by Stephen Goodfellow

Some years ago I was going through various papers and journals looking for subjects to report on at our Wednesday SciTechNature gatherings, when I came across an extraordinary article. Astounded, my imagination took me back, thousands of years, to the very origins of winemaking.

Those early winemakers; where did they think the yeast came from to make the wine? Did they even think about yeast at all? One simply trod the grapes, stored it - and there you were: Fermented grapes - wine.

Of course, we humans were not the only lovers of grape juice. Pesky wasps have always butted in when it came to enjoying this delicious fruit liquid. For as long as we homo sapiens have been around, forever, they have been a stinging annoyance, our eternal competitors for this delicious juice.

So imagine our collective surprise when in 2012, scientists discovered that the yeast that converts grape juice into wine comes from the guts of said bothersome wasps.

To be sure, well before this 2012 information bombshell, the winemaking industry knew that the most commonly used winemaking yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is the fundamental progenitor of fermentation. Although there was speculation that fruit flies were a common vector that transports ambient or "wild" yeast strains within wineries, it was not until 2012 that the winemaking industry knew the correct origin of the fermenting yeast.

This is of course undeniable proof that nature has a sense of humor; that the very insect that has annoyed us down through the ages, is the very same that gave us the joy of this alcoholic beverage. So Raise Your Glass, and give a grateful toast to the humble Yellowjacket!

Let me conclude this article with a plug; there are so many controversial heretical bulwarks based on observational evidence that we discover in our Wednesday gatherings at 11:30am for SciTechNature at the Biblioteca. It might be amusing to pretend a shocked and indignant cosmology community fleeing our Wednesday group to eventually become useful citizens, abandoning cosmology to become cosmetologists, enthusiastically arranging hair styles for happy customers.

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Stephen Goodfellow was born in Southampton in England 1953. Goodfellow has lived in Nigeria, England, Denmark, Mexico. He enrolled at Wayne State University in Detroit, USA to pursue his Postgraduate degree and graduated M.A in painting, and M.F.A. in printmaking. He developed an art medium called Primary Micropointillism consisting of only three colors which he applies to canvas.

Stephen has lived in San Miguel as a full time fine artist for the past 14 years.

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