulfites and am I actually allergic to them? Stick around.

Speaker 1:
It's time to open up a can of advertisements.

Dan Pashman:
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Dan Pashman:
You can control it through the app on your phone and you can control it using your voice with Amazon Alexa or the Google Assistant. I just can't stress enough how easy it is to set Sonos speakers up and how good they sound once you've done it. So go to sonos.com to learn more and complete your holiday shopping.

Dan Pashman:
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Dan Pashman:
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Dan Pashman:
Welcome back to the Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Our year end spectacular is coming and we need your new year's food resolutions, you guys. What food do you resolve eating more of in the new year and why? Record a voice memo on your cell phone with your name and where you're from and the answer and send it to us at hello@sporkful.com and before we get back to Richmond, this is the second of two straight shows featuring stories from Virginia. Last week I went foraging in the Shenandoah Valley with Jay Marriott, Jay's been foraging in this area since he was a kid, he finds food growing wild all around and sells it to some very fancy restaurants.

Jay:
You know, it's not just about the rat race and going to the grocery store. Paradise is translated to garden, right? So, and the garden is here. It's everywhere. We just have to slow down enough to see it.

Dan Pashman:
Jay learned to forage from his grandparents. When the farm to table trends started taking off, he had the business sense to get in early, but as you'll hear, Jay never expected what happened next. That episode is called "A Foragers Life." It's up now. Check it out.

Dan Pashman:
Now, back to our live show at the Fire, Flower and Fork festival in Richmond, Virginia.

Dan Pashman:
Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved gardeners at Montecello famously tried and mostly failed to grow grapes for wine in Virginia. In recent decades though Virginia's have decided they're going to give it another shot. And this time around, it seems to be working. In the last 20 years, the number of wine businesses in the state has quintupled to nearly 300. Local wine makers have come together to share what they're learning through a wine research exchange. And right now there are basically no rules. So, for instance, they're making some wines with a very herbaceous green pepper kind of flavor, which is not what wine makers in other part of the world want.

Dan Pashman:
But in Virginia they're embracing it. Another example, this was something that I just learned. So, all right, red wine is made using red grapes with the skins. White wine is made using green grapes without the skins. Rosé is made using red grapes in the style of white wine. In other words, red grapes, but no skins. That's rosé. Now if you take green grapes and make them in the style of red wine, in other words, green grapes, but with the skins, you get something called orange wine, which the taste makers tell me it's going to be the next big trend. And they are making a lot of it right now in Virginia. So I was very excited to discuss the present and future of wine in Virginia live on stage with Mathieu Finot. You know, he's one of the founders of that wine research exchange and the wine maker from King Family Vineyards just outside Charlottesville.

Mathieu:
Hello.

Dan Pashman:
Welcome Mathieu. So you grew up in the Rhone Valley in France where as I understand that they also have wine.

Mathieu:
They do make some, a little.

Dan Pashman:
So what's a nice Frenchman like you doing in a place like this?

Mathieu:
Wow. Yeah, I don't know, to be honest. So I'm from Northern Rhone. I'm coming from a family that used to have a farm where, like a lot of small farm in France, you make your own cheese, grabbed pre cards and pears and cherries and grow grapes and make wine was a grapes. So I decided to go in the wine making side of the business. So I studied in Burgundy, a lot of fun learning, tasting good wine. And then I decided to travel around the world. Every wine regions [inaudible 00:23:28] their own grapes and they also have their own wine making style and being able to understand all the differences was good for to try to make me a better wine maker. You know, I went to Italy, I went to South Africa and I came here in 2003, wanted to stay six months here and then go to New Zealand.

Dan Pashman:
What brought you here?

Mathieu:
I wanted to go to Oregon. Probably didn't take the right plane.

Dan Pashman:
What did you know about wine in Virginia before you arrived?

Mathieu:
I didn't know where I was going to be on the map. I mean I that as bad as I was, I'd never been to the United States before. Let's not forget, 2003 was just after the Freedom Fries incident. So I wasn't sure that I would be very welcome in the United States. I really wasn't planning to stay at all. So you know war in Iraq and all these kinds of things like a little bit of tension between French and American. I'm like, yeah, just going to be here for short time. But I ended up in Charlottesville and that's a good cool place. It's a very nice place to live. Surprisingly, like American people are very nice.

Mathieu:
I mean we've got a bunch of stereotype in France, but like you've got bunch of stereotype with French people too. But like, you know, and you arrive and you confront it to a real life and real people, and then suddenly you're like, wow, that's cool. There's like get friend with people that do cheese, like butcher some pigs and all this kind of things. It's like, Oh, that's my life. You know? I love it.

Dan Pashman:
Probably in some ways reminded you of where you grew up.

Mathieu:
Yeah. So for me it's like Virginia is a place that I've been working the most of my entire life and now that's a wine rejoinder, knows maybe the most.

Dan Pashman:
Where did Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved gardeners of Monticello and others who tried a long time ago make wine here, where did they go wrong?

Mathieu:
I mean, we're in a challenging region. It's a very warm and also humid region. And you know, we've got Dani meal, you, we've got powdery meal, you've got black crowds, we've got a lot of disease. I mean, if you grow tomatoes in your garden, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Jefferson didn't know about that. So you had no chance. I mean, to start with, he was doomed.

Dan Pashman:
And so how is wine making different in Virginia from other places?

Mathieu:
It's not, but at the same time it is. It's not because there's nothing serious about wine.

Dan Pashman:
There's nothing serious about wine? I mean I'm on board with that, but I mean what-

Mathieu:
What is the purpose of wine? I mean you don't need wine to survive. Why does better in that sense? But like I think the only purpose of wine is to have a good time. As a wine drinker, you like what you like and it doesn't matter what people are telling you, you know, you have to get back and you have a good time with his bottle of wine or not.

Dan Pashman:
So that's the universal part of wine. [crosstalk 00:26:31]

Dan Pashman:
So in France, there are a lot of the AOC rules about certain grapes in certain regions. It's very strict. California doesn't quite have the same number of laws and rules, but people, you know, because it's a very long established industry there, people who have come to expect California wines to taste certain ways, to be certain types of wines. And that makes it hard for wine makers there to try something totally new and different because you know, it's sort of becomes a business risk to not give people what they expect. You don't have those restrictions in Virginia?

Mathieu:
No, we don't. And that's the big part of the reason why I'm still here. I mean, the restrictions that we've got is like, it's still made was grapes and that's the most important part.

Dan Pashman:
Well, until Josh comes along and starts making some kind of tofu wine or something.

Mathieu:
I mean, and maybe it would be good, I may be judging it a little bit personally, but like there's no history behind Virginia wine. At the beginning I think we were trying to be like California because like in United States, wine is California wine.

Dan Pashman:
And it's the obvious thing to do if you're trying to build a wine industry in America, go to California.

Mathieu:
So we're going to, we're going to implant like Cabernet Sauvignon and try to do a big caveat. And so we know that you find in Napa. The point is we're not Napa, we're Virginia.

Dan Pashman:
When you say we're not Napa, we're Virginia, you mean the climate is that it's not the same climate, you can't grow the same grapes.

Mathieu:
The climate, the soil, everything is different. The [foreign language 00:27:51] is different. [foreign language 00:27:51] is a concept of sense of place and that's where you grow the grapes and that's very important for understanding what we do and I will do it because there's grapes that we can grow here that will grow well and there's also grapes that's not going to grow well and there's no point of trying to mimic something from another region. You have to show where you're from and that's weird because like I'm not from here, but I've been in Virginia for long enough that I really feel like I've got a lot of pride into what we grow here and what Virginia is about.

Dan Pashman:
I would love to hear a couple of specific examples of things that you and other wine makers are doing in Virginia that just like would probably never happen in France or California

Mathieu:
You know, for a lot of time in United States we've been trained to doing a big super ripe California style or West coast style Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon, [inaudible 00:28:41] are very, very ripe. But I'm coming from a place where you've got Cabernet found that are very herbaceous. And when I'm talking about herbaceous, it's like you've got the green paper component. And for us here for very, very long time we try to erase that and pretend that all, I don't want that because I want like this foot bond. Now I'm even doing this the old closer fermentation. Fermenting was a stem because I want to bring more greenness in my wine. You might thinks it's completely crazy. But for me I find it create more layers, more complexity in the taste. And maybe young might be a little bit abrasive, but like age the wine for a little bit and then suddenly you're going to have something with depth, things that you may not get otherwise. And so instead of erasing it, I think we should embrace it and we should make it as being a signature of what we do.

Dan Pashman:
Tell me about the, I understand that you're using concrete tanks as opposed to steel tanks. What does that do?

Mathieu:
Again, like I mean, you know, if you're going Burgundy, if you go a lot of places, you've got a lot of concrete tanks because you know, in 1900 it was less expensive and more durable than oak. So people start doing fermentation concrete tank and like you know, comes to like 1980, when everything needs to be like sterile. And so everybody removes a concrete tank and put like stainless steel tank. It's much, much easier to clean. But there's one thing that now people realize, it's like, with concrete tank we had a fermentation that was different than it was a stainless steel. You know, we were talking a lot about biome and like life's, wine is a living product. I mean, we use yeast to make the alcoholic fermentation, but we've got bacteria, we've got a lot of things going on in the wine. The yeast population and all that. It's also a part of the [foreign language 00:30:22] and we need to value that.

Dan Pashman:
Mathieu, I need to talk to you about something.

Mathieu:
Yes.

Dan Pashman:
A while back on the podcast, I was talking, I think it might've even been during an ad. I was talking about wine and I said, I said I didn't, I have not always been a big wine drinker because I'm allergic to sulfites. And I said, whenever I drink wine, especially red wine, even a relatively small amount, it's not life threatening. I just get like if I drink too much of it, I could go from zero to hung over, basically. Like I just got a pounding headache, my nose get stuffy, I don't feel good. And so as a result, I never drank that much of it. So I got several angry emails from listeners saying, you know, you've debunked MSG. You know the sign that MSG isn't, there's nothing wrong with MSG. And now that you're spreading other misinformation, there's nothing wrong with sulfites. Get it straight. So what's the deal with sulfites?

Mathieu:
First, do you have more headache or stuffy nose when you drink a red wine or white wine?

Dan Pashman:
Probably red.

Mathieu:
All right, here you are. So it's not sulfites, your problem is not sulfites, it's the histamine.

Dan Pashman:
Histamines.

Mathieu:
Histamines, that could be a natural product that happened during the fermentation of the red wine. So you are allergic to histamine and the reason why I'm saying like just take some Claritin before you drink red wine.

Dan Pashman:
So you're saying that I need it anti-histamine.

Mathieu:
Yes.

Dan Pashman:
That makes a lot more sense.

Mathieu:
Zyrtec, anything like that. If you do that then you don't need to get the Advil the day after. So be proactive and then your next day will be much, much better. If you eat like nuts or dry fruit, the level of sulfur in this product is like 20 times higher than what you will naturally find in wine.

Dan Pashman:
And just to be clear, some sulfites are a natural byproduct of the fermentation process.

Mathieu:
You will never had a wine with zero sulfite because fermentation, the yeast, produce a lot of byproduct. And one of the byproducts that they do is they use sulfur. So even if you don't add any single drop of sulfur as a preservative, you will naturally have sulfur in your wine.

Dan Pashman:
Right. So it occurs naturally in the wine and then traditionally, and for many centuries, sulfur in some form has been added to wine as a preservative. With the so called natural wines. So there's some sulfur in those that's naturally occurring. Is there added sulfur?

Mathieu:
You can. It's 10 or 20 PPM, so I'm not sure about that. It's a small amount.

Dan Pashman:
It's interesting, Mathieu, I was reading about. So as you know, I'm sure like wine in America has that label that says contains sulfites. Do you know where that came from?

Mathieu:
I'm not sure about that.

Dan Pashman:
It turns out that we have the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to thank, but he's most famous for having spent 24 hours on the floor of the Senate doing the filibuster to try to block civil rights legislation. But one of his other real gems was that he, you know, he was sort of like part of this Neo prohibitionists, you know teetotalers in the 70s and 80s and his crowning achievement on that front was to get this law passed because they realized they weren't going to be able to get away with banning alcohol again. They just decided to try to make it sound as scary and bad for you as possible. And so they passed a law that said that every bottle of wine has to say contains sulfites to scare people into thinking, "Well that sounds bad. Maybe we shouldn't drink, maybe we should vote for Strom Thurmond."

Dan Pashman:
And so that's where that label comes from. Even though all wine contains sulfites and a lot of other things contain a lot more. So if you're one of those liberals out there who's like, "I only drink natural wine because regular wine contains sulfites and sulfites sound bad." You just got played by Strom Thurmond.

Mathieu:
The comment that I've got very often when it comes to wine with no sulfites, if you're going to Europe, we don't have the big contains sulfites sign on it and so I've got a lot of people that say, "Oh yeah, I never get a headache when I drink when I drink wine from Europe when I'm there because they don't have any sulfite." Like, no, just not writing on the label. Right. Let's not forget that there's one thing in wine that maybe a little bit more dangerous than sulfur. It's called alcohol.

Dan Pashman:
So what does the future hold for Virginia wine? What do you think or hope that the Virginia wine industry will be at in 10 years from now?

Mathieu:
I mean the hope is first like, yeah, if you've got the chance to drink Virginia wine most of the time is because you've been traveling your winery and most likely bought wine at the winery because the problem is we are finding small winery on the world scale and we are lucky enough to have a lot of agritourism and this means that a lot of our wine is being sold at the winery. So next step is to be able to get more Virginia wine that more people can try it and say like, "Wow, that's good."

Dan Pashman:
Mathieu, if you know is the wine maker at King Family Vineyards outside Charlottesville. Big hand for Mathieu Finot.

Dan Pashman:
And a big hand for all of you. Thank you so much for coming out. Goodnight.

Dan Pashman:
My thanks to everyone at the Fire, Flower, and Fork Festival in Richmond, especially Stephanie Gans, Susan Winecki and Eileen Mellon. And I ate some great meals in Richmond, some great fried fish at Croaker Spot and Mamma Jay's. So I want to also think Adrian Miller, AKA soul food scholar on social media. You've heard him here on the show before. Finally got to meet him in person at this festival, which was great and he pointed me to Mamma Jay's where I got a fantastic piece of fried catfish that is just haunting my dreams.

Dan Pashman:
Also took two orders of peach cobbler and two slices of pineapple coconut cake to go jam those in my carry on. It was kind of funny, my parents were on like this sort of fiftieth anniversary trip to Sicily and they were packing their bags in Sicily as I'm packing in Virginia and I'm cramming in leftover fried fish and peach cobbler and cake into my bag as my mom is, you know, cramming olive oil and cheese and olives and sun dried tomatoes into her bag. It runs in the family.

Dan Pashman:
Anyway, Richmond was a blast. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe or favorite or do whatever the thing is to do in your app. You can do it right now while you're listening. Thank you.

Dan Pashman:
And Hey, while you're tapping stuff on your phone, tell your friends about this episode or another recent episode of the Sporkful that you like. Throw it up on the social medias. It helps us out. Thank you.

Dan Pashman:
This show is produced by me along with [inaudible 00:37:02] and Perry Huggins. The show is edited by Tracy Samuelson and Hallie Bayramdere. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosaria. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman and this is Carrie Duggin and Sarah Jamison from Alexandria, Virginia. Reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

Dan Pashman:
Have you heard about the food in Macao? Over four hundred years ago, Portuguese and Chinese influences intertwined to produce Macaonese cuisine. The food and Macao brings together spices from Malaysia, India, and Portugal, and this mix of cultures is also apparent in the destinations, art, architecture, and cultural traditions. For more information, go to visitmacaochina.com, that's visit Macau, M-A-C-A-O China dot com.