Ferment Academia - Sandor Katz Residency
At Aterra Eco Boutique, Portugal
Join us in Portugal for the inaugural edition of Ferment Academia - a five-day residential event celebrating fermentation, food culture, and community.
This first gathering brings together some of the most respected fermenters, researchers, and educators from across the globe. At the centre is Sandor Ellix Katz - author of Wild Fermentation.
Overview
Price €1900 per person,
Deposit and payment plan:
€570 non-refundable deposit to secure your place €665 by December 2025 (+ accommodation fee*) €665 by March 2026
Date 5-10 May 2026
Time 10:00 AM (5 May) - 2:30 PM (10 May)
Location Aterra Eco Boutique, Carvalhal das Figueiras, Corgo da Casca, 7630-635, Portugal
For more information, click below to expand.
Terms and conditions will apply to your booking via the Ferment Academia
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To read a brochure outlining the week in detail, as well as information about the venue and facilitators, please click this link
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Travel to the venue is not included in the ticket price.
However, if you choose to join the optional “discovery day” on 5 May, you will meet the group in a location in Lisbon at 10am and go on a culinary adventure together and arrive at the venue at 7pm.
Alternatively if you do not wish to take part in the optional “discovery day” you can find your own way to the venue Aterra via public transport, arriving either for 7pm on the 5 May or arriving in the morning of 6 May by 10:00am.
The official programme begins on Wednesday 6 May at 10:00 and ends on Sunday 10 May at 14:30. Please keep these times in mind when booking your travel.
There is information around how to get to the venue from airports in the detailed brochure. Please do have a read through.
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The residency takes place at Aterra, a unique eco-boutique retreat in São Teotónio, South Alentejo. Nestled among forest, farmland, and freshwater lakes, Aterra offers a peaceful setting with simple comforts, wild beauty, and a deep-rooted commitment to sustainability.
The venue sits just 15 minutes from the Costa Vicentina coastline — a favourite among surfers and hikers walking the Fisherman’s Trail.
It’s easily accessible from both Lisbon and Faro.
Aterra is fully off-grid, built using permaculture principles. All toilets are dry composting, and yet beautifully laid out and comfortable. The entire site is designed to minimise environmental impact. There’s a private lake with a small beach, a seasonal café and bar, and plenty of space to rest, walk, or swim.
You can also book additional services directly with the venue — including massage, horse riding, hiking, and surfing.
If you’d like to extend your stay before or after the programme, you can arrange extra nights directly with Aterra.
Prefer more traditional accommodation? There are local guesthouses and Airbnbs nearby if you’re hiring a car.
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This event has a wonderful array of facilitators with a huge range of experience. I’m honoured to be part of this list!
Sandor Katz
Sandor is a fermentation revivalist and author of five celebrated books including Wild Fermentation, The Art of Fermentation, and Fermentation Journeys. His work has inspired a global wave of fermenters — from kitchen hobbyists to chefs and researchers — and earned him a James Beard Award and a spot on The New York Times’ list of the 25 most influential cookbooks of the last century.
A self-taught experimentalist based in rural Tennessee, Sandor has taught hundreds of workshops worldwide. His work continues to shape how we think about microbial life, food, and community.
Paula Neubauer
Paula is a Brazilian fermentation educator, award-winning producer, and founder of Get Pickled Somerset. Based in Frome, she left academia to follow her passion for preserving and fermenting local fruit and vegetables — and has since won Great Taste Awards and Taste of the West for her products.
Paula is a member of the Fermenters Guild and has taught workshops across the UK and online, including a session on ancestral Brazilian fermentation for The Fermentation School. Her current focus weaves together flavour, education, and storytelling — with a strong emphasis on sustainability and cultural knowledge-sharing.
Jo Webster
Jo is a clinical nutritionist, medical herbalist, fermentologist, and director of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. She works one-to-one with clients, while also completing her PhD at the University of Surrey and with TEAGASC, where her research focuses on a specific form of fermented food. Alongside her PhD, she is also researching herbal oxymels as food-medicine.
Jo teaches at Betonica School of Herbal Medicine, and co-holds the Guinness World Record for the largest dish of bacterially fermented sauerkraut. She’s also a mother of four, a lifelong learner, and an advocate for accessible, community-rooted food practices.
You’ll often find her fermenting, reading, herbing, or walking in the woods — usually with a curious question close at hand.
Katsu Lask
Katsu is a Harvard-certified fermentista, author of one published fermentation book (with a second on the way), and a passionate ambassador of all things fermented.
Born in Northern Germany with Eastern European roots, she brings a unique cultural blend to her craft.
She regularly hosts workshops in collaboration with local organic farms and regional vegetable producers, sharing her deep knowledge and enthusiasm for fermentation.
You can follow her daily adventures with beneficial bacteria and microbes - along with plenty of inspiration, recipes, and scientific information - on her Instagram profile @fermentation.love and on her website of the same name.
Pao Liu
Born and raised in Taipei, now based in the UK, Pao is a fermentation educator with a deep love for koji and its many possibilities. Her work blends traditional Asian fermentation techniques with modern curiosity, exploring texture, flavour, and aroma across a wide range of ingredients.
Pao’s playful, precise approach makes her workshops both accessible and exciting — rooted in history, but always evolving. She continues to experiment with new methods while preserving the cultural richness of her fermentation heritage.
Jelena Belgrave
Jelena is a fermentation consultant, recipe developer, and educator blending her Balkan roots with Japanese macrobiotic training. Her work explores how fermentation connects tradition, migration, and identity — with a strong focus on food as a cultural and community practice.
She has led workshops for UCL’s Institute of Making, contributed to the Migration Museum’s “Fermentation Beyond Borders” series, and taught across schools, refugee centres, and public spaces. She is currently Fermentation Specialist for Plates, first Michelin starred plant-based restaurant in the UK. Jelena is a member of the UK Fermenters Guild and a passionate advocate for fermentation as everyday knowledge.
Her events are known for sparking curiosity, expanding palates, and inviting participants into a world of new, surprising flavours.
Melanie McIntosh
Melanie is a fermentation practitioner, cook, and sour flavour enthusiast. Her love of preserving started young — fermenting garden vegetables at home in Vancouver, then diving deeper into Japanese techniques while living in Japan.
She went on to lead fermentation at Little Duck The Picklery in London, set up a fermentation lab in rural Germany, and most recently filmed a Japanese TV show focused on tsukudani — a traditional preserving method.
Melanie also hosted a fermentation festival and taught culinary seaweed sessions at UCL’s Institute of Making.
Her work bridges kitchens, cultures, and techniques — always returning to the joy of tangy, funky, fermented things.
Stephanie Sacco
Stephanie is a fermentation-focused anthropologist and researcher based in Brazil. A PhD candidate at the Federal University of Paraíba, her work explores how people understand and share microbial knowledge across cultures — blending multispecies ethnography, sensory methods, and digital anthropology.
Alongside her academic research, Stephanie has over a decade of experience in the social impact sector, supporting community-building and education initiatives across Latin America and beyond. Her project Ferment Antropologia documents how fermentation acts as both a cultural tool and a site of connection between humans and microbes.
She’s also an active member of the global fermentation community, with a strong focus on accessibility, collaboration, and cultural context.
Rodri Rodriguez
Rodri is a fermenter, cultural researcher, and experimental cook exploring the intersection of food, identity, and ecology. His work draws on ancestral techniques, wild ingredients, and seasonal cycles — often spotlighting fermentation as a living, breathing collaborator in the kitchen.
He was born and raised in Utrera (Seville), an area where table olives have had great historical importance. And this was his first encounter with the world of fermentation. He tends to his family of olive grove of manzanilla and and gordal olives, which he has been converting from traditional farming techniques to biodynamic principles.
He also extended this approach to how he processed his olives, banishing chemicals and reverting back to traditional salt brine fermentation techniques. Industrial olives are made with caustic soda, a highly corrosive compound. In addition to this, they add a lot of preservatives and chemical flavor enhancers.
Rodri shares his work through workshops, pop-ups, and collaborations that connect microbes with memory, movement, and place.
Payal Shah
Payal Shah runs Kōbo Fermentary - a flavour lab, think tank, and creative fermentation studio based in Bengaluru. She’s not a chef, a food scientist, or a microbiologist by degree (her academic roots are in organisational psychology), but she’s spent the last 20+ years exploring the wild, unpredictable world of microbes and flavour. What began as a ginger beer obsession in her early twenties has since spiralled (gloriously) into a lifelong love affair with fermentation.
Payal is neurodivergent. She has ADHD and is Autistic and this deeply informs how she learns, teaches, and creates. Her brain, much like fermentation itself, is nonlinear, adaptive, and full of unexpected connections. She’s not big on precision, but she is a master at pattern-spotting, diving into rabbit holes, and translating complexity into something both digestible and delicious.
These days, her work is as much about research as it is about flavour. She’s currently exploring flavour matrices, Indian koji applications, and the rich cultural history of fermentation in India and beyond. Offline, you’ll find her collaborating with farmers, chefs, researchers, and artists - pushing the boundaries of what fermentation can be, from education and experience design to future-forward food tech.
Gabriela Monteiro
Gabriela is the founder of Nomad Food Lab, a long-running project focused on conscious eating, fermentation, and plant-based cuisine. With over 15 years’ experience as a retreat chef, workshop facilitator, and food culture educator, she’s known for creating vibrant, nourishing meals that celebrate global traditions and local ingredients.
She is also a Mindful Eating teacher and integrative therapist, working with aromatherapy, flower essences, and nonviolent communication. Gabriela holds a Master’s degree in Community Psychosociology and Human Ecology and brings a multi-dimensional approach to both food and wellbeing.
At the residency, she’ll be working closely with our guest facilitators to co-create daily meals that reflect the spirit of fermentation: alive, collaborative, and full of depth.