What's brewing

Maintaining a balanced microbiome is an essential part of self-care, which is why fermented drinks play a starring role in Goodwood’s five-day health programme

Words by Emma Moore

Right: drinks such as kombucha and kefir offer a wide range of health benefits

If you were told that a gently effervescing bottle of liquid had the power to banish stress, help with weight loss, clear the mind, improve immunity and nurture mental health, would you believe it? It sounds rather like the magic cordial Lucy was given in Narnia, to deploy as needed. But these are some of the health benefits credited to fermented beverages such as kombucha and kefir, which have been nudging their way onto refrigerated shelves lately.

Fermentation has always played a part in our diets; it is, after all, the natural process that gives us sauerkraut and soy sauce, beer and pickles, miso, kimchi, yoghurt, cheese and sourdough bread. But the recent surge in interest reflects both our increasingly exploratory palates and a burgeoning appreciation for the importance of keeping our microbiomes in balance (that’s the yeasts, bacteria, fungi and viruses that live in our digestive system). Nurturing gut health is now seen as essential self-care, like exercise and meditation; it’s preventative medicine of the first order. And it’s why Goodwood has devised, with nutritionist Stephanie Moore, a five-day health programme to massage microbiomes back into shape with diet and holistic therapies. As part of the programme, fermented food and drinks are on the menu three times a day.

“Moods and emotions are steered by the gut,” says Lisa Puddle, co-founder of the kombucha brand Momo, which is served during the programme. She was alerted to the benefits of nurturing your inner probiotics on a trip to New York in 2016, when the city’s culinary landscape was already fizzing with fermented foods and drinks. The intrepid Momofuku chef, David Chang, had a whole team dedicated to investigative fermenting – principally in search of untapped umami – and Jori Jayne Emde had set up a fermentation farm to supply restaurants and locals with punchy probiotic-packed condiments, tonics and tinctures. Puddle, meanwhile, fell for the newly ubiquitous fermented tea, kombucha, as a tasty alternative to alcohol, quickly noticing how much less bloated, more energetic and unstressed she became when drinking it regularly. It was the impetus to give up a job in the fashion industry and set up Momo once she was back in London.

Fastidious about capturing all the drink’s power as well as its authentic flavour, Momo brews its liqueur in small batches in glass jars. Kombucha, which is thought to have originated in China and travelled via Korea and Japan back along the Silk Route to Russia, is traditionally made from a live culture called a scoby (short for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”) and black or green tea. Momo, like other modern kombuchas, is enhanced with enticing flavours such as ginger and lemon, elderflower, hibiscus and raspberry and turmeric.

Fermentation fervour set in earlier, meanwhile, for Susana Perez, who makes kefir from the bounty of Goodwood’s dairy herd. As a young judo black belt in her native Catalonia, Perez was fed kefir by her family to fortify her. “It made me feel stronger and gave me a clear mind for competing,” she says. Made from milk and a culture of grains, it is considered a Middle Eastern tradition with origins in the Caucasus Mountains.

Perez also left a high-powered London job to pursue a simpler life with her family, making pure, nutrition-packed kefir from unhomogenised single-origin milk – from herds she knows around her Sussex home. Her infectious devotion to the drink, and her commitment to high production standards, have been strengthened lately by an encounter with a cancer-research doctor who has been using it to bring the digestive systems of chemo patients back to health. And should any more convincing be required, recent research suggests that kefir can stimulate sleep hormones, an effect enhanced with the addition of cinnamon and honey. This is self-care we can definitely make time for. For more information about Goodwood’s five-day Gut Health Programme, visit goodwood.com.