Modern Pioneering with Georgia Pellegrini

Narrator: "Modern Pioneering" is funded in part by wild blueberry farmers of Maine.

Wild blueberries are full of flavor and nutrients, a pop full of blueberry taste for your favorite smoothie, breakfast, or dessert.

Learn more at wildblueberries.com.

Narrator: At Muir Glen, we believe that organic farming benefits consumers, farmers, and ecosystems.

Narrator: And made possible by... ...and many other generous donors.

A complete list is available at GeorgiaPellegrini.com.

Pellegrini: I read a book once called "Uncultivated."

It's about apples, but, really, it's about what happens when we stop trying to control everything we grow.

Andy Brennan writes about wild trees, unmanicured, untamed, that carry flavors no one could design.

He calls it "uncultivation," a return to what's been forgotten.

He says uncultivation isn't neglect.

It's trust.

It's stepping back and seeing what happens when we stop trying to make everything perfect.

Here in upstate New York, that idea breathes in a regenerative orchard, where imperfect apples contribute to the unique flavor of a new American brandy, at an artist's home, in barrels of vinegar, quietly alive with bacteria, in a brand of cider made from fruit that no one planted on purpose.

Each carries a piece of this place and a way of seeing the land and the fruit as something we collaborate with, not command.

O mio babbino caro Frishkopf: Brandy and spirits -- at the end of the day, they're farm products.

They grew out of farming.

They grew out of a way to take farm products that don't have a long life and create a longer life to them.

And brandy is the one that has the longest life.

It's both expressive of the farming culture, but also of the beauty that you can create from farm products.

And it's all about sort of celebrating farming and life.

Pellegrini: Jonathan Frishkopf's story started far from the farm.

While studying economics and finance in college, he took a wine-tasting course that opened a door he never closed again.

While finance carried him to New York, then to Vienna, his weekends were spent in vineyards and tiny Austrian distilleries, learning the old ways of making schnapps.

By the time he settled in Prague in the early '90s, he'd seen a whole continent turn its surplus fruit into something lasting.

In every orchard, when the pies and preserves were done, the farmers distilled what remained.

That's what stayed with him -- the idea that nothing should go to waste and that simple fruit could be transformed into memory.

Frishkopf: When I did finally come back to the States, I started looking at brandy and why nobody was doing brandy at, really, a world-class level in the US.

So, around 2015, '16, I started looking in the area.

I looked for about a year and a half and found this beautiful property.

And we set off to create sort of a world-class brandy.

One of the big factors in the Hudson Valley is we can grow ideal apples and ideal grapes in the same place.

And I don't know anywhere else in the world that really fits that profile.

Pellegrini: Brandy begins here, long before the stills or the barrels, each apple, each root system shaped by this hillside.

Jonathan and his director of farming and production, Caleb Gregg, are still learning the patterns beneath their feet, how regeneration brings the best fruit.

Gregg: The baseline we started off is, what we want to do is be organic.

We eliminate all systemic pesticides, herbicides, all either done by hand, or we let the native animals and insects kind of help us balance and manage the different pests.

Hopefully these trees will last 50 years or maybe more.

Pellegrini: John, tell me, why were regenerative practices important to you when you started this?

Frishkopf: We feel like it's the right thing to do.

It's the right thing for the planet.

But beyond the philosophy, I think it actually produces much better fruit.

What we're trying to do is get the land to become even more expressive by growing organically and using these regenerative methods.

So, you try to guide the system to focus on what's good and less on what's bad.

And that's what creates the best quality fruit.

If you look at dirt in a regenerative organic farm compared to dirt in a conventional farm, the soil is basically dead because it's been poisoned.

Whereas if you look in our soil, it's living.

There's little bugs.

There's a whole ecosystem that's evolved with the plants, and it supports the health and the flavor of the fruit.

Pellegrini: We step into a room where old world meets new.

The wine or cider is pumped into a traditional cognac still, pre-warmed, then double-distilled.

The first run makes low wine.

The second is where they make the cuts, capturing the heart.

Vapors travel the swan neck into a copper coil condenser, carefully cooled for a clean spirit, off the still, hot, vivid, bursting with fresh fruit, collected in a reception barrel the way they do in cognac.

From there, they shape it, and blending becomes the language of the place, some lots kept young, others left for long aging, all blended for balance before the slow walk to bottle.

Gregg: Here we are in the chai.

This is an apple brandy, vintage 2023.

The reason we use this weighted bottom, this needs to go all the way to the bottom because the way that the maturation and the extraction of the tannins in the wood, the tannins in the oak -- so, they're gonna be concentrated on the bottoms and the sides.

Pellegrini: Is there a methodology to tasting it the way you would taste wine?

Gregg: We like to just aerate it just a little bit, and not getting your nose directly in it, but kind of start on the outside.

And you're trying to get those lighter aromas.

At this stage, what are the notable characteristics?

Pellegrini: Mm-hmm.

Gregg: For me [sniffs] you're gonna get more of that spice, you're going to get the vanilla and baking spice, toasted, roasted apple notes.

We're really just assessing at this point to say, "Is it too much?

Is it too little?

Could it use a little bit more time?"

Pellegrini: Okay.

Let's taste.

Gregg: Yeah.

Cheers.

Pellegrini: Whew!

I'm inducted now.

Gregg: So, it's hot.

Pellegrini: Wow!

Gregg: Yeah, so, when the eau de vie comes off the still, it comes off at about 70%.

You get extraction from all the sugars, the tannins of the barrels.

You need the alcohol.

This specifically, to me, you get a lot of -- on the nose, you get the bright fruit, vanilla, and then on the palate, very fruit forward, this one.

It's lively in a way.

Pellegrini: Yes.

Gregg: So it's got some intensity to it, and that's really from those sharp apples.

This might have one or two things that we find really nice in a blend.

Frishkopf: We're eight years into this venture and we're finally tasting an aged apple brandy and it's fantastic.

Everything just came together.

And it was just such a beautiful spirit.

And I was just so relieved and so happy because it's -- it's everything I hoped it would be.

In the Hudson Valley, they've been making brandy since the 1630s.

And it was actually one of the first spirits that was used in drinks, whether it was punches or cocktails.

And I think we should go back to that.

And what we're trying to create is a legacy very much in the European tradition of a great spirit, that in 200 years people will know and respect and will be, in our case, sort of the definitive Hudson Valley brandy.

And the idea is to build these traditions, to build these approaches to farming, to production, to maturation, to blending, in order to create that legacy and become known as the Great American brandy.

Pellegrini: In this work, time is both the ingredient and the teacher.

Patience shapes flavor the way weather shapes the land, slowly, invisibly, perfectly.

At Klocke, that patience lives in the soil and the stills.

And just beyond these hills, another story begins, where two creatives are learning their own rhythm of time and taste and place.

Ashley Rupprecht and Jeffrey Schad spent nearly 20 years in New York City, both working in creative fields, photography, media, and hat making.

They bought their upstate New York property initially as a weekend home, a place to recharge from the city.

Within a year and a half of going back and forth, they decided the quality of life there outweighed what the city offered and began to think how they could redirect their creativity to this plot of land.

Their first connection came through small acts, experimenting and tapping maple trees for syrup, playful, creative, and symbolic of their design background meeting rural life.

Schad: We were fortunate enough to be the caretakers of this place.

We wanted to do something with it.

Coming from the creative world and still being involved in the creative world, I think we bring a set of references with us.

Our kind of like obsessiveness over tradition and craft with our products is hopefully what ultimately makes people happy.

You should be able to have beauty in your food.

It should taste amazing, but it should be beautiful, as well, which I think is often overlooked.

Ruprecht: We still are doing everything by hand.

Schad: Yeah.

Ruprecht: Not only is the food that we're making slow, but the packaging is, too.

And it is all intentional, and there are all these little design elements.

Pellegrini: A few years into tapping for maple syrup, they became fascinated by fermentation and began developing apple cider vinegar.

It took years of experimentation, failed batches, reading and testing to master the two-stage fermentation process.

The result was a slow crafted vinegar with minimal alcohol, layered acidity, and the sweetness of maple, all made traditionally and aged naturally.

Schad: You know, I think if it all worked correctly the first time, like, I probably wouldn't have read anything or reached out to anybody.

But mainly it was just because of failure.

Fermentation the traditional way or the way we have done it up until this point, like, takes a long time.

Ruprecht: I think we also just got interested in the -- just the craft behind making apple cider vinegar and just preserving the season, how that vinegar can then also preserve other parts of, like, produce and food, as well.

Pellegrini: There isn't much action in making vinegar, no harvest rush or fire to tend, just a quiet room.

barrels breathing in their own time.

Schad: I think fermentation is an ongoing learning experience.

It was really a process of, like, learning through experimenting and then, like, observing what went right and what went wrong and -- Ruprecht: And why.

Schad: And why.

Once I understood the vinegar-making process, it became easier to replicate.

We still rely on intuition and tasting to, like, see if they're finished.

Your eye is, like, the greatest measuring device.

And it's the same with, like, producing, you know, food products in agriculture.

Like, your taste buds are, like, the ultimate say whether it's done or not or whether it's good or not.

And so I think it's the science that gets you most of the way, and then it's that instinct and taste that lets you fine-tune and finish things along the way.

And that's what we rely on.

Pellegrini: Ashley and Jeffrey's patience in the barrel room turns tangible in a gathering that shows their spirit -- unhurried, sensory, grounded, creative, art and hospitality merging naturally.

Ruprecht: Delicious.

Yes.

Pellegrini: It looks delicious.

Pellegrini: Ashley builds a meal that brings it full circle -- grilled bread with goat ricotta... "Ri-goat-a" cheese.

Ruprecht: [ Laughs ] Pellegrini: ...delicata squash brushed with maple and vinegar, and a fall salad of bitter chicories, grilled pears, blue cheese, and hazelnuts, all dressed with their own hard-won vinaigrette, a simple meal, but one that holds the story of their land and the time it takes to make something honest.

Schad: Cheers, guys.

Pellegrini: Cheers.

Ruprecht: Cheers.

Pellegrini: Thank you for this... Schad: Yeah.

Pellegrini: ...amazing wood-fired meal.

Schad: I know.

Ruprecht: Thank you for visiting.

Pellegrini: The fruits of your labor in this wood.

Schad: [ Chuckles ] Yeah.

Ruprecht: Mmm.

Oh, my gosh, yum.

Pellegrini: Wow.

Schad: Mmm.

Pellegrini: I can't think of a better meal on a fall day.

Ruprecht: I know, right?

Mmm.

Schad: I know, right?

Ruprecht: I think it's such an amazing way to share this region.

There is different tastes within maple syrup and apples.

Schad: We try to make things in traditional methods.

And through that, I think the flavor has been really high-grade.

Doing something with your hands and making something that's truly delicious and that you can stand behind -- that's the reward in and of itself.

And it would be an honest and, like, an amazing reflection of the farm honoring the tradition and craft of doing things and honoring the region.

And I think that's super important.

Pellegrini: There's a moment in any creative pursuit when patience gives way to trust.

For Ashley and Jeffrey, that trust is expressed in barrels and bottles.

Just down the road, at the home of another artist and author, it becomes philosophy, an invitation to let the wild show us what beauty looks like when we stop shaping it.

He calls it uncultivation, a practice of letting the wild lead.

Andy Brennan wrote the book that led me to this area and ignited my desire to better understand the apple and its relationship with us and to this place.

His homestead is in Wurtsboro, New York, a plot of land he bought long ago with his wife, Polly, and tried to tame, only to find it couldn't be tamed in the way he first imagined.

The painful lessons he learned set him on a path of discovery and transformed the way he interacted with the land.

Brennan: I cleared four or five acres and started planting apple trees, but I didn't realize that everything you read about apple trees is designed for a different property.

So I discovered the hard way that digging holes and planting conventional apple trees isn't a thing in the mountains, that, really, trees from seed do well, so -- Pellegrini: 'Cause it's sort of survival of the fittest, right?

Brennan: Yeah, the most important thing about apples is that every single seed in an apple is designed to test new locations.

Some of them are gonna be compatible here in the mountains, some in sandy New Jersey, some in Alaska.

Pellegrini: And those varieties that we're all used to seeing in the grocery store, the Golden Delicious, the Pink Lady -- are they all clones, I guess?

Brennan: So, yeah, the cloning in the apple world occurs two main ways, grafting and then in root cultivation and propagation.

I'm grafting to preserve diversity from the local wild trees.

Rather than having 400 of the one variety I like, I have like -- I have over 400 varieties.

Some trees have multiple grafts.

Pellegrini: So, you're identifying ones that you discover in the wild.

You like their flavor.

And so you want those to continue to exist because each one, like you said, is genetically different.

Brennan: Yes.

Pellegrini: And so you graft the ones that you want to perpetuate... Brennan: Yeah.

Pellegrini: ...on to your original rootstock.

Brennan: Yes.

We call this an orphanage 'cause it's basically all the wild trees growing here.

I want to see how the tree that was in the wild does on a different root system in a different location.

Pellegrini: I could talk to Andy for hours.

I devoured his book like a feast.

Trusting nature this completely isn't the most lucrative path, but for flavor and sustainability, it's unmatched.

Brennan: It's a tree, right?

So it's used to getting its companionship and its information from other trees.

Once you remove the apple from the forest, you are saying to the tree, "I'm gonna make your decisions for you.

I'm gonna protect you."

And you have to do that.

Humans have a certain type of intellect.

We're using that and applying that to a tree which has its own intellect and its own survival.

Pellegrini: Andy even finds himself having to resist intervening.

It's human nature to want to meddle, but he tries to resist.

He simply takes the apple mush from pressing his cider, scatters it among his tree orphanage, and trusts.

Brennan: To tell an apple tree what's best for it is ridiculous.

I know this from cider, that, left to their own resources, the story that they can tell, the way they express themselves in the fruit, the way they express themselves in their little micro community, it's so much more interesting than what I could potentially conjure for the tree.

Pellegrini: It's interesting that we haven't done a better job of figuring that out by now, that we're still so keen on interfering, especially in modern agriculture, that we need to keep creating these sort of waxy, shiny pieces of fruit that all taste very similar, that all look very similar.

There's no variety in flavor or taste.

What do you think consumers could do to change that?

Brennan: I think specialization is a real problem.

Pellegrini: So, it's a question of how we can get back to living a more multi-dimensional lifestyle.

Brennan: Here's an area again where I spread the apple seeds, and you could see that's an apple tree.

That's an apple tree.

That's an apple tree.

That's an apple tree.

That's an apple tree.

And -- Yeah, here, here, here.

But it's like this all the way up, for five acres, to the very top up there.

Evening falls Giving grace to summer fields And there you are Pellegrini: In Andy's tasting room, the result of uncultivation is in bottles of different shapes and sizes, with labels honoring the land that produced their wild flavor.

Brennan: There are certain apple trees that are just phenomenally interesting and cider makers particularly should take note of.

It would be nice that people got a sense for just how diverse apples are.

My hope is that the ciders do that.

We'll start with the East Branch, which is the northern part of the county there.

Pellegrini: Is there a strategy to drinking cider?

Brennan: You don't have to even drink.

You can spit it out in a sink, but --- Pellegrini: I will be drinking it.

Brennan: Oh, yeah.

Well, cheers.

Yeah.

Pellegrini: Cheers.

We taste cider.

It's incredible.

It's what cider used to taste like long before I was around.

Brennan: So, obviously, there's no sweetness in it, but there's a lot to remind one of the apple.

Pellegrini: It has so many layers of flavor.

Brennan: I'm not gonna take credit for that.

It's the -- Pellegrini: The more that you swallow, the more flavor you experience.

Brennan: I might even find, like, a sweet cider sort of attractive on first sip, but by the end of the glass... Pellegrini: It becomes cloying.

Brennan: ...it's gross... Pellegrini: Yeah.

Brennan: ...whereas this is only getting better and better.

Pellegrini: I could drink a lot of this.

Somehow it's the simple things There's so much wonder Something to believe in Pellegrini: Wow.

Brennan: Almost like the memory of the fruit when you're drinking it.

Pellegrini: That's exactly what it is.

It's a memory of a fruit.

But there's still not really much sweetness happening.

Brennan: Yeah, but you -- Pellegrini: But you get this apple fruit experience without it being sweet.

I'm not sure how that happens, but it does.

I want to be the one Who brings out the color in gray days Everything has never been so easy Brennan: It's amazing 'cause, I mean, to me, I'm not the creator of these ciders.

The trees are.

But the trees are... geniuses.

They have such an interesting story to tell.

I was watching you watch the sun come up Pellegrini: We take a little drive to a piece of land that Andy forages.

He has been working with the landowner for years to clear the overgrown forest and bring back sunlight to the remnants of an abandoned orchard.

We get into the question of what makes a tree wild versus one that's cultivated and the dance between letting something remain wild and giving it a touch of human intervention.

Brennan: There's some varieties that I would like people to know about because they're unusual.

This one looks like a regular apple, but it tastes more like a crab apple.

It tastes pretty horrible.

And it might look like a farm tree, but it's definitely not.

Pellegrini: How do you come up upon an apple tree and know that it's wild versus just abandoned?

Brennan: When John, the property owner, and I started clearing this -- this was maybe 15 years ago -- this was completely overgrown.

You couldn't see the apple trees.

As we clear a little by little, discovered this wasn't by accident.

The trees are actually in a perfect row.

Pellegrini: Mm.

Yeah.

Brennan: This is part of the Deniston farm from the late 1700s.

So, that is essentially what a lot of seedling -- like the Johnny Appleseed-type wild trees tasted like.

Pellegrini: Hmm.

Brennan: Looks like it'd be delicious, but it's, um... Well, you could try it or... Pellegrini: I'll find out.

Brennan: Yeah.

[ Chuckles ] Pellegrini: Very chalky and lots of tannins.

Yeah, a bitter bite to it.

But it's still got that sweetness there.

But I'd eat it.

I think it's more interesting than a -- a store-bought apple.

You know?

It's a culinary adventure.

Brennan: Yeah.

We're flying high like a jet stream See it in your eyes that you feel me Never wanna come down to the ground Brennan: There's no luxury item that can possibly match the glory of not knowing something and just being a beginner at something.

For me, this is one of the things wild apples teach, is that I have no idea what's gonna happen.

Every single tree has got volumes to teach me if I'm open to it.

But if I'm like, "Well, no, that's a tree, apple trees do this," and I have in my mind this sort of set conclusion, I'm gonna miss it.

To me, that's waking up every morning in a sort of existential panic and being like, "Well, what is my connection to the world?"

and going out and trying to figure that out.

Pellegrini: Mm.

Brennan: And every single day, I think, is very important.

So, for me, going into the wild is my most successful way of doing it.

Till the sky falls down I had it all written, but the ink never dried Throw out the page What do I say?

If all I thought I wanted went running away Pellegrini: We spend so much of our lives trying to shape the world.

to fit our plans.

But the longer I stay close to the soil, the more I see how the land shapes us back.

It teaches character, not sameness.

It keeps the memory of what worked, what failed, what was let go.

Time softens everything, even our need to control it.

I don't want to give up Give up on a someday What begins as cultivation becomes collaboration.

You learn to stop forcing and start watching, to let things find their own rhythm in the wind, in the weather, in the waiting.

The work becomes less about yield, more about relationship, each place teaching its own character, its own memory, its way of holding time.

And somewhere in that stillness, trust takes root, trust in time, trust in place, and the quiet knowing that what endures was never ours to perfect, only ours to witness and to let nature sign.

Might be just behind the door What my heart's been looking for Narrator: To learn more about the topics featured on this episode, log on to GeorgiaPellegrini.com or follow along on Georgia's Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channel for weekly pioneering adventures, tips, and recipes.

"Modern Pioneering" is funded in part by wild blueberry farmers of Maine.

Wild blueberries are full of flavor and nutrients, a pop full of blueberry taste for your favorite smoothie, breakfast, or dessert.

Learn more at wildblueberries.com.

Narrator: At Muir Glen, we believe that organic farming benefits consumers, farmers, and ecosystems.

Narrator: And made possible by... ...and many other generous donors.

A complete list is available at GeorgiaPellegrini.com.