Waters to Wine: Drinking local

The dismal state of the environment these days has me down in the dumps. In fact, it has depressed me so that I’ve been forced to drink (I imagine no one saw that coming). With climate change (and governments’ inability to do anything about it — world leaders agreed this week to not decide on anything at this year’s summit in Copenhagen, instead deciding to wait just a little bit longer in an inspired move), our throw-away culture, and a myriad of other problems far too numerous to mention, it’s a wonder that we’re all not raging alcoholics, passed out in a gutter somewhere, drowning our worries in the drink. Perhaps we should be.

You see, I’m not drinking solely to block out my sorrows — I’m drinking for a good cause. One of the greatest things to come out of the broadly named “environmental movement” in the past few years has been the idea of slow food. By this, I mean food that is sustainable — local, often organic, or both — that is prepared with care and intention at every step in the process, and that is expected to be consumed with that same care in mind.  Here, we savor quality over quantity, specificity over ubiquity, and food with a story over food with a label. Which brings me back to alcohol.

Luckily for us, caught up in this movement for better and better tasting food has been a push for equally stimulating spirits. Microbreweries and local wineries have experienced an enormous flowering over the past decade, and we’re now blessed with a variety of drinks that might have been unheard of only a few years ago. And even more luckily for all of us Middlebury students, we happen to have a local microbrewery just down the road.

The Otter Creek and Wolaver’s brewing facility is well known to Middlebury students; its brewery tour seems a rite of passage for the newly-21, and its seasonal selections provide just enough variety to keep students interested. Moreover, as a brewery, it is committed to lessening its environmental impact as much as possible. Wolaver’s Certified Organic Ales was one of the first organic breweries in the United States when it began in 1997, and now it produces a number of organic ales for nationwide consumption. Of course, it is important to mention that while Wolaver’s brews are organic, the organic hops they use have to be trucked in from thousands of miles away, lessening their environmental credentials. However, Wolaver’s has also begun its Farmers Series of ales, which incorporate ingredients from local farmers, helping contribute to the local economy and building the idea of a story I mentioned earlier.

To me, it is this story that is most important. While microbreweries and artisanal foods are not a cure-all for all of our environmental ills, they are important for what they do — they make us ask questions about our food. It’s too easy to just go to the supermarket and pick up some anonymous case of beer; it’s much more interesting to know where it comes from, who produces it and how. So when we drink beer from a brewery down the road, that in and of itself isn’t solving anything, but it is the beginning of a valuable and essential process.

The more we learn about food, the more we want to know. If I know where my beer comes from, I’ll want to know how it’s produced, or maybe I’ll want to know what it does with its waste and if its hops are sustainably grown. Drinking local beer forces us to ask questions, which is always one of the most valuable things one can do.

So please, go out and have a drink from one of Vermont’s many local breweries. The state has been blessed by a growing number of local producers, all making some great beers. It’s important to know that by drinking alone we won’t solve any of our problems, but we can start to help. So as the empty bottles multiply and the problems fade from our consciousness, we can know: that glow we’re feeling comes from more than the alcohol.