Foraging wild cocktails with Bella Porcile

Robin Danehav is exploring foraging, with bartender and mixologist Bella Porcile in this documentary where she shares all her secrets in turning what you can find in nature into beautiful wild cocktails.

If you want to support this channel and the making of these 100 films about 100 humans making the world better, you can sponsor me on my Patreon page. This will give you end credits in all films being released while you are a member.

Bella is a bartender, a forager and loves to bring people out in to nature. In this film she tells her story about working behind a bar for a long time, how that has affected who she is and how she has decided to design her work situation now.

We meet her in Gotland, Sweden during the summer and just outside Stockholm in fall, picking things and turning them into amazing creations.

Have you ever experienced nature with all of your senses? Or are ju limited to using your eyes? Follow along on this adventure where Bella teaches you how to begin exploring what's around you. You'll be surprised how much of it you can actually eat. Find more about Bella on her instagram mixedbybella.

To buy Bella's book Vilda Drinkar, check it out here: https://amzn.to/3GrzdY5

Thank you to Slite Strand resort for hosting us during our time in Gotland, book your stay on https://slitestrand.se.

Also big thanks to restaurant Bonden & Bönorna where Bella worked during the summer who let us use the space for filming. It's an amazing restaurant in a somewhat forgotten part of the island. Check it out on https://bankenochbonden.se/

And finally thank you to Dometic for lending us the very well equipped monster truck for the shooting day in Stockholm.

Please subscribe to the Youtube Channel if you haven't already ❤️@storybydanehav

Transcript

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 ruless, 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 Smørebrød
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 the words.
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.