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Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

They've been making banana wine from wild yeast presumably for at least a 100 years or longer. It sounds like the regulators in their country are a PITA and won't get out of the way.

There's a million different strains of yeast but they all do the same thing. If you don't add any yeast it will still ferment with the wild yeast.

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Regulation is extremely important, and has been part and parcel of alcohol and wine production since prehistoric times. Besides the health reasons, wine is very easy to cut with synthetic or artificial ingredients, which has important economic and health consequences - hence the use of government bonding for hundreds of years around the world.

But more recently, regulation is vital for setting up geographical indicators for production of items that are locally unique, e.g. Parmesean, Champagne, and the German Reinheitsgebot which are legally protected practices for the reasons in the first paragraph. Being able to identify the specific strains of yeast in this banana wine is a big part for arguing the provenance of it.

You can't create an export market if you product is variable due to your results depending on whatever yeast happened to be used that day.

Lambic beers prove you can do that

So people say. I suspect that as they are made in the same buildings over the decades or even centuries that the yeasts eventually become part of the local ecology and are thus quite stable.

I was thinking the same. Though wild fermenting works well for small batches, I have no idea of it scales. I was guessing this is a comercial operation if regulators are involved.

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