Twelve months chilled — it keeps evolving. Live product; keep it cold.
On the palate
Bright, crunchy, properly sour, with resinous juniper and a clean finish.
Where this dish comes from
Fermented cabbage is at least two thousand years old and probably Chinese first: labourers building the Great Wall were fed cabbage fermented in rice wine, and the technique is thought to have travelled west with the Mongol expansions into Central and Eastern Europe.
In Europe it became a maritime technology. Captain Cook carried barrels of sauerkraut on his second voyage and lost not a single man to scurvy — the first hard proof that a preserved food could be more nourishing than a fresh one badly kept.
Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation (2003) restarted the craft revival in America, and René Redzepi's Noma Guide to Fermentation turned it into fine-dining infrastructure. Alsace's choucroute garnie tradition — Maison Kammerzell, the winstubs of Strasbourg — is the classical form.
How we make it
Two percent salt, measured to the gram against the weight of the cabbage. Below that it goes soft; above it, the lactobacilli stall and the ferment tastes flat.
We ferment cold and slow at cellar temperature rather than warm and fast. Eight weeks at 12°C builds complex acidity and keeps the shred crisp; two weeks in a warm kitchen gives you sour mush.
Wild lacto-fermentation
8 weeks at 12°C
01Cabbage hand-shredded and salted at exactly 2% of its own weight.
02Worked by hand until it releases enough brine to submerge itself.
03Weighted under a river stone in a stoneware crock, cellar-cold, eight weeks.
04Jarred live and unpasteurised, with juniper, caraway and bay.
Cold and raw beside rich meat, or warmed briefly — never boiled, or the cultures die.
THE INGREDIENT LEDGER
Every defining ingredient, named: who grew or caught it, where, when it was taken, what it has meant to the people who kept it, and what it does for you.
Late storage cabbage
Cut after first frost, November 2025
Farm / fishery
A single family farm, ninety years in the same fields
Region
Hudson Valley, New York
History
Fermented cabbage fed Roman legions and Mongol riders alike; the northern European crock was a household's insurance against scurvy.
Why it is good for you
Live lactic acid bacteria, plus vitamin C that fermentation preserves rather than destroys.
Nutrition, roughly
Per 100 g: 19 kcal · 3 g fibre · vitamin C, vitamin K, live cultures.
Caraway & juniper
Seed threshed August 2025
Farm / fishery
Caraway from a Finger Lakes grower; wild juniper
Region
New York State
History
Caraway in kraut is a central European habit that turned out to be practical: it settles the gut that ferment enlivens.
Why it is good for you
Both are traditional carminatives, easing the bloat fermented food can bring.
Nutrition, roughly
Negligible.
Nutrition figures are typical values for the ingredient itself and are given as a guide, not as a dietary claim. Harvest dates refer to the batch printed on your lid.
