Taste of change

Carlos Gonzales is captivated by transformation. Specifically, he’s excited by the concept of harnessing microorganisms to change a food product into something it wasn’t—like turning a cucumber into a pickle.

“Through fermentation, food can take on different qualities,” he said. “Certainly, preservation is a big aspect.”

Gonzales is the co-owner of Pacific Culture, a local preservation-by-fermentation business with a small storefront on Humboldt Avenue and a booth at the Saturday farmers’ market. Along with his sister, Amber Smith, he launched the business in the spring of 2014. They sell their sauerkraut, pickles and kombucha throughout the North State.

During a recent visit to the store, Gonzales explained that he started fermenting food when he was a student at the University of Southern California.

“I was your typical pizza-eating college student,” he said. “I was researching and trying to understand how to make the best pizza possible, and after a surprisingly long time, I finally realized that pizza’s all about the dough and crust. So, I learned about sourdough cultures—instead of using commercial yeast, you have this sourdough culture that you feed flour and water twice a day.”

As a mix of yeast and bacteria, sourdough is a type of fermented food, and it turned Gonzales on to the wide world of fermentation. From there, he progressed to experimenting with pickling vegetables, and he eventually saw an unfilled niche in Chico’s growing craft-food scene after he was done with college and working for his father’s company, Fifth Sun.

Now, Pacific Culture is a staple at the Saturday farmers’ market in downtown Chico alongside other local food purveyors such as Live Life Juice Co. and Beber Almondmilk. From Gonzales’ viewpoint, the rise in popularity of high-quality and locally sourced food products is entirely driven by customers.

“It’s all about the customer, what they’ve been exposed to, what they want and what they’re willing to spend,” Gonzales said. “We sell our jars of sauerkraut as affordably as possible, but we’re still $7, $8, $9 on the shelf. You can go to Costco and get a gallon of sauerkraut for a few dollars, I’m sure. But, you know, I think customers are becoming more savvy to differences in quality and what’s out there.”

Pacific Culture got started by making sauerkraut and pickling locally grown, in-season organic vegetables, but they’ve since branched out to other fermented foods. Their big push these days is kombucha, the fermented, lightly carbonated tea-based drinks that have become enormously popular over the past decade.

It took about a year for Gonzales and brewmaster Indra Clark to develop Pacific Culture’s kombucha recipe. They started selling it about 18 months ago. At the moment, it’s available at more than a dozen locations around town on draft. They’re just beginning to bottle the bubbly beverages, which land somewhere between tea and beer, and are slightly alcoholic. They offer a variety of flavors, including Salty Dog (brewed with juniper, grapefruit and sea salt), Dark and Stormy (hjicha, ginger and spices) Concord Grape and Turmeric. Bottles of Pacific Culture kombucha sell for $5 at the farmers’ market and are just starting to hit the shelves of local retailers.

More than ever, consumers are aware of the probiotics present in fermented foods and their connection to gut health. That’s been a boon for marketing, Gonzalez acknowledged, but it’s also another source of wonder for him personally.

“There are probably more bacterial organisms living inside you than human cells,” he said. “There are billions of bacteria in your body, and you’re helping that system’s health by consuming fermented foods. I find that fascinating.”