Mushroom Magic: Holiday Cooking & Wine Pairing featuring Mighty Cap Mushroom

(upbeat music) Well, hello and welcome to The Wine Access unfiltered podcast. It is November, which means if you're like me, you're starting to do all these fun things around, you know, creating spreadsheets and notes and Pinterest boards and saved Instagram videos of all the foods you're gonna be eating over the next two months because for me, the holiday season is just about the food and The Wine as it is about gifting and family and friends. So I thought maybe for these last four episodes of the year that we would do kind of a little mini series focusing on some of my favorite foods that I enjoy across the holidays. I think for some of you, if you're like me, I have a lot of questions around some of these foods, things that we commonly enjoy around this time, but maybe don't always understand to the degree that we'd want to and I thought, in true wine access unfiltered form, we would sort of break down some of these things in the same way we break down wine. Now, of course, we will still be drinking wine throughout these episodes. So if you are a member of the unfiltered podcast wine club, please grab your wine today is that chalet and wine that we've got that we're gonna dive into a little bit into the episode. So grab that bottle. But today's focus is gonna be a food that I personally really love. I happen to live in the capital of where it's grown right now, which is kind of fun. But a few weeks ago, I was out in Paso doing a little wine tasting as I tend to do. And I made my way into this really cool place that I never expected to be in Tin City. And if you've ever been to Paso, you've probably been to Tin City, which is this really cool sort of industrial chic playground with lots of different tasting rooms and makers and crafters. And I found myself on a mushroom tour at my cap mushrooms, which was not a place I expected to be. But I'm so happy that I got there because it was so enlightening and fascinating. And when I met my guest today, I knew immediately we had to have him on the show. He's a wealth of knowledge of all things mushrooms. He has a huge background in wine as well. So he's kind of come out from different angles. So I think we're gonna have a really great conversation today about all things mushrooms, hopefully answering all of the questions you have around them regarding what's the difference between like a chantral and a trumpet. How do I store these? Is there a proper way to cook them? And how are mushrooms even grown? Because Chris has a really cool take on that. So please welcome to the show, Chris Battle of Mighty Cap Mushrooms. Hi. Hi, Amanda. How are you? I'm so good. And it looks like you were sitting where we met at your place in Tin City. I am. I'm in the hot seat here at our farm in Tin City. I love that you call it a farm because when I walked in the door, I didn't really know it to expect, but I guess when you think mushroom farms, sometimes you think of like some of the mushroom farms out by me in Pennsylvania, which smell like manure. But I loved walking through your doors because it was like this beautiful laboratory of science experiments and humans and like all of these different things that were completely new to me, but free of all the gross smells. So I appreciated that. It was fun and it was funky, but I think my first impression of it was you and just your passion for what you're doing with mushrooms. How did it remind me how you got started? Or I guess remind everyone how you got started. Yeah, this journey was kind of crazy. So quite a big background in the like food industry and I've been in the wine industry as well. But yeah, I was foraging when I moved up here and super got, I really got into looking for wild mushrooms like in the early 2000s. And I've always been into the outdoors, very active sports and all that kind of stuff. And when my wife and I moved up here, I just started getting into looking for mushrooms. So super cool and peaceful and happy and met a bunch of friends that were in the industry as well. It's got better at it. Yeah, several years later was like, man, we can't get these mushrooms all year round. So seasonal. Yeah. So my wife's summer is just like, well, why don't you just grow up? Can't be that hard. And I was like, okay. Famous last wife where it's like how hard could it be? Yeah. And me, you know, I'm super, I guess you would say maybe a type, like I'm all in, I get in and I'm just like, gonna do the best of the best, whatever I put my heart and soul into and this definitely stuck with us. And I love it. It's super fulfilling, you know? Watching mushrooms grow daily, you'd think you would get kind of bored of it or complacent, but it still captivates myself and even my staff as well. And when you get to see people's reaction, they just, they don't even know what to expect. You know? There's just a gotta be a lot of education behind it, you know? Because people grew up around the white button mushroom in the salad bar. That's right. Which is not what you guys are doing. And maybe to just paint a really clear picture, because I think when you go do the tour, which you can do at MightyCap, you can do a farm, a mushroom farm tour. The first thing that you see obviously is not soil. The first thing that you see is what you showed me, which is these like spores in a bag, which is not what I anticipated. And I think, you know, understanding maybe what mushrooms are and how they're grown is phase one of understanding mushrooms at large. So can you kind of walk us through the process of what you're doing specifically at MightyCap when it comes to the actual growing of mushrooms? Yeah, so essentially here we make the growing medium from scratch. So it's a couple different components of oak hardwood and organics, soil hull and water. So this are the three main ingredients that we use to grow all of our mushrooms, typically, versus like a traditional button mushroom or a, you know, a chermini or a brown, you know, those types of mushrooms very commercially grown, obviously, most common are grown in a manure-based substrate. And so we don't have a manure-based substrate because the strains of mushrooms that we grow grow very well and they couldn't grow on them anywhere. It's too rich. And so having the oak hardwood, which they're typically grown on, you know, essentially in the wild, we add the protein, which is that soil, which it really shortens the growth period in the mushroom and that's how one, you know, mushrooms grow really fast in general. But we're able to expedite that even further by, you know, having about a 30 to 40-day grow cycle from start to finish. But it requires making the substrate. And then we have to sterilize it to make sure there's nothing living on that substrate. So we alter pastorize. We also do autoclave where we, you know, medically sterilize the product. And then it gets brought into our lab. I'm like, you can see the wheels turning in my head. I'm walking myself. I'm just going through the farm right now. How does this work again? And then it goes into the lab. And essentially we inoculate that sterile medium with the type of mushroom, you know, from basically a petri dish. We'll grow it. We do cultures. So we actually, we try to do pretty much everything from start to finish. And then that culture will expand and feed off that sterile substrate that we just made. And then over the course of, you know, two to three weeks, it gets pulled out of incubation. But you know, mind you all in these areas or temperature controlled, CO2 controlled, you know, very sterile process. And then they go into the fruiting rooms, which is one of the first things you see when you do walk to the farm, up inside the farm. And inside those fruiting rooms, it's mushroom season 365. So there is no season for us. It's all year round. And that's one of the benefits of mushroom farming. You know, I would say the, the cons of mushroom farming, because there are some, is that there's no stopping. And that's what's really hard about mushroom farming. Because if you take a break just one week, then that means you don't have products in the following three weeks. Right. So it's, it's kind of tricky. It's a very tricky industry. It's an interesting one for sure. And I think one that for me was really eye opening because I think going back to this whole process, it sounds like the start of your mushroom process is the same for any mushroom regardless of what you're growing for the most part. And then it's not until you get to these like inoculation feature areas that things start to take a diversion path, right? Yeah. One of the cool things about mushroom farming is like you could do like a baseline growing method and be somewhat pretty successful, you know, on a very small scale. But as you get bigger and grow more, you can really dial it in and get more specific about each individual mushroom. Because they do like certain criteria to grow better, higher quality, higher yields. And so that's what we've really been able to capitalize on as we've gotten bigger. And putting out a super premium product, we're kind of like in between. like someone who would be growing at home, you know, small scale, maybe a couple hundred pounds, and then there's, you know, there's quite a bit of farms in my scale in that like 900 to 1500 pounds of fresh mushrooms a week, and then it jumps like way up, you know, then you start getting into the people that are doing like 30, 50, 200, 200,000 pounds a week. And even then those farms are considered small because really like the button mushroom farms, I mean, they're doing millions of pounds a week, like they're growing so many pounds of mushrooms. Not even found one more. I want to pause and say two things. Number one, I have tons of footage from when I was at the farm. So if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to this, I guess right now, and you want to see some of the things that Chris is talking about, it will all be in the YouTube version of this podcast. And number two, if you're sitting here geeking out about everything Chris is saying, he sells grow kits. So you can do this at home and, you know, like see this whole thing in process and they're really cool in the ships nation. Why do I think is what you told me? Yeah, look, oh yeah, of course you have it in front of you. There's one up there. I mean, you want to grow some mushrooms. This is so fun. I know I've got to order one of these kits and have a little fun at home with them. I want to take a real quick pause because I don't have any wine in my glass. I think maybe you have a little wine in your glass, but I mentioned at the top of the show, you're ready. I mentioned at the top of the show that we are drinking wine from Chile. So this is the bean, well, you'll see Vinho and very big letters. And I'll tell you what that means in a second. But this is a carrying on from the mall valley in Chile. And I'll be honest guys, I don't drink a ton of Chilean wine. I am not ultra familiar with this region. I have been kind of on the other side in Argentina, which is very different from Chile. But I'll tell you a quick little story. Last night I went to a restaurant that I've been dying to go to in Philadelphia called Maun. And it's this Cambodian spot. Wanted a James Beard Award this past year. And it's wonderful, but it's a BIOB. So I had to bring my own wine. And I'm like hunting through my wine shelves and I'm like, what am I going to bring to this dinner? Because you know, Cambodian food is really interesting. And it sits between Vietnam and Thailand. And so there's a lot of influence from both of this places. But it's uniquely its own. And I was like, it tends to lean more in these like sort of bitter umami flavors. And so initially I was like, maybe I should do burgundy, but I was like, that's not going to work. And also this is BIOs. The glassware is probably not going to be great. And then I was like, you know what? I should probably dig through my natural wine stash to see what I have. And low and behold, I found a natural wine from Chile that I had never touched before. I got in it from another wine club years ago. I was like, let me give this a try. I'll bring it back up bottle see if it's fine. We opened it. It was the wine of the night. It was so good. And it was a really great sort of reminder that there's so many different wines being grown all over the world. But I think if I had to be really excited about one particular place right now, it's South America. And specifically these like smaller regions within Chile and Argentina. And so when I started kind of digging in and doing some research on this wine that I drank last night, along with the wine that we've got here today, I was like, wow, like there's a lot of things that are happening in Chile that are really interesting. And they're really trying to improve the quality. And I think that gets me really jazzed because as we all know, the wine world is large. And there's a million different paths we can all go down. And so this is a perfect way to start going down that path if you're interested like I am with a wine like this. So to kind of break it down for you, the grape here is carrying on which has sort of become one of the primary grapes, if not the primary grape of Chile. Certainly grapes like Carmeniere and Cabernet are very big of there as well. But when you see Vigno on this label, that is a sign of quality. This is something that was established in 2009 by a handful of producers in this region who really wanted to make carrying on a great sort of standalone grape. And so when you see that, it means that it's old vines, it's aged for a minimum of two years. It's at least, I think 70 or 80% carrying on. It can be blended with other things. But you're basically, when you see this on the label, this VIGNO, that's an indication of really great quality and great substance and people who are making carrying on in a fantastic way. And so I'm going to pour it in my glass right now. And the reason I chose it for this particular episode is I was like, what works really well with mushrooms and mushrooms tend to be a thing that you can kind of play around depending on the sauces that it's going with. But in general, it likes something maybe a little spicier, maybe that has a little mommy. And this, if you smell it, it almost has a zinfin-dell quality to it, but it's a little spicier, it's a little darker. And then you taste it. It's got all this juicy, bursty cherries, but not in an overwhelming way in a way that I think would work with a lot of your rich stock-based sauces. If you wanted to do a pasta that had some mushrooms in it, we had this beautiful eto pasta with some mushrooms, steak salad with some mushrooms. I think this is a great one to have with it. But I am curious since you're the mushroom expert, what is the best wine to pair with mushrooms? That's asking me to pick my favorite child. You don't have a favorite child? No, they're both my favorite child, children. There is an infinite amount of ways to cook mushrooms and have what goes with them. So if you're asking the mushroom guy, the actual fun guy, like I'm going to tell you that it goes with anything, but they really do like cream. Cream and time is a pretty good common thing to cook with mushrooms, but red sauce, you know, pasta's, you know, just a vessel for all kinds of love. Everything? Yeah. All the good things that we love. Butter, you know, carbonara, mushroom, carbonara. I mean, it's like, I mean, it's endless, you know, mushroom bolanes for going down the pasta road. One of my go-to's for pasta, like sauceless, I don't even do sauce. I just do like a really good olive oil at the end, but I'll pre- roast my mushrooms. In fact, that's one of the biggest questions. How do you cook your mushrooms? Yeah. Baseline cooking method is a lot of people tend to under cook their mushrooms, and they don't realize, you know, it's really hard until people to overcook a mushroom. Interesting. Yeah, it's like, but like, oh, and I go, well, it's not like a steak, a fish, or a chicken, something that you can ruin if you overcook, right? Okay. The thing with a mushroom is like, it gets better the further you cook it. So it caramelizes. The water content starts to leave. That moisture goes away. So you get away from steaming the mushroom, and you get more of that caramelization that started to happen. And crispy edges that, when is that my lower effect where it does start to caramelize, and then the texture, the flavors get more concentrated. And then when there's less water in there, it's a great sponge to suck in that fat. So whether that's avocado oil, which is neutral, you know, not much flavor on avocado oil, butter touck fat, something that I choose to cook with quite a bit of. Nice. After you do that simple method, medium to high heat, tell people to keep it down till it's golden brown, and that's a good sign to know, like it's starting to lose all that water and caramelize. Then your mushrooms can go in anything. Okay. I prefer that method versus like cooking your mushrooms in the sauce or in something. They're never going to get that nice caramelization that texture and that flavor, because they're just going to be saturated and moisture in the sauce. It's a little like cooking approach, right? Like you want you want it to get that caramelization and the way that you're going to go about that is removing any moisture from the exterior to get that that effect. So I assume like one of the biggest things that I've seen on Instagram or TikTok is like you don't really want anything in the pan to start, right? You kind of want like a dry pan with the mushrooms in it and you want to let that water sort of evaporate out, right? So I'm going to debunk that. Okay. Yeah, we get a lot of that, hey, dry saute. In some cases, I would say, you know, like, shantraels when it's during the rain season, they come in really wet, right? And so that would be a common thing to do. Put them in the pan and you sweat them out because you're going to get like, we call it Mother Nature's nectar. And we'll preserve that. It'll kind of like brown and shantrail water basically. And we just take shots of that because we're like, that has got so much nutrients in it. That's a mushroom, that's a mushroom secret, a four-jerk secret. But one step, that's the only way, one of the only things I would do, like dry saute and then add your stuff in. But most of because our mushrooms are super saturated in water and hydration is just right. I have been cooking these things for years. I go straight in with my fat and let that water evaporate through the fat. Same thing with like, like, marels, like all the wilds, you know, typically you can come in wet. I just, I throw my fat in, you know, it just, I guess it depends on how wet the mushroom is. But I'm all day fat in the pan first, salt, medium to high heat, probably about 10, 15 minutes on that, on those mushrooms, they start to get golden brown and caramelized, even add a little bit more salt, pours the end and taste through it, but that's easy. That's my goal to for cooking. - This is already like changing my life right now, 'cause I know that I am definitely gonna be grabbing boxes of mushrooms. There's a local purveyor near me that like during the holiday season has these like beautiful boxes of just crazy mushrooms. And I lose my mind because they're so beautiful. They're so fun, but like I also, I don't wanna screw them up. You know, like somebody took a lot of time to make this beautiful thing and it's such a pure, you know, sort of like grapes. It's such a pure expression of mother nature that you don't wanna adulterate it in any way, but I also like there's so much information on the internet so it's hard to know what to do. But I guess maybe to backtrack, even before cooking, do you clean mushrooms? - So our mushrooms go out 100% clean. So when we ship out to customers, our chefs, our restaurants, they get 100% usable product. There is no cost and labor in them having to trim their mushrooms. And the same thing at the farmers markets that we do every Saturday and past our robles and moral bay. We do two of those. And the customers, we've had the train over years, you know, we're like, "Hey, don't rinse these," you know. And they're like, "Oh, I don't clean these." And you're like, "No, if you add water to these right now, you're gonna have a soggy mess and your mushrooms gonna be terrible." And you probably never buy mushrooms from me again. (laughs) We just say chop and cook, you know. And they're like, "How do you cook?" That's the next one. And we tell them and then they come back the next week and they're like, "Those are the best mushrooms I've ever had in my life." They're grown in such a pristine way. When we pull them off, there's nothing there to really clean. Very little off the back. This is kind of, I mean, this is our grow kids, but essentially we grow without the box in our grow rooms. And this thing comes off and then we just trim the backside of it and it goes into a box for a customer. So do not rinse these types of exotic mushrooms. Even the ones you get at your farmer's market, typically they should be cleaned 100%. You'll know when you look on the back of them. - What if you're buying at like a whole foods? - Good question. So if you're buying at a bigger box store, those mushrooms should be cleaned, especially if they're the exotic ones. It just depends. If they're in a bulk basket and you're gonna buy by the pound or ounce or whatever, they might just have a bunch of stuff on them and you might have to brush them a little bit. But typically like the oysters, liens main, those are the most common ones that you're gonna see at the farmer's markets. There's multiple different variations of the oysters, but basically one kind of liens main that you should not have to rinse those in water. - Okay. - And if you do, you should tell them, like, do, don't sell me dirty mushrooms. - Does it make sense? - Can you clean these better? - Maybe find a different purveyor of mushrooms. - Yeah, they should. You shouldn't have to do some work when you get in. You should know just to go and cook on, you know? - Well, I mean, I guess that's, that like is a good segue into an X question, which is how important is the purveyor and the source of the mushroom? Is it like wine where like it really matters where it's grown and who's growing it? - Yes, so there's, you know, the big, the big picture, like the global or the national scale of things, is, and a lot of people do not know this, but about 85% of all the mushrooms in the United States, and that fact, I've been quoting that number for like four years is probably more than that now, are, is important into the US. So you can think about 85% of the market share, that's a lot of the potty. - Right. - It's a lot of mushrooms. - It's a lot of mushroom. We're talking like in the billions of pounds of mushrooms. - And where are they coming from? - So the biggest producer, do you want to guess? - China. - So China's the biggest producer, Canada's like right alongside, and then Australia. So it's like, - Wow. - But China, and China takes the cake, Canada's taking them right there as well. And it's kind of mind blowing, you think about, you know, we got to go through with you and do the tour and kind of show you, you know, how we make the substrate block and we do everything from scratch to grow the mushroom. And so what's happening overseas is they're doing like, you know, 85%, 90% of that work overseas. And then they simply refrigerate it. And the mushroom goes to sleep, takes an app. And then it gets put into a seat train and shipped across the pond to the US. And so when that growing medium or that species of mushrooms comes over and lands at any state in the US and grows out in that state like California, the mushrooms grow pretty fast, right? The mushroom part. So in that, this part, the fruit body, which we call the fruit body, when the fruit body grows out of that block here in the States, they're allowed to call it a California USA, part of the USA grown mushroom. And it's like, really? No, I think it started over there, not here. And that's a lot of stuff, or some of the things we'd like to tell people 'cause they have no idea, especially when you are at Whole Foods. And I'm not saying, you know, specifically them, but other big companies, 'cause I know Whole Foods does bring in stuff, but they also do bring in Chinese stuff, that it'll save product with USA on the box. You know, that's where it gets kind of confusing the consumers that you either have to like, really down the rabbit hole and see the mushroom farm name, or the farm that's on that box. Sometimes it'll be very broad, you know, and so it's hard to tell. And so though I was gonna ask, is there any way to even know other than to do a ton of due diligence? On the big box, big box groceries, it's a little bit of legwork, but not too much. I mean, you can get there. I don't wanna drop any other names, but I mean Whole Foods is great. I know we know of one farm out there, and I speak of them very highly. It's another good friend of ours, Far West fungi, and they're more up north in Northern Cal. And they do do Whole Foods, you know, and they say Far West fungi out there. So they grow quite a bit of mushrooms weekly. They've been big mentors or ours. I can't speak highly of the family. They actually help us get to where we are today. So another farm helping out another farm. - What is the impact of something like that? Like if you're buying a mushroom, that's maybe 85% grown in China and then finished in the US. Is there a flavor impact? Is it just an ethical thing? Like, is there a point of contention that you find specifically with this form of farming that is noticeable to the consumer? - Yeah, why, right? Why is this happening? What's the rev on me? Or what we do? I would be fine if they just labeled where it came from. Honestly, like people should have the choice, right? But if you're totally bamboozling the customer and saying, this is from USA 'cause they think it's grown in the USA, I think that's kind of morally wrong. That's probably my biggest rev. And what they're doing and how they're doing it, I mean, mushrooms of Indonesian culture for forever, right? I mean, they're pros at it. So, you can't knock them for that and they've pioneered a lot of stuff in the mushroom industry. They've mechanized a lot of this process. So there's that side of it, but you also just don't know how it's being made, what's in it. There's just no open transparency of what's going on, whereas if you were to walk in like you did, you get to see everything. In most farms, have that same program, not that you can walk into any of them and show off the farm, but they're growing basically on that same type of medium. No one's using pesticides, chemicals to do this type of farming. Some of the bigger farms might use forms of control for bugs or pests and stuff like that. And you just don't know. I won't start me rumors or wait any trouble. But some of the big part, there's some control that has to be taken at that massive scale and there's things that are done because they are so big. We're growing at such a small scale. We have a lot more control. So there's that, more or more specially hyper-local for the area. So there's a lot of things to consider. Well, it's this idea that kind of translates across multiple industries, including wine, which is like whenever you can know your farmer and know your source, that's control. And that's, I think ultimately it's not only giving you control. It also, I think in a lot of ways, guarantee is quality in a more effective way. So the more local I think you can be or the more that you can know what's going on behind the products that you're consuming, whether that's wine or mushrooms or when we get into beef in a later episode. I think the better off you're going to be. And I think that just, we're ultimately we're putting these things into our bodies. So if that's something that you care about, then you should definitely be knowing who's growing your things. I agree. I mean, it is, I think people get a little complacent and comfortable on convenience. That's kind of what I've come-- yeah, it takes more effort to go and know where it's coming from. And do the research on what you're feeding your body. I mean, health is a really big thing. So it's like some people don't look. They don't care. [BLANK_AUDIO] and they're that way, you know, and that's fine. You know, if they want to, you know, two bucks check, whatever. That's great. Have some porch counter, rock and roll, and call another day, you know? Party on. Yeah, like, and then some people want to know what's going on. And so we like to value that and share that with what we do here at MightyCop. Yeah. Well, maybe that's an interesting place to take this conversation because we don't often get to talk about, you know, the health side of things when it comes to wine, but the health side of things when it comes to mushrooms is certainly something that we can explore a little bit. So are there any health benefits, whether that's from the actual consumption or I know you make some of the tinctures you mentioned the the shantrell juice earlier. What do you see as being like a health benefit with mushrooms? The biggest thing, the biggest takeaway on just mushroom health benefits or mushrooms supplements in general, general, we usually start off with saying there's there's two types. Okay. So you have product that is made from what we call micellated grain. Okay. And that's what it is. It's micellium growing on grain, which is essentially the growing medium. Okay. I can tell you that it's like what's inside this box. Okay. That's what the mushroom's going on. And then there's other products, which would be the other side of the fence, is only made from the fruit body and the fruit body is only the mushroom. And so with all the products out there in the in the world, about 90% of the mushroom products are made from micellated grain. And so when you think about that on deeper level, you're like, okay, so I'm not actually digesting the mushroom. I'm eating the growing medium. I'm getting micellium. So yeah, maybe there's there is there's studies that show there's some nutritional value in the root structure of a mushroom or the micellia. But I believe in a bunch of other farms that are doing the same movement as well, believe that the nutrients are in the actual mushroom. I'm sorry, but so we call that the fruit body. Okay. So first and foremost, choose the fruit body, 100% mushroom based product, and there's they're out there. Now beyond that, mushrooms in general across the board, whether you eat it, mushroom, and that's fine, or have an exotic or a wild. They're going to help regulate your blood sugar, lower your cholesterol. They're loaded with vitamin Bs. We, meaning my wife and my team all believe that they are anti-cancer, anti-tumor. They're really good for your brain. Especially I'm sure everyone's heard of lions being mushrooms and what their health but if it's our, those are more specific towards cognitive health. There's a whole array of great things that lions being does for your brain, as well as like Rishi, which is a medicinal mushroom. It's not an edible. I mean, you can have tea with it, but as far as cooking and eating with it, you can. It's not one of those. It's made for medicine or grown for medicine. But Rishi really helps with like gut balance, reduction in inflammation throughout your body, and it's a really great immune booster. High concentration levels, like on a tincture, which we do, a dual extraction tincture, it's done in alcohol, cane alcohol, and you're getting all of those medicinal compounds on in a liquid form, which we think is the best way to consume medicinal. There's no digestion to go right inside your mouth and your tongue, absorbing it right into your bloodstream. So you're getting those medicinals relatively instantaneously versus a powder or something, which probably is my salinated grain or not even the fruit body. There's a lot of stuff out there. You just got to really look on the back of whatever you're taking, because I'm sure there's a few people that are watching this podcast that are taking mushroom to something, probably more mushroom coffee than a mushroom supplement. But you just got to make sure, yeah, it's coming from the fruit body. Even those mushroom coffee companies, oh my god, there's so many of them. I'm having a bad. I feel like I get a new Instagram ad every day for one. Can you just lay off the coffee, the mushroom coffee really? But we encourage people to put those tinctures, let's do extraction here, in the coffee that you drink every day, that you probably have been drinking for 10 or 15 years, your favorite coffee, the alternative movement. They've tried to get you off of your favorite coffee and onto their thing. And so, advertising's good. And some of those companies don't use fruit body extractions. They're using filler. So do some work again. You got to look at what you're taking. They're not cheap either. It's crazy about how many they're spending. People are consumers are spending on this stuff. I love talking about products like this that there's so many different variables, and there's so many people that are really passionate about it, and have different opinions on things like health benefits and sourcing. And so, it's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this series of shows, because I think when we talk about wine, I don't like to talk about it in a vacuum. I like to talk about it, has compared to other things and tangent with other things. So, I really appreciate you helping us dive into this a little bit more. In terms of people are going to be serving mushrooms in various ways at their meals, is there a particular mushroom that you like as a standalone side dish versus in a sauce? Stand alone. I like something with a little bit more texture. So, if it's going to be the main player of the dish, like a mushroom taco, that's going to be the key component. My favorite mushroom, which you might want to know, is a mitaki. Okay. My taco is like hands down, one of my favorite mushrooms that you are able to cultivate. It is found in the wild during certain seasons, and the flavor, the texture, the shelf life, the versatility of it, there's just, it's amazing to cultivate it very difficult. Probably one of the most difficult mushrooms to consistently grow. Just recently, we started to dabble more into it, but it's been several years of attempts to grow in the mitaki. We just haven't been set up. Right here in the newer facility, we're on track to having this available every week here to our restaurant. So, we're very excited to introduce. But that's the thing. It's like they can go stand alone, like taco. I do a mitaki taco. It's like a street taco. Roast the heck out of the mitaki is golden brown, duck fat, a little bit of salt. And then there's this farmer's, one of my farmer's markets, the booth next to me. They make these sourdough street tacos, and they're like, you know, they might be like three and a half, four inch rounds. Yeah. And those street tacos, the mitaki, I do a little bit of creme fresh, green scallion, and lemon zest, and I can use like 15 of those legs. They are so freaking good. I know, I was thinking it would be great with the wine. I mean, it's the kind of wine that it drinks a little bit like a kianzi, and that like, it's got really tart, big red fruit, but there's like a spice component, and there's there's an ease to this that you often get with something like a zinfindal that Santa Bay City doesn't always give you. So I think when you've got these, I think a taco is just like a mushroom taco would be so good with this wine. So if you're inspired, that's that's maybe the move. I've got a few questions that I'm going to be asking everyone in this series if you're open to something a little more holiday related. What is your secret holiday flex? So like a dish or ingredient that you bring that everyone talks about? My go-to for like family parties, gatherings, we obviously bring some sort of mushroom dish over is I do a mushroom avocado toast. Oh, wait, tell me how you do that. So good bread, obviously, nice, you know, not too thick of a cut, toasted, that's your that's your vessel. Local avocados because they are the cremeist if you can find them. Now you're just showing off that you're in California. It's just not fair. Well, if you can get good avocados in the room season or whatever you do live in this world. So I spread that on the the toasted sourdough and then that's my first part of prep and then my mushrooms just like I tell everybody that medium to high heat saute golden brown, get them to like crispy, right? Cook them way down and pull them off to the side. I do a little bit of onion and garlic and then I do butter and a little bit of cream, some cherry vinegar in there. Let that all kind of meld together, toss my mushrooms back in there. It'll thicken up almost like a white sauce gravy mushroom gravy and then I take my avocado toast and in the pan I just press that right on top of the mushrooms and everything in the sauce. I flip over and then just perfectly stuck across that bread and that toast and then I'll hit that lemon's, lemon zest on the top of the end is just money. I love that little secret. That sounds so good. Microplane lemon zest. That is a perfect holiday flex and now I'm angry that I'm not in California because the avocado game on the east coast is not strong. Although I'm told there's a guy who brings them into New York on a regular basis. I think either from California or from Mexico, and they're like, that's where the good restaurants get their avocados from. So I got to figure that out for myself. Your holiday guilty pleasure with something completely unsheath-like. That you love eating this time of year. -I'm going to have to say a peak on pie. I just can't put it down. -Okay. -I can just, and it's like the most, like, not good for you on the planet. -Yeah, it's pretty bad. -I was like, oh, leave it. Come back. Another, oh, yeah. That's probably one of those, yeah, the peak on kind of gets me sometimes every year. -I like the peak on pie without the pecans, which they call like a chest pie. So I like that gooey part of it, but I don't like, I don't do the nuts. It's like the texture of them freaks me out. I like the flavor of it, but I can't do the texture. Last question. Finish this sentence. The holidays don't officially start until. -Maybe the menus and the meals start to change in the house, more soups and more deep, robust, you know, stews and a little bit more, you're a little bit more cooking, typically, in the fall. -Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? -I like a Christmas story. That's probably something that. -Oh, it's a classic. -Classic. My dad used to make us watch that every year, and he had. One of the. Can I share this tradition with you? It was so bad. It was traumatizing. It was traumatizing for my brother and I. So every Christmas, and his, my dad's dad made him do this every year. -Okay. -And so on Christmas morning, my dad would pull corn beef hash out of a can. -Okay. -And he would saute in the pan, and my brother and I had to eat. I have no idea why this thing stuck for so long and tell my brother I really like through it one day. And he's like, "You guys can't open your Christmas presents and tell you this is tradition. This was in my family tradition. You guys need to eat. You need to split this can a corn beef and a half." And I was like, "It was like eating dog food." And I was like, "Yeah." "Sick, savon, all the way until, I think we're. Until we've fought back, I think it was like 11 or 12. My brother was three years older than I mean." And he was like, "Uh-uh. We're not doing this anymore. We don't want the presents to walk out." I remember the morning, like, "No, you can eat all. You eat it." And he's like, "I'm eating it." And I'm like, "No, we're done." And kind of broke the cycle. But he's. -Wow. -He has to eat corn beef hash to open our Christmas presents. And I was. -That's so strange. -Sometimes on traditions, but. -Okay. That's a tradition I've never heard of. -We laugh about it now. Yeah, it's like, "Can't open your presents so you eat the corn beef hash." I'm like, "What? This is disgusting." We're a family that was not. We were not allowed to go downstairs on Christmas morning without the entire family. And without my dad going down first to turn on the music, adjust the lights. Like, there were. There was like 20 minutes of things that had to happen, which when you're 11 or whatever, you're like, you're dying inside. Like, the time cannot move slow enough. Somehow that tradition has continued. Even now, my sister has two little kids. And it's still the same thing. -Uh-huh. -We will come over her house and go up. We will not go into living. We go upstairs. We have the whole family. We have to get the pictures on the stairs in the pajamas. And we are not allowed downstairs because the thing. The whole thing started with the presents were going to disappear if we. Like, went downstairs before we were allowed to. So it was just this like. It's very like funny tradition that has continued. But I will tell you since you're a Christmas story fan. One of our guests from the. I think it was the first season was Peter Billingsley. So, Ralphie from a Christmas story. It was a wine fan, yeah. -Yeah. That's right. -He's a wine drinker. -Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. -You'll sh*t your eye out. -That's right. We had a light lamp in the front window. We had a red rider BBG. We had all the Christmas story. -That's awesome. -Yeah. No, we were big fans of the movie in our house. Well, Chris, I know this is a very busy season for you. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Tell me about where people can find you, where they can find the product, what products they should be adding to their cart. -Yeah, absolutely. So we are located in Pasa Robles, right smack in the central coast, literally the same distance between LA and San Francisco right on the coast here. And we have a full-fledged farm here. We do tours twice a day, seven days a week. You can book those online. We have a retail store that has opened seven days a week and you can get all kinds of mushroom products. You can come in there and talk, get some education. We're all about just discussion even before we even think about selling you anything. We definitely want to help you guys understand what's going on and get more confident. You know, like Amanda said, sometimes they're like so pretty. People do walk away from them. They're like, "Oh, I cannot cook that thing. It's staring at me." I'm like, "No, it needs to. It loves you. It wants you." And break the ice. Just cook it. Don't be scared. -And the grow kids. -The grow kids. So we do offer the grow kids online. It can order as they ship anywhere in the US. All over the US we ship them out in daily. If you are thinking about doing these for gifts, they're amazing. They're 25 bucks. This guy is seven days old from starting from nothing. So they do grow quite quickly. My suggestion is that we get hit super hard, like the two weeks prior to Christmas. If you really want or early ship to your, we're going to give it to and have them grow it out now and have the mushrooms during Christmas time while they're on vacation and they get to enjoy it. So a lot of stuff online. Yeah, we're here all the time ready to rock and roll. Come see us in Tin City. Yeah. A lot of wineries, like 30 wineries surrounding me. It's crazy. It's a must-stop. If you're going to, I just put up two videos on Paso. There's a whole substack on it. So I've got all the information on Paso. The comments are already going off about my pronunciation of Paso. You said robles. Let the record states what I say in the video. But for the love of God, there's the pronunciation police. Just you guys got to calm it down. Passor robles. That's how we roll. I blend here local's, we say robles. That's it. Passor robles. Are we just even saying Paso? You can say Paso. Paso is easy. I say both in the video and the amount of comments already that people are like, it's like seeing San Fran. Like you don't see San Fran or it's, it's robles. I have been to Paso enough times to know that no local calls it Paso robles unless they are truly Spanish speaking. But the local Paso livers, like the guys that make them the wine that are growing the mushrooms, they say Paso robles. I promise you, I have researched this. I have done my due diligence. Anyway, all that to say, please make a journey to Paso. If you haven't been yet, it is so well worth going. It is an incredible place for so many reasons. I travel, I'm very lucky to travel a world to a lot of different regions and wine region specifically. I have not been willing to go back to another wine region as many times as I have to Paso because they're just not that interesting to revisit and Paso is not that Paso keeps changing. There's new things that open all the time. It excites me every time I go there and I just love it so much. So please put it on your your travel calendar for 2026 and maybe make it a gift. Maybe this is your gift this year. Maybe you get the grow kit from MightyCap and you do like, you know, you do like a whole experience to Paso as your gift. So, and then maybe you also gift the wine access unfilter podcast wine club. That could also be a great gift, which you can find via the description below. It's 120 bucks a month plus tax, but including shipping and you get 10% off all of your wine access purchases. You'll get this wine, oh my gosh, right here, plus three others. If you order now, we've still got a few kits left if you want to jump in early. But you guys, I hope you're having a great holiday season. If you're loving this, please make sure you leave us a review like this video. If you are watching on YouTube and please give Chris and the MightyCap team a follow on Instagram. Stay up to date with what they're doing. Chris, I want I wish you a wonderful happy beautiful season that's filled with not too much too many issues regarding shipping, but we all know it's the holiday. So have a glass of wine or some mushroom tea and hope for the best. Right? Push through. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.