Wild Fermentation
Workshop

14–15.06.2025
Izba, Topolò/Topolove

The Wild Fermentation Workshop includes a theoretical part dedicated to the basics of lacto-fermentation and spontaneous fermentation together with a practical laboratory part that will combine vegetables grown by the organic farm L’Orto Felice with wild herbs and fruits collected in the meadows surrounding Topolove.

Alessia Beltrame is a chef and cooking teacher specialized in the plant world, in the use of wild herbs and fermentations, with work experience in England and Scandinavia. Her work is dedicated to the intersection between productive sustainability, local tradition and a holistic approach to food as care.

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When things go sour
Footnotes to Wild Fermentation
Antônio Frederico Lasalvia

Before the advent of modern technologies like greenhouse complexes and refrigeration systems, the rhythms of agrarian life were marked by cycles of abundance and scarcity. One way to even out the seasonal fluctuations in caloric availability was to preserve what had been harvested in summer for consumption later in the year. In more than one sense, this meant that human digestion began outside a person’s body.

At its core, fermentation is food being metabolized by different microorganisms. Lacto-fermentation, for instance, involves lactic acid bacteria breaking down sugars in vegetables, making them more digestible (and, in some cases, more nutritious and palatable). As an organic process, fermentation is a silent form of interspecific collaboration, which can be detected by smell, taste, and even sight.

Although the decomposing agency of fermentation cannot be fully controlled by humans, it's something people quickly learned to accompany in order to compose complex flavours with. “It happens all around us,” Alessia Beltrame explained during the Wild Fermentation Workshop, “even without human intervention.” Fermentation spontaneously appears in the most ordinary settings, like in sourdough, cheese and vinegar making (to cite the three instances of this phenomenon: alcoholic, lactic and acetic fermentation). Yet, the boundary between rot and cure is not always clearly marked, and often the difference between foul and fine lies in timing.

Certain cultures have long attuned themselves to the rhythms of fermentation, like those rooted in Japan and Georgia, making it central to their cuisine. In the experience of our workshop, what made this process unique was not so much the techniques involved – which were quite straightforward –  but the ingredients themselves. The fermenting jars combined cultivated vegetables from L’Orto Felice (an organic garden in Friuli) with wild herbs gathered in Topolò/Topolove and fruits harvested from Kojsko’s orchard: dandelion stems, wild fennel, elderflower, cherries and many other things that were in season and within reach. The fermenting agents were simply what already clung to the surface of the plants, along with the probiotic microorganisms on our hands (washed only with water, never soap).

With Alesia’s guidance, and after some fine chopping and rough measuring, we sealed the jars and waited for the quiet magic to happen. The palette inside the glass was rich with contrast, with deep shades of purple folded into bright oranges, occasionally speckled with weeds and petals. For the next few days, this is a stomach, and it’s transparent. We will see digestion happening outside of us: a slow bubbling of inexorable transformation. Sugars shall turn into acids and textures will collapse into softness. Taste will grow stranger, sharper and richer. It’s both unsettling and thrilling to see your future appetite fermenting on a shelf. 

When things go sour, sometimes it’s for the best.

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Video by Antônio Frederico Lasalvia.

Program of the workshop

Day 1
15.00–16.30
Presentation and foraging

Day 2
10.00–12.00
Preparation

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The workshop is free and open to everyone!

The workshop will be in Italian language with English and Slovene translation, if needed.

If you would like to participate, write to us: uncommonfruits@gmail.com

Photo: Teo Giovanni Poggi, workshop Fermentation as Metaphor by Rebeca Perez Geronimo, Academy of Margins 2024.