Tastemakers: Red Ginger chocolate & wine tasting/Anahata Balance Kombucha tea drinks

Feb. 8, 2009

Red Ginger Chocolate
& Wine Tasting

When chocolatier Mimi Wheeler opened Grocer’s Daughters Chocolates five years ago in Empire, she had many missions. It was important to her to make chocolates using high quality and often organic ingredients. She has even traveled to Ecuador and spent time with those who grow and harvest the cocoa beans that become the chocolate she uses.
Many of her chocolates use herbs from her Leelanau Peninsula garden or other fruits grown in the region. Equally important to Wheeler is promoting others in the area: “We believe in cross-marketing and we promote many other food artists with similar ideas and practices of sustainable production.”
On Valentine’s Day, Wheeler will join winemakers Lee Lutes (Black Star Farms) Bryan Ulbrich (Left Foot Charlie) and Larry Mawby (L Mawby) at a special chocolate and wine tasting hosted by Red Ginger. The winemakers, along with Wheeler, will be present to answer questions and talk about the pairings. The event is from 2 to 4 p.m. and complements a perfect day in downtown Traverse City of shopping, going to the State Theatre, and enjoying Valentine’s Day dinner at one of the many eateries.
Now, chocolate and red wine make for a great match, but a tasting such as this will give you an opportunity to find that the nuances of some chocolates and white wines also make for great pairings. To learn where you might buy Grocer’s Daughter Chocolates (they are available throughout Northern Michigan), visit grocersdaughter.com. For more information about the tasting, visit
eatatginger.com


Anahata Balance Kombucha Tea Drinks

Last fall, the Lake Street Café at Oryana in Traverse City began offering Anahata Balance brewed Kombucha Teas by the glass. These tasty teas are a great source of nutrition, aid in creating metabolic balance, and help to “clean out one’s system.” Now of course, there is no FDA-approved language as to the medicinal or other health benefits from consuming Kombucha Tea, but those who drink it swear by it. Anahata Balance is a local Traverse City company that makes teas, tonics and therapeutic remedies for health and healing.
Anahata is Sanskrit “to balance the heart,” and the company’s mission is “to educate this community with other like-minded businesses who see the need to nurture the body wholly.” They have been brewing organic Kombucha mushroom cultures since 2000. Oryana offers four blends of the Kombucha Teas: Classic Black, Red Dragron, Medicinal Berry and South American.
Kombucha is not really a mushroom but a “scoby” (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). Anahata Balance describes it this way: “Kombucha tea (pronounced kom-boo-sha, Kombu tea in English), also called a Manchurian mushroom, is a living culture which grows on top of a mixture of brewed tea and sugar in which the culture has been introduced.”
Anahata Balance encourages first-time users to start out slow with just two to four ounces of the tea daily, and if you would like to gain weight, drink tea after meals, or if you are trying to lose weight drink before meals.
If you have not been to Oryana since they have remodeled and expanded the size of their operation, you must do so. They have come a long way since their humble beginnings, and the store is loaded with products from local growers and producers, not to mention a full line-up of local entertainers, including the gifted Pat Ivory on the dobro Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m. For additional information on Kombucha Teas, go to anahatabalance.com. For the schedule of music at the Lake Street Café at Oryana, check out oryana.coop.