Sour Power

Committed to "bringing fine fermented foods to the Santa Fe market," Barrio Brinery (1413 W Alameda St., 699-9812) has overcome a series of hurdles and is set to open on Nov. 14.

"We started everything up around March/April," owner Patrick Block says about the journey. "We submitted permits in July and just had it approved last week."

The holdup was due to the nature of the business—one specializing in fermented food products.

"They said, 'Oh, if you were doing beef jerky or salsa, we would know exactly what to do.' I guess that in New Mexico no one had done commercial fermentation before," he continues. "Or at least no one in the [Environment] Department had reviewed anything like that, so I had to reinvent the pickle or reinvent the wheel for them."

He leads the way to the locale's main workspace, past refrigerators and boxes of Morton canning and pickling salt to a room devoted exclusively to fermentation. It currently holds around 50 pounds of pickles in process, all housed in lined, food-grade buckets.

"It's not real pretty or real quaint," he says about the setup, "but it's still hand-crafted, and it gets the job done."

As of now, Barrio Brinery is only approved to produce pickles and escabeche. Block explains that for each individual product to be approved for sale, samples of it must be sent out for lab analysis at New Mexico State University.

"On one hand, it's food and you don't want to kill people. I get that," Block jokes about the red tape. He then points to a printout of a quote by USDA microbiologist Fred Breidt that reads, "…Risky is not a word I would use to describe vegetable fermentation. It is one of the oldest and safest technologies we have."

He hopes, with time, the brinery's production includes pickled beets, carrots and Yucatán-inspired pickled onion.

Block's love for fermented food started early on. A recently retired state employee, he was looking to keep busy, and found inspiration in his 20-plus years working as a bartender at the Santa Fe Opera. "I thought, I sure as hell don't want to own a restaurant. I wanted something that would keep me busy but not that busy."

He researched successful business in other towns that like Santa Fe have a "local food/slow food vibe," and decided on pickles. "Nobody else was doing here and it seemed like a good thing to do," says the recipient of a BizMIX grant.

"Water, salt, spices and time," he cites as the ingredients for a perfect pickle. "Nothing else."

He serves up his version of a bread-and-butter pickle, whose provenance is a friend's organic garden in Tesuque. It's crunchy and not too sweet, given that he opts to employ honey rather than cane sugar. The hot and spicy varietal lives up to its name and has a smoky kick thanks to the use of New Mexico red chile.

The name, he says, is an homage to the neighboring Barrio La Cañada. "I looked around, and I like alliterative words, term, phrases, whatever the heck you call 'em."

Block hopes to cement a good walk-in clientele, team up with area chefs to offer catered selection based on their dishes, and eventually, sell retail in local produce shops like La Montañita or Kaune's.

Much like his product and process, however, Block wishes to remain a small operation that acquires its kick at a slow pace.

"It's always going to stay fairly simple," he muses, taking a bite of kosher dill. "I don't want to be the Orville Redenbacher of pickles or anything like that."

Santa Fe Reporter