Wild Mother Tasmania is an Australian apple cider vinegar company based in the Huon Valley, Tasmania.
The business was founded by Dr Tim Jones, who is undoubtedly one of Australia’s top cider makers.
After starting his drinks production career making industrial cider in Cascade Brewery, Tim joined Willie Smith’s as head cider maker in 2014.
Advertisement
He stayed in that role until 2020 and during that period of almost six years, Willie Smith’s won a stack of trophies for its ciders showcasing the complexity offered by heirloom English and French cider apple varieties.
- Click here to open episode in your podcast player
Tim’s new venture Wild Mother is dedicated to minimal intervention, unfiltered and unpasteurised vinegars from apples and cherries, some of which have been aged in casks that have previously held bourbon, port and Tasmanian whisky.
And more relevantly to this podcast, there are also some liqueurs and apple brandies in the pipeline that you’ll hear about, right after Tim explains how he first became interested in exploring the world of craft vinegar.
More:
Tasmanian adventures with Bruny Island Beer and Sailor Seeks Horse wines: S2E3
Wild Mother Tasmania founder Dr. Tim Jones: Full transcript
TIM JONES: I’ve been massively passionate about vinegar for actually a very long time and I’ve actually been working in cider for more than 12 years, believe it or not, prior to Willie Smith’s at sort of industrial scale. And then at Willie Smith’s, at craft scale. But what really got me into it was kind of similar to what got me into cider and that was having really great apple cider vinegar in cider country in France, where my wife’s from.
So not only was I exposed through Sophie to amazing cider, which led to what we did at Willie Smith’s, but also to, you know, really wholesome full-bodied European vinegars, which are, you know, delicious and healthful. And it’s something that I wanted to spend more time when I was at Willie Smith’s, but we couldn’t because we were focused on cider.
Now I’ve got the opportunity to launch a business that’s dedicated solely to vinegar making.
JAMES ATKINSON: Is there much of an industry in Australia producing vinegars, you know, of the sort of style and on the scale that you are?
TIM JONES: No, there’s not. There’s quite a bit of industrial vinegar made and there are one or two really successful smaller vinegar makers on the mainland that are focused on wine vinegar.
But there’s not many people at all that are focused on craft vinegar as their singular focus.
JAMES ATKINSON: And you know, obviously this podcast is called Drinks Adventures, so I suppose you could argue that we’re kind of going a little bit outside our remit here, but I think it’s kind of relevant given your background, you know, as a brewer and cider maker and so forth.
And perhaps from what you’ve told me, this cider vinegar is good enough to drink anyway.
TIM JONES: Well I mean, yeah, it’s a fair call, but what’s really interesting to me is that there’s more and more vinegar and vinegar-like products turning up in bars and turning up in good food stores, et cetera.
JAMES ATKINSON: Do mean natural wine?
TIM JONES: No, I’ve got too many friends in that scene to agree with you there James, but I think it’s really fascinating once you’re in the world of vinegar, what you start to notice. My observation is that a couple of things have happened that have drawn people to consuming more vinegar. One is that the kombucha craze really kind of conditioned people’s palates to that sort of vinegar, volatile acidity kind of flavour profile.
And the other is that a lot of people feel that there’s a lot of health benefits associated with vinegar. So, you know, rather than sort of forcing yourself to have a shot of vinegar each day, there’s plenty of other ways to have your daily dose of apple cider vinegar, which is actuallysuper pleasu rable.
So, I have been working on shrub syrups, which are blends of apple cider vinegar and various other things like raspberries and blackcurrants and herbs and spices. And the addition of a good traditional-style apple cider vinegar is really flavourful and tends to sharpen and brighten flavours as well.
So I’m feeling pretty positive about that. Vinegar is growing in its importance in the beverage industry as well as in the sort of condiment and health space.
How is apple vinegar made?
JAMES ATKINSON: Sure. And so how are they made? Talk us through the raw material that you’re working with and then how you set about making vinegar, which is kind of, I guess, probably the opposite to how you would set about making a cider.
TIM JONES: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I was always good at screwing up a batch of cider, so I thought that was my natural talent and moved into vinegar making as a result. Now, that’s a good question, and there are various different ways that vinegar’s made. Industrial vinegar’s sort of another world, which I won’t go into, as it’s not really relevant, but in terms of craft vinegar, it’s a two-step ferment.
The first step is to go through what we call traditional alcoholic ferment. So turning the sugars that are in whatever fruit juice you’re working with into alcohol. And then the next step is an aerobic ferment that’s carried out by the vinegar mother or acetobacter that converts alcohol into acetic acid and in doing so, removes the alcohol, creates acidity and also creates a whole bunch of other metabolites that people attribute some health benefits to as well.
JAMES ATKINSON: And it should arrive at being an alcohol-free product, or very close to?
TIM JONES: Yeah, very, very, close to. That’s sort of the main parameter as to how you tell when your vinegar’s finished is to check that there’s under about 0. 5 percent alcohols there. That’s the kind of limit. And that’s what you’re shooting for.
You know, what’s really fun about vinegar is that you’re dealing with a second ferment and a lot of things change. So it’s kind of like double the fun, if that makes sense.
JAMES ATKINSON: And it’s going into oak as well, is that right?
TIM JONES: Yeah, so we’ve got a few different products at the moment that we’ve launched or are about to launch, some are aged and some aren’t.
So I’ve brought out an organic apple cider vinegar, which is really a simple purely made vinegar that’s just got apples as an ingredient. And at the moment they’re wild fermented and they’re also fermented into vinegar with a mother that I’ve cultured over time from fresh fruits. So hence the business name, Wild Mother Tasmania. And that’s there really to give people an option to buy a locally-made organically-certified vinegar in Tassie. That’s also designed to be used as a condiment as well. So it’s not just a vinegar for health. It’s a vinegar that tastes good.
Cherry vinegar by Wild Mother Tasmania
And the other un-aged vinegar that I do is a cherry vinegar and many, many years ago when I was working for CUB, I had a cherry grower down here plead with me to come up with a product that they could make out of their cherries that don’t reach export grade, of which there’s hundreds and hundreds of tonnes wasted in Tassie each year, and it took me about ten years to work it out.
Yeah, cherry vinegar is something that we can make out of cherries that would otherwise be destined for landfill because they just don’t quite reach the grade that’s required for export aesthetically. So there’s a food waste component to the business as well. We’re really passionate about saving agricultural and food waste and this is one way to do that.
So that’s kind of like, what we’ve released to date, and we’re very close to releasing a second kind of range of vinegars that have been barrel-aged and have been ageing apple cider vinegar and now cherry vinegar in, in a range of different casks for over four years. And in doing so we have been able to create some really interesting flavours.
So like, for example, we’ve got bourbon cask Australian apple cider vinegar, that’s got this absolutely delicious sort of bourbon breadth and depth to it. And we’re obviously using Tassie whisky casks as well. And I’ve got a relationship with a really great fortified winemaker in the Barossa to source some really fantastic old fortified casks to age.
So we’ve got some really nice cask-aged vinegars about to be released. And it’s been really cool getting feedback from high quality chefs on these types of products, um, because they are a little bit new. There’s always that uncertainty around how the market will pick them up. You know, to date, we’ve just had fantastic feedback, so I can’t wait to get them in bottle.
JAMES ATKINSON: Looking at the apple cider vinegar, I mean, I’m really only familiar with the widely commercially available ones like the likes of Bragg’s. How does your product differ to what people might be accustomed to trying in the past?
TIM JONES: Yeah. Well, I mean, Bragg’s is a classic example, you know, like it’s a really popular vinegar with people that are concerned about health.
And it’s a pretty good product except that it’s imported. So that was one thing that really drove me in the first place was, we need to be able to supply the market with, you know, locally-made product. And because it’s made locally with fresh apples up the road, it’s not made from concentrate, we end up with an Australian apple cider vinegar that’s super tasty.
JAMES ATKINSON: Bragg’s, when I have tried it on its own, it’s got that searing acidity as well. So would yours be similar to that kind of flavour profile? You mentioned that there’s more body than some of the other products on the market.
TIM JONES: Yeah, so what we’re looking for is, it’s a product that has got reasonable acidity, so it’s not been watered down, but isn’t just that searing acidity.
So we’re looking for apple character in the actual vinegar and a mellow component to it as well. And when I say unaged, it is aged, but not cask-aged, and that really helps it settle down as well. So when you try our vinegar against some of the more industrial vinegars, you’ll see that, yeah, there’s more mellowness and more flavour.
And really it’s just the same philosophy that we had at Willie Smith’s was, you know, it’s about trying to really showcase the fruit that you use rather than it just being an ingredient.
JAMES ATKINSON: And when you mentioned the cherry vinegar, is there any sort of tradition of cherry vinegars overseas or is this very much a Tasmanian innovation?
TIM JONES: Well, I did a lot of Googling when I thought about it because we’re also working on some balsamic styles which take a lot longer and they’re in cask now. I have found a few cherry vinegars and I found a few cherry balsamic vinegars and I’m not saying there isn’t a tradition of cherry vinegar but I’m yet to find it as a staple traditional vinegar.
And interestingly, it’s been selling really well. I guess it’s been surprisingly taken by the market. And I was sort of concerned that people just wouldn’t, you know, they’d have a question mark about what to do with it. But it’s been selling really well, particularly in the Valley.
JAMES ATKINSON: And what are your ambitions? Like, have you got other investors on board and plans to sort of make this a product that’s available On the mainland, in retail outlets and so forth.
TIM JONES: Yeah, so I’ve got a funding partner and we’ve been working on the model for a long time. We would like to grow the business significantly. We’re realistic about the challenges of doing that in Tassie, particularly around freight, but we are already on the mainland. We’ve um, partnered with Natoora down in Melbourne who have just started selling into restaurants for us and they’re a fantastic partner because they’re really focused on sustainable high quality food and they’ve got a really interesting model which we thought was really well aligned with ours and we’re in discussions with some people in New South Wales. So we do really hope that we can get it out and into mainland market and get a bit of volume but it won’t be super simple because of, yeah, as I said, our isolation down in Tassie.
Wild Mother visitor experience coming soon
JAMES ATKINSON: And yeah, tell me about like the production site and is it possible for people to come visit you at some point? Or some kind of cellar door type setup?
TIM JONES: Yeah, so at the moment there’s no cellar door, and we’re sort of two thirds of the way through renovating. So it’s not ready for visitors and we have had people through, but we really want to be able to set up a site for people to come and see for themselves what we do.
I think that there is a lot of interest in vinegar in the market. People have been hearing a lot about vinegar and it would be great to be able to show people on a consistent basis what we do and even hopefully have them come down and maybe pickle some veggies with us design their own blended vinegar.
So yeah, we definitely want to have people on site in the future.
Huon Valley activities
JAMES ATKINSON: And this is in the Huon Valley which is becoming a pretty exciting culinary destination isn’t it?
TIM JONES: Yeah, we’re really, really lucky. We’re sharing a site with Bruny Island Cheese, which is absolutely fantastic. We’re discussing different products that would be complementary to their cheeses.
We’ve got the The Kiln restaurant next door, which has just opened, which is a fantastic restaurant, and Willie Smith’s Apple Shed up the road. So there’s a lot going on and we’ve got quite high hopes for the site actually because we’d like to get some more artisan producers on the same site that we’re on and try and create an environment where people can come and actually visit, you know, a couple of different producers in one go.
JAMES ATKINSON: And I assume that, you know, with the cider vinegar, you’re, you’re sourcing the apple juice from Willie Smiths, given your relationship with the company?
TIM JONES: Yeah, so R& R Smiths, who are the Smiths family side of Willie Smiths, have always been by my side and supporting me the whole way through, which has been fantastic. I use their certified organic apple juice, and for the cherries, we source them from the Derwent Valley and the Huon Valley from two different growers, Hansen Orchards and Reed Fruits. So we’re literally just a couple of ks away from the orchards where our fruit comes from. And I think that’s a very good situation to be in because it allows us to use fruit that’s ready to press straight away and we’re able to process without the tyranny of distance and allows us, as I said in the case of cherries, to use absolutely amazing quality cherries that might just have a tiny little split in them, which means that they won’t to last the distance to get to China. So because of where we’re located, we’re able to actually impact on some of that ag and food waste situation as well.
Australian apple cider vinegar: Uses
JAMES ATKINSON: Now you’re a very good cook from what I’ve seen on Instagram and I might have even enjoyed some of your cuisine myself on occasion. So tell me about putting these vinegars into practice and what you’ve learned about what you can do with some of these products in the kitchen.
TIM JONES: Yeah, well, I’ve learned that teenagers do start to switch off after six months of a new vinegar every day! But aside from that, I’ve been having a ball working with vinegars, particularly sort of stepping outside of the traditional use of dressings, etc. I mean, the goal with the apple cider vinegar is to have it so that it’s so good that you can use it by itself as a dressing. I think that’s a real indicator of quality. But I’ve been messing around with a lot of deglazing with the cherry vinegar. I’ve been using that a lot cooking with red meat. I’ve been using the cask-aged apple cider vinegars to baste slow and low cooked meat, particularly pork and smoked meat. So really, I think for my own purposes, to get a feel for the depth of application of the different products. And I think when you’re creating a product for release to market that you’ve had six to twelve months playing around with yourself, it allows you to really get the product right. But it also allows you to go in and, and talk hand on heart to chefs, et cetera, about the different applications. So it’s been quite good fun, I’ve got to say.
Australian apple brandy and pommeau coming soon
JAMES ATKINSON: And you were saying as well, there are some alcoholic products that are related to this venture as well.
TIM JONES: Yeah, that’s right. So I have tried to force myself into a break from making cider and other alcoholic products, but I failed. And, uh, I have been working on some small cask fortified apple products.
So in the next year or two, we’ll be releasing some really small cask pommeaus, which are basically, I guess, an apple port that originates from Northwest. France, something that Willie Smith does absolutely beautifully. And, uh, yeah, I’ve been putting a bit of Apple Brandy away too, but I don’t have a time frame for selling that because that will be sold on when it’s ready rather than when the business model dictates.
JAMES ATKINSON: Oh, right. And, I mean, obviously Willie Smith’s had a Apple Brandy program as well, but with the Apple Brandy and the pommeau that you’re doing, are you kind of trying to do something that’s a bit different to what you did there?
TIM JONES: Yeah, that’s right. So, um, it’s about focus and about really high quality for me.
I think, you know, we made some really great things at Willie Smith’s, and the guys continue to evolve and improve. But by doing my own thing, it allows me to go off in, in my own direction and that’s using my own apples. that are all grown specifically for pommeau. So, let them ripen beyond what you normally would for cider apples.
And, you know, obviously using the varieties that I’ve chosen for cider and for pommeau, which are high in tannin and depth and fruit character. And the other interesting thing that I’ve done, which again was a little nerve-wracking to start with, is I’ve been playing around with Tassie whisky barrels for aging.
There’s apple liqueur styles and they’ve come out really, really well. So it’s another kind of classic Tassie tweak on a traditional beverage, you know, using what we’ve got on hand here and coming up with something that’s a little unique.
JAMES ATKINSON: Am I right in saying you have an orchard yourself that has some apple trees?
TIM JONES: Yeah, so many years ago when I was working in commercial cider, when I first sort of learnt about old world ciders, I planted a large number of European cider varieties on a friend’s land, a piece of land, who continues to support me to this day with that orchard. And that’s allowed us to make some really special ciders early on at Willie Smith’s and fortunately I’ve been able to keep that orchard and, and I’m now in a position to make stuff with the fruit that comes off it.
Wild Mother Tasmania: Where to find it
JAMES ATKINSON: Wonderful mate. Well yeah, really interesting project and something a bit different for us to talk about on the podcast, which is fun and I’m really looking forward to trying these products. Where can people get their hands on them?
TIM JONES: So at the moment they’re in Tassie in most of the independent retail shops, so the Hill Street Grocer stores, Salamanca, some of the specialty food stores as well, including the Wursthaus and Eumarrah. Not available in retail yet on the mainland, but we’re getting very close and I’ll let you know as soon as soon as we can. For people in trade in Melbourne, Natoora will be able to supply restaurants.
JAMES ATKINSON: Awesome, Tim. Well thanks for joining us for a chat mate.
TIM JONES: Thanks so much James. And I’ll be up in a month or two with some samples for you to try.
JAMES ATKINSON: Excellent. Cheers.
