Bella Porcile is a bartender and a forager. She makes wild drinks: she goes out into nature to find what's edible, and turns it into cocktails. She also loves taking people outside to taste their surroundings.
This film is No. 3 in 100 Documentaries. Read more on the film's own page: The Taste of a Place.
In the film she tells me about her years behind the bar, how they affected her, and how she has chosen to design her work today. We meet her on Gotland in the summer and just outside Stockholm in the autumn, picking things and turning them into something beautiful.
Have you ever experienced nature with all of your senses, not just your eyes? Bella shows how to start exploring what's around you. You'll be surprised how much of it you can eat. Follow her on Instagram: @mixedbybella.
Bella has also written a book, Vilda drinkar (Wild Drinks), about what's edible in nature, the basics of making drinks, and the seasons. Find it here (affiliate link).
Thank you to Slite Strand Resort for hosting us on Gotland, and to the restaurant Bonden & Bönorna, where Bella worked that summer, for letting us film there.
Transcript
The transcript below is generated from the film and only lightly edited, so it reads like people talk.
I can't go anywhere without just you know picking something. I always have something in my hand. It was such a hard time for me. Am I a bad person? Am I doing something wrong here? I've never been treated so bad in my life. It's all about balance, I would say. This should work with this, you know, maybe this works with this. I always experiment. Over there. When I go to a new place, I love to find out what's the taste of this place. What's the flavor of this area? Every place tastes different. To learn about new plants, you see something that you maybe haven't seen before.
You look it up, "Blodvaxskivling". You just bring it back home and you use it. For me, that's what it's all about. Thank you for being here. I'm making 100 films about 100 humans who are making the world better, funnier, or happier. And this is number 98 featuring Bella Porcile. When I started this film, I thought it was gonna be more about the action cocktails and how to make a cocktail. But it has turned into something more of a try to experience nature with all of your senses kind of film instead. And that's okay, because it will still contain Bella's art, which is very beautiful cocktails.
It doesn't just taste good, it's all about the presentation for me. It's the details that's important, and I think that's what people like. I'm Bella Porcile. I'm a bartender, a forager, and I make wild drinks, meaning I go out foraging in nature for what's edible, and I incorporate that with my drinks. And I also like to take people outside into nature to enjoy the nature and taste the nature. Crunchy. Flower candy. I think nature should be important to everybody. We wouldn't be here without nature. Nature is our lungs. It's life. So this is like finding gold. We are in Slite on Gotland in a quite new restaurant.
It's called Bonden & Bönorna. It means the farmer and the beans, because we work really close to the people on this island. We have focus on local produce. Since it's an island, it is a little bit harder to get things to the island, to import things. So you have so many people that grow vegetables, people that distill their own spirits. So you don't have to look outside to get things. You really work locally. Here, they really get to taste like, what does this island taste? Because that's what's on the menu. The reason I started shooting this film in Gotland, which is an island in Sweden, is that I knew I wanted to make a film about Bella, but she's very hard to pin down in a specific place.
So when I asked her, "Where are you going to be?" She said, "During the summer, I'll be in Gotland." So I decided to go there and I brought my kids along and we had an amazing week. Not ultimate foraging shoes. Not. Snake bush. No. What's it called in english? We're here to pick up the ride of today. We got a Land Rover Defender. It's a tractor, but it's fun. Now we are on our way out into the dark deep woods of Stockholm. Everything is heavy and it sounds a lot. It's not a race car. It's like flying an airplane. We're going to lift off. It's a world of learning and that's what I find interesting.
I don't know everything about it. Every place has new plants that I don't know about. I just wanted to be able to be more out in nature with my life. Going in the woods, foraging. Let's go. Into the forest we go. To lose our minds and find our soul. So we're here and Bella is picking what's available to pick. And we'll see where this goes. Well, you just need to be open to what's around you. Open your senses. Look around, look up, look down, be curious. Have a look what's around you and breathe. Smell the air. We don't want to walk like the paths where people walk.
We want to go in off-road. I've been through many restaurants. I cried myself to sleep many times. I cried at work and I felt useless. I think it's hard to put words on what's hard in the business. Being a woman in this business, it's hard sometimes to just have a professional relationship with the men because it feels like it's always something they want something more. Okay, just because you helped me with an event or like a favour with something doesn't mean that I want to come home to you and it doesn't mean you can text me in the middle of the night saying stupid things, you know?
It's that respect Wow! Did you fall in the fall forest? Yes. So, I've been working with many people who doesn't really see you for what you are and your creativity and doesn't really understand. It can be a hard business, people can be, you know, not so nice to you. Somebody actually said to me, "Wow, it's so great that you've been nominated for this thing because you're not a real bartender." And I'm like, "What do you mean I'm not a real bartender?" I've been working behind the bar my whole life and I create menus and everything. So, and that was, you know, a guy saying that.
It's those little things, you know? Okay, so I actually made a book. It's called "Vilda drinkar" "Wild Drinks". And it's all about what's edible from nature. All the flowers you can pick. The basics in making drinks and it's all through the seasons. Oh, now I remember the worst. I totally forgot about a whole restaurant I worked in because it was so bad. Just to be out in nature and just explore. I can't go anywhere without just, you know, picking something. I always have something in my hand. We walked around in this area and behind every rock she found something that's edible. I started thinking about how does she turn this into an actual work and a way to make a living.
I usually go to places that is like a really good restaurant, but they don't really have a bar yet, and they want to have a good bar. So I create cocktail menu with like what's around here, who makes spirits around here, who makes glassware around here, what grows around here, who can I work with? I wanna try to get everything in there so it becomes the flavor of that specific area. And then I build the bar from that and the menu from that. You know, work close to the people and lift them up and highlight them. Like from this area, this guy makes the gin and this girl, she blows the glasses and this guy makes the coasters, for example.
And yeah, I design my drinks that kind of way. My dad, who's Italian, he taught me a lot of what's edible in the forest. You can eat this, look at this weird thing. He had a restaurant from like when I was young. So I've been working there since I was like, you know, two years old, working, folding napkins, but you know, following in his footsteps. He always said like don't get into the business is so hard and stressful. But of course that's what I did. I think you can break rules, but you don't want something to be disgusting. People are not expecting like, okay, this is going to be spicy, but it's supposed to be.
You don't want to shock somebody. If they don't know, maybe it's going to be like, oh, what is this? If you tell them before, this is supposed to taste like this. They'd be like, whoa. And then you explain like, how you've done it. We picked some wood and now it's time to make a fire. "Picked" Well deserved break. Yeah. Balancing flavors, it's quite important. To enhance the sweet flavor in cocktails, I make sugar syrups for example. That's an easy way to work with flavors. You can put sugar on strawberries for example and leave it for two days and then it becomes a rich strawberry syrup.
So you add fresh fruit, berries, and you just put sugar inside and that will draw out all the juiciness, so you get a really flavorful syrup. I love fire so much. I can sit for hours and just stare in the fire. When I was a kid, I used to go out with my parents in the forest and pick mushrooms, so I'd done it a lot before. It's been a long time since I did it the last time, so it was nice to get reminded what it's like to be out like this, just hanging out, chit-chatting. The best combination is to make a film while you're out in the forest.
So this is a hot alcohol-free forest toddy that I made. Fresh blueberries, some blueberry syrup, this alcohol-free beverage called Järn, pine, and also some water. Ta-da! So when I make cocktails, when people now come to my bar, I have a menu. If they come and order just plain gin and tonic, I always try to show them my menu and say, "Don't you want something from here?" or "What kind of gin and tonic would you like?" because here we have these kind of gins from this area. And they're like, "Oh, okay, I can try something else. I can try something new." When they come in and just want something normal and plain, but then they end up having two or three cocktails from my menu because they think it's so fun.
I love that. Yeah. Now, cheers. It's so yummy. Oh, that's good. Sweet, sour, salt, and bitter standard flavors, but when Bella is mixing them up in her very creative ways and you taste the end result, it's like, "Wow, this really tastes like nature." And I know that that is exactly what she says she's doing, but when I actually get the experience of tasting it, it's a whole different thing that I could never have expected in the first place. I grew up in Sweden, but I had my Italian dad with Italian flavors. We always went to Italy. But then I had my Danish side with a Danish grandpa who was a baker, and he made sweets and candy and everything.
So I had the Danish influences. I went to Denmark to smell the Danish smells, the smørrebrød everywhere, and then I went to Italy having big family dinners, you know, the pasta pizza and everything and that kind of life. Here we have some rescued rhubarb. The leftovers from an event we had the other day. To save it, I put it all in sugar syrup, and then I dried it. You always want a nice balance between sweet and sour and bitter. Nobody likes when it's too sour. Okay, what sweetness do I want to balance it with? Do I use honey? Do I make my own sugar syrup?
Or is it something else? Is it something from nature that's sweet on its own? It's all about balance, I would say. Mmm, this is the best smell. I never feel like I really read into something and learn, like, this is how it goes. This goes with this, and this has to go with this. I'm more like, this should work with this, you know, maybe this works with this. I always experiment. If I go out and I find a flower that smells like almonds, I think like, maybe this goes well with whiskey, for example. What can I do with it? Can I dry it? Can I use it into syrup?
Does it go on something else, like in food? Do I sprinkle it on top? You know, it's just so many things you can do. So it's a little chaos up here. Nothing is written down, it's just like free base. Stoneberries. Beautiful. Well, we have Salmbär, a very famous berry here from Gotland. It's like a blue raspberry. I think it's called blue raspberry as well, actually. I always loved being in the forest. Like, when I was young, I wanted to move out and live with the trolls. I used to sneak out, run away from school sometimes with a little stick on my back. Just make some nice room under a spruce and pretend to live there.
My favorite time for foraging is spring and fall. You can pick things all year round, but the most flavorful I think is in the spring. And then fall, all the berries that comes. You get all the cloudberries, blueberries, lingonberries. And then comes the mushrooms. You can put some warm clothes on and go out foraging and be out in the rain in the woods and go pick things. Yeah, I love that. Over there. Over there. Wow! Ah! Okay. So if there's one, there's more. Yes. This is a röd-gul trumpetsvamp. Red, yellow trumpet mushroom. This is like finding gold. Then I went to restaurant school. My mum had a restaurant as well with my sister.
My uncle was my teacher in the restaurant school. It was all around me all the time. But then I moved to London after I finished school, trying different things. I worked in a pub because I used to watch the TV series Cheers when I was younger. I want that life. I want to stand behind a bar and just chit-chat with people and have that life. So I moved to London to start working in the bar. And I lived there for like four years, trying different things. But then from London I moved to the Swedish mountains, or "fjällen". And that was just like, wow. Up here I can breathe, it's nature.
Yeah, I fell in love with Åre, so I stayed there for like 15 seasons. I have many people that says when they drink my cocktails, they get a memory. They say, "Oh, this drink, it reminds me of when I was young and I took a walk in the forest with my grandpa. And it was such a beautiful memory, I almost started to cry. And of course me as well, because I'm very sensitive. So, you know, opening up a memory and a sense of something when they drink my drinks. For me, that's what it's all about. You okay? So now we're on the hunt for something special.
Bella, what is it you're looking for? Now we're looking for the black trumpet mushroom, because it likes to grow with "hassel". And this is "hassel". It's just a hard one to find, and it's just so flavorful and a rare mushroom to find. But it's, yeah, it's like a winner. To be out foraging, it's helping me to relax and be more in touch with myself. To be more creative as well. It helps you to be more connected to yourself and connected to the world. We finally got the black trumpets that we were looking for. But we didn't find them in the forest. It's common for people maybe to just use their ears and eyes.
But if you try to smell, taste what's around you, then you can find more of that area. You can just close your eyes and think about the nature, the forest and breathe. We were sitting at the campsite, a lovely lady came by and she had two big buckets full of mushrooms and she kindly gave us the black trumpets. She felt sorry for us because we didn't find any, so she's like, "Oh no, okay, I'll give you some. Here you go." And she just emptied her basket. So we got lots of them now. And they're supposed to be very nice. These are really, really nice. Wow.
Now I remember. See, I even, I totally forgot about a whole restaurant I worked in because it was so bad. A guy who was so toxic to the place, he lied so much to everybody. He said to my boss that I was a really horrible person to work with and that people were scared of me, the staff. And I was so in shock. I'm like, "What? People like me. I do a really good job. What do you mean?" And then I talked to all my, the people who I worked with, like, "Is this true?" And they're like, "What? No. We love you. And what do you mean?" And he said that, but he's like, "Ooh." But then the bigger boss decides to listen to him.
Believe him, you know? That for me was really hard. He just lied so much about me. So I believed it myself. I thought like, "Am I a bad person? Am I doing something wrong here? What am I doing?" Super pretty. He knew that I knew he wasn't good. So then he had to get rid of me. And to do that, he had to lie about me. A couple of months after all this happened, he left the place. The police took him. And then everything came up like, "This is not true. He did this. La, la, la." And the bigger boss apologized to me and was really sad.
And I'm like, "Thanks, but you really destroyed my creativity, my feelings about myself." I think I pushed this memory away because it was such a hard time for me. Because I had so much creativity and I knew I was doing such a good thing. I'd never been treated so bad in my life. They made me believe that I was so bad. I think I just, you know, forget it. That's when I started to feel like I need to work more with myself and surround myself with good people that sees what I can do. Let's go. Come. I was gonna pick this fireweed, which I love.
And I find this wild gooseberries. Yummy. When I was young, my Danish grandpa, he apparently had a room in his house that he called the laboratory, where he used to hang up herbs and dry them. So he actually used to go pick in nature as well. And I didn't know that. My mum told me that now. So it's like, it's in my DNA. So that made me very emotional to hear that he used to do the same. And he used to make all different kind of schnapps. He had his own little bar in his little apartment. So how come we're able to just go out in the forest and pick stuff like this?
Because in Sweden, we have something called "Allemansrätten". You're allowed to go around and pick what's growing in nature. Not as much as you want, but you can go freely. And it's also like you have to respect the nature. You can't leave anything behind but your footprints. Yes. Like they say. It comes with responsibilities. If you're already curious and want to go out foraging, then just do it. Curiosity and openness, it takes you a long way. Now we found a mushroom that we're not quite sure about. How important is it to identify what it is? It's important. You can't pick anything that you're not sure about because some things are poisonous.
So 100% sure before you pick it? 100% sure before you pick it, yeah. It's very important. You just need to be open to what's around you. Open your senses. Look around, look up, look down. I cannot go anywhere without picking something and look like what's around here. So, yeah, just open up. Breathe, smell the air. Just go out in nature. Be curious. Have a look what's around you and ask people. Yeah, find some more. What should you look for when you try to find mushrooms? What they like when it's wet. It's very hard to pick when it's dry, but here is like moss, sun and a little shade.
You said you have a witchery side. Can you tell me more about that? During the winter, in my kitchen at home, it looks like witches' cabinets. I have so many jars and bags everywhere with dried things. I like to go out and collect plants, as you know, edible plants and also medicinal plants. Back in the days, the women who collected all the medicinal plants were stamped as witches, which is of course, nothing bad to be a witch, but then it was. Because the men in the society, they thought it was some kind of sorcery that they could heal people. So they decided to… Yeah, you know, what they did to the witches.
Horrible stuff. They killed a lot of women. It's a powerful thing to heal people, and they didn't want that. But that's a witch. So for me, a witch is a strong woman who knows about nature, who's in contact with nature and… Yeah, loves everything that's growing. I'm friends with a real witch, and she taught me a lot. For example, a tea made from St. John's Wort. It's good for anxiety, depression, things like that. You take the little buds and you squish them like this, and then if it becomes red, then it's the real deal. My witch friend, she has a special garden growing everything, all the herbs and everything, and she can tell the story, where it comes from and why this is so special, this flower.
And then that's how you learn from being curious. Do you see a similarity between how witches were treated back then and how the restaurant industry has treated women? I think it's always a connection with that. I worked my whole life in the restaurant business and specifically behind the bar. And I worked in nightclubs, you know, and after beaches and after ski and, you know, mayhem world and big events, partying, loud music, blah, blah, blah. I can't do that anymore. My advice for young women starting in the business is surround yourself with good women around you. But I think the younger generation now, it's actually very different from when I grew up.
The old thing that maybe chefs was a bit hard on you and the young waitresses, I think that's, it's going away. And it's more communities now with women supporting women, they don't take the same shit. Because usually in like an award show, something like that, it's men, men, men, men. And then it's one thing for the women. But now, like we have a great Swedish chef. She just won the chef of the year in Sweden. She's amazing. We are getting better at highlighting the women in the industry. You just have to sort of brush it off and just keep believing in what you do and do your thing, you know?
And if you love what you do and feel like you're not doing anything wrong and people like what you do, then it's the way forward. It's just nice about, isn't it? So nice. Now I'm working for myself. I have my own company. I just felt in the end like I don't want to have one boss that's in charge of me and that they don't see my worth. So I needed to get out of that and now I'm working for myself which is also, it's hard but it's more free. I find it much more fun because now I can do what I want to do and no one can say that I'm doing anything wrong.
Yeah. I choose what people are around me and I just surround myself with great people. What's your biggest dream? Still do what I love, be free and travel the world and see what's the flavor in Mexico, what's the flavor in Scotland and just meet a lot of new people all the time and get to cook with them and inspire people to be out more in nature and it is amazing. I love it, I love what I do and I like that people like what I do as well. You can't take that for granted. Where I am now, it's exactly where I want to be and I want to be here in a small area that hardly nobody knows about and people come here and they get surprised like, wow, what is this hidden gem in this area?
It's a world of learning and that's what I find interesting. I don't know everything about it. It's new, every place is new and every place has new plants that I don't know about. So how do we sum this up then? Well, getting to know Bella is an experience for sure. She holds so much wisdom, she shares it generously with everyone and just walking with her in the forest trying to remember all the plants that she's talking about. If there's a change in me because of making this film, it's that I will try to go out more in nature, look at it in a different way, in a different light, try to really take in what's out there and all the smells and all the sounds and the flavors that surrounds us everywhere.
It really taught me a lot about nature in general, which I thought I had locked down pretty good. But as always, there is more to learn and you just have to keep an open mind and that's what I try to do. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.