Cooking with Crosby Roamann: Sourdough

Every year, as our grapes slowly ripen, we take fruit samples from the vineyard. Sampling begins generally in mid-August for our Sauvignon Blanc, and continue through our last harvest of the vintage, typically mid-October. The practice is simple, but time-consuming. A 100 to 200-berry sample is collected in a sandwich bag from each block being tested by gently harvesting one berry per cluster from roughly every-other vine until we've reached our sample collection target. We then crush the berries in the sample and chill them to 68F. Then we check the sugar content (i.e. Brix) in a refractometer. Sometimes, the juice sample is sent out for professional chemistry including acidity and pH, among other things.

If the weather is just right, the grapes will be the right temperate for testing with our refractometer right there in the field, and then often the jucie samples get left in the car ... and forgotten, and a day or two later, they will begin to ferment.

This year, I decided to put some of these spontaneous grape sample fermentations to good use. Following a recipe from Sylvia Fountain at FeastingAtHome.com, I collected the juice from our berry samples and made a sourdough bread starter with it. The results have been incredible.

I followed the traditional sourdough starter recipe -- 1/2 cup wholewheat flour, and 1 cup water -- but to this I added 1/4 cup of fermenting grape juice. I made this addition two or three times over the course of the first week as the starter got going. When we made our first boule, at the end of that first week getting the starter going, I added an additional 1/4 cup of fermenting grape juice.