By Sara Johnson, Owner of Swig – Professional Bartending & Events
When I first moved to Chestnut Hill, my top food priority was finding a great, local pizza. Well, nearly three years in I still haven’t found it. Fortunately, and maybe for the better, I found my perfect flatbread thanks to Earth Bread & Brewery.
As you stroll along the cobblestone-lined Germantown Ave through Mt Airy, Sedgwick Theater, the landmark Art Deco movie palace and a Philadelphia treasure, will probably steal your glance. But right across the street, peeking out from the mural on Durham St., is a modest corner door that leads to some of the finest food and drinks in Northwest Philadelphia.
Inside, the walls are adorned with a mix of rotating local art and vintage classroom maps, while the rustic furniture, exposed ovens (the bread) and fermentation vessels (the brewery), friendly staff, and reclaimed bars do their part to round out Earth’s atmosphere. The music is for music lovers — just loud enough to be noticeable and just far enough left of the dial to start conversation at the bar. (Amusingly, during my visit, two unrelated couples at separate ends of the downstairs bar raised their iPhones to Shazam Peter Schilling’s English version of “Major Tom,” a song about an astronaut nearly stranded above Earth.)
Our call wasn’t for the beer — as good as it was — my date and I came for the wine. Wine on tap. You heard me right, ladies and gentlemen — wine from a keg. The local focus is as much a part of Earth as her breads and beers, and the dedication of the owners, Peggy Zwerver and Tom Baker, to sustainable business is not just lip service to the name Earth. No wasted bottles or labels or cartons, no thrown-away corks—only reusable stainless steel kegs filled with 120 glasses of perfection.
Some scoff at the idea, but co-owner and master brewer Tom Baker (is that Major Tom?) — formerly of New Jersey’s Heavyweight Brewing Company, a much-loved brand by craft fanatics — beamed when describing the process of choosing the wines, installing the brand new system, and sharing it with the public. His biggest challenge? Convincing customers that wine is better from the tap. He explained that when wine is poured into a glass, air fills the empty space in the bottle, which is sealed in by the cork, beginning the process of oxidation, and degrading the wine. Basically, no glass can be as good as the first. (Unless maybe you’re drinking, y’know, an entire bottle—not judging.) But in a tap system, that empty space is filled with nitrogen, an inert gas that prevents outside air from tainting the wine.
Understanding that wine from a tap might be a difficult sell, owners Baker and Zwerver searched for the perfect local winery to blend a custom red and a white. They found their winery in Karamoor Estate Wines of Fort Washington, Pa., one of the first vineyards in Pennsylvania modeled after the Eurocentric tradition, and whose vines trace their lineage to Bordeaux. The winery’s passion and drive to create the best vineyard, along with their state-of-the art winery, is exactly what they were looking for. After sampling a few of Karamoor’s wines, I’m definitely on Tom’s side. Their Cabernet Franc was a perfect balance of raspberries, plums, and spices, while the house red and whites (both on tap) were equally matched to their bottled cousin. I’ll never think of keg wine the same way again.
Since we spent much of the evening seated at the bar, we asked Bar Manager John Calvitti to recommend his favorite menu selections. The seasonal kale salad he brought out caught us off guard: topped with julienne carrots, sesame seeds, red and yellow peppers, and finished with a soy-ginger dressing—it was crunchy, sweet, and the slightest bit tangy, a full-flavor salad out to do more than whet your appetite. The signature BBQ Chicken Flatbread followed, and we were not disappointed: a mouth-watering delight of house-made maple barbecue sauce, blackened chicken, fontina, grana padano cheese, and pickled red onion. Oh. my.
And of course, there’s all that beautiful, hand-hewn beer. We tasted each of the four house drafts, an eclectic mix ranging from a strong Imperial Ale to the just-right “Goldilocks” Saison. A word of advice, though: don’t fall too madly in love with any one house craft — master brewer Baker never brews the same batch twice, so be sure to walk out with a growler or two before they’re gone. If you’re looking for a craft standard, Earth also pays homage to local favorites by offering a few guest spots to the likes of Sly Fox, Victory, and Philadelphia Brewing Co., an impressive gesture by Earth, a restaurant and brewery clearly committed to not just their own business, but the larger local craft industry.
In addition to beer, Earth also brews their own rotating selection of kombucha, a kind of fermented sweet tea reported by many to have health benefits. Knowing I can stop by on my way home from work for a competitively priced growler of sour cherry kombucha (or blueberry, or ginger, or craisin) alongside a growler of Altbier for my husband adds yet another reason for me to celebrate Earth as a neighborhood cornerstone.
If you’ve never been to Mt. Airy, I cannot recommend a better place than Earth to take its pulse.
Learn more about Swig by visiting them online at swigevents.com. Be sure to also follow Swig on Facebook by clicking here and on Twitter @swigtender.
