What “Local” Has To Do With “Craft”

by David Nilsen

Note: Since writing this, I came across my colleague Jeff Alworth’s insightful recent blog post about the concept of “local.” You should definitely check it out.

Earlier this summer, Clay Gordon and I had a series of conversations about craft beer and craft chocolate, and one of our main points of discussion was around the meaning(s) of the word “craft” in both sectors. What does it mean, how has its usage changed, how it us used differently in beer and chocolate, and is the best word for the job? I’m not sure we solved anything, but it was fun to discuss.

A couple weeks ago I had a beer with Brian Simpson, co-founder of Riverbend Malt in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the premier craft (there’s that word again) malthouses in the country. It reminded me of a conversation we’d had several years back about the importance of craft malt, when Brian hit upon another buzz word in artisan food and beverage: “local”.

In the earlier conversation, Brian talked about the birth of the craft malt movement, when most brewers were still getting all their malt from larger companies in Canada or Europe (still the norm, actually). Breweries were touting their “local” beer, but the ingredients were grown hundreds or even thousands of miles away, sometimes across an ocean. The only thing local about the beer was the water and the brewer. Both of those are important, but it’s tough to call a beer local when much of the money from each pint or can is heading to ingredient suppliers in another state or country. Craft malt was a way to make a beer truly local, or at least regional.

This got me thinking about craft chocolate. If you’re making chocolate in North America or Europe, your chocolate can’t possibly be “local” from an ingredient standpoint. Cacao doesn’t grow here. If you get chocolate made from where the cacao could be local, then the chocolate itself no longer can be once it gets here.

“Local” has been a major component of the artisan food movement(s) that began in the 1980s with Slow Food and everything that followed. But local isn’t always possible. It isn’t always better either, in the same way “small” isn’t always better. I’ve had plenty of “small, local” beer that was…terrible.

What about you? How does “local” fit into your perception of “craft”?