My name is Sacha Laurin. Many of you know me from cheese gigs around town, as head cheesemaker of Winters Cheese Company, teaching cheesemaking workshops privately, or at the Cheese School of San Francisco, the San Francisco Cooking School, local wineries and at the Davis and Sacramento Co-ops. Or, perhaps we’ve crossed paths on the mat flowing with the community of Akasha yoga. For me, fermentation is not just a love, an intrigue and pursuit of alchemy, it is a way to align with the goodness, nourishment, deliciousness and healing wonder of nature. It is a miracle of life that has become a way of life. When I discovered kombucha in 2008, it was still relatively unknown as a beverage or as a fermentation concept. For me it was love at first taste. Sharing my love for kombucha with friends, family, yoga community and my students of cheesemaking has been one of the most joyous and richest parts of this last decade for me.
Kombucha the drink, and its creator – the humble colony of bacteria and yeast – mama SCOBY- have changed my life, healed and strengthened my body in countless ways, and brought my community closer. Over the years, my desire to learn and discover everything about kombucha and the SCOBY mother who transformed tea into a delicious bubbly beverage with health benefits lead me down a unique path and ultimately to my current passion of sharing Together Kombucha with the world.
I started making jewelry and clothing out of leftover SCOBY in 2013 and began growing a “farm” of vegan leather from the microbial cellulose that is the SCOBY mother. 2013 began with growing and sewing a fashion line Kombucha Couture, and ended with placing first at the Sacramento Film and Music Festival fashion competition, where I was unexpectedly catapulted from cheesemaker to fashion designer at Sacramento Fashion Week in 2014. In all of my efforts, I felt the common thread was a passion and reverence for fermentation and the art, science, and creative potential of nature.
Paris Fashion Week called in 2015 and Kombucha Couture became the first ever fermented fashion to walk the runway showcasing 50 pieces of clothing made from dried kombucha SCOBY. The next 5 years became focused on Research & Development of the kombucha fabric, personally and in collaboration with the UCDavis Department of Design which culminated in a feature in National Geographic magazine Genius Edition 2017, continued cheesemaking, a dedication to sacred family time, passionate dedication to fermentation, studying the benefits of kombucha and home brewing.
Then, out of the blue, the 2020 pandemic hit. Life stopped. Orders for jewelry and fabric stopped. Cheesemaking and teaching stopped. Calls for kombucha began… People were listening to their bodies and wanting something more, so they turned to kombucha. Because my brew is the real-deal, authentic fermentation in the tank and aged out in secondary fermentation, it tastes very different to store-bought kombucha and has a lot more detoxifying enzymes and health benefits. Although everything else in my life had stopped or so it had seemed, there I was finding myself doubling my production just to keep up with the booch love that was being showered from all directions.
Brewing, bottling and offering kombucha has always been my way of giving back to the universe for the beauty and miracles and blessings that are life. It became more than ever an anchor, a celebration, a commitment to my people. It became my way of growing and building a community around my kombucha, as I began the “kombucha sleigh” and every week dropped surprise or requested and free kombucha to doorsteps all around Davis. People would wave from their windows during lockdown and send love notes of gratitude. It became a completely natural, grass roots, organically bountiful way to offer support, comfort, wellness, joy and connection during a time everyone needed it most.