Exploring the art of the collaboration
The art of collaboration is alive and well in the Okanagan.
While on a subconscious level the transactional nature, the give and take of collaboration is necessary to get along in the world, those makers among us seek it out to further their creativity and nurture a sense of community and conviviality.
Collaborations — or collabs — build community with the sharing of ideas and techniques. You can see that spirit shining bright in the craft beer industry, for example, where camaraderie is their leitmotif. Guest taps bring awareness to their fellow breweries and offer a chance for cross-marketing.
Recently, Cannery Brewing hosted a brainstorming session amongst a family of craft breweries. They’ll meet again on Sept. 9 to create a fundraising collab beer to aid Penticton Beer Week.
Kim Lawton, Cannery’s PR liaison explains, “Craft beer is an industry inherently supportive of each other. It’s not uncommon,” she adds, “to call another brewery for advice, to borrow ingredients or meet for a beer.”
The Cannery’s menu is ripe with collabs at any given time of the year, expressing itself strongly with seasonality. Their Okanagan Daze showcases Okanagan apricots and Pinot Gris in a refreshing Canadian wheat ale; the Sunblink Berry Sour, is a celebratory tart wheat kettle sour fermented with raspberries, blackberries and blueberries; and the Thornless Blackberry Porter blends malted barleys and superior hops with pure blackberries for a complex, easy sipping quaff.
At Slackwater Brewing creativity reigns with their latest summer collab, Margarita Pool. In tandem with JAK’s Beer Wine Spirits, find a dry-hopped sour gose on tap, a brew of fresh lime juice, sea salt and Motueka hops aged in Herradura reposado tequila oak barrels — a bright, light and refreshing repast.
At Penticton’s Upper Bench Creamery, cheesemaker Shana Miller does a collab at least once a year.
“I love doing collabs,” she said. “It’s a way to stay connected with other artisans, and it’s rewarding to have a vision and make it happen.” This year she made an oatmeal stout-washed farmers cheese using Cannery Brewing’s popular stout. The semi-hard cow’s milk cheese is salty, earthy with lovely tang and pungency.
At Creek & Gully Cider, Annelise Simonsen, director of operations, thinks “collaborations are a pretty fun thing” – doing three to four a year. Earlier this year, they created a cider saison made with Cannery Brewing’s Saison and Creek & Gully’s Spartan apple juice and Red Delicious mash. On the current roster is ‘Cheap Tricks’, made with Rigour & Whimsy winery’s whole cluster Riesling co-fermented with Golden Delicious apples in an open-top barrel.
The elixir, bottled with honey for a slight spritz, is available through the cidery. The most fun was a collaborationon-a-collaboration: the cidery created another Riesling/Golden Apple mashup with Ursa Major Winery called ‘Stay Golden'; once the juice was extracted, Neighbourhood Brewing asked for the leftover grape/apple pomace. That was added to a barrel of the brewery’s mature sour beer. The result — ‘Cool Kids’, a beer high in acidity with notes of tangy apple and Riesling. A win-win-win.
In the culinary world, chefs create their magic by naturally collaborating with farmers, fishers and foragers, and seek out other chefs of like-mindedness to share ideas. A unique collab between five female chefs —called The Future is Female — is an Oct. 3 culinary event at Naramata Inn. In the male-dominated restaurant industry, young women coming up in the kitchens have surprisingly few female role models. The Inn has a strong female kitchen presence including chef de cuisine, Stacy Johnson; Minette Lotz, the Inn’s fermenting and foraging expert; pastry chef Liz Stevenson, whose impressive resume includes stints at award-winning Ruya in Dubai and London’s Mayfair, and Dominique Ansel Bakery in London; and the Inn’s young chef de partie Lauren Dumont.
Along with the Inn’s sommelier Emily Walker, they will all collaborate on a sixcourse menu with noted Vancouver-based chef and restaurateur Andrea Carlson at the helm. A role model to both women — and men — in the industry, Carlson has long promoted seasonal, local and organic ingredients before it was commonplace, and her approach to using those ingredients is delicious poetry. A celebrated career that has spanned decades, she recently won the coveted Vancouver Magazine's Chef of the Year — the first woman to do so in the 33year history of the awards.
Carlson has deep respect for the Okanagan, having “planned her cookbook amongst peach orchards and wild artemisia.”
And at her Vancouver restaurant, Burdock & Co, she recently created a ‘Summer of Love” menu series, with Naramata as an amour. Carlson will spearhead the next level dinner, with the Inn’s powerhouse brigade dividing and conquering through the courses, adding in nuances and flavours that reflect the seasons and our region. A collab not to miss. Tickets available at: naramatainn.com