"Wild Saccharomyces does not make any of these compounds. If it had acquired the trick of making opiates in its evolutionary past, palm wine drinkers would have bathed their nerve endings in such tranquilizing spirits that early Homo sapiens would have sleep-walked itself into the fossil record."

[on using Yeast to manufacture opiates]

"the first yeasts that show up [to ferment cocoa pulp] have names that cannot be read out loud without a few test runs - Hanseniaspora guilliermondii and Hanseniaspora opuntiae - followed by multiple strains of Saccharomyces and the utterly unpronounceable Pickia kudruavzevii, also called Issatchenkia orientalis. the tongue twistiness of the latter species qualifies this as the Engelbert Humperdinck of mycology."

"Opportunistic infections of these kinds are a modern phenomenon. the Roman gladiator impaled with a trident would not have survived long enough to be troubled by a yeast infection. the technology of modern medicine encourages our colonization by fungi,"

"We have seen already that the human genome is adapted in varying degrees to deal with alcohol. Because every drop of alcohol comes from yeast, there is a sense in which the genetics and practice of human drinking were largely crafted by the sugar fungus. If agriculture and civilization were founded on the needs of brewers, it follows that we have been tamed by Sacchromyces. This is particularly compelling for those of us who hunt for the cork-screw at the end of a tiring day. there is a certain truth to this idea of an ancient co-dependence. Yeast, as a silent partner in this venture, also shows signs of domestication in its genome. For a long time it was believed that Saccharomyces was a sort of house-trained pet, the microbial equivalent of the domestic cat."

"For a long time it was believed that Saccharomyces was a sort of house trained pet, the microbial equivalent of the domestic cat. Different strains of wine and beer yeasts are like cat breeds, but microbiologists had no idea where they had come from until they began using molecular methods to search for strains of fungus in the wild.

The presence of feral yeasts close to domestic vinyards was no surprise, given that it is a microorganism that escaped from wine presses all the time, but, as the search continued, wild strains of Saccharomyces were found on oak trees - on their bark, leaves, acorns, and in the surrounding soil. Yeast showed up in forests far from vineyards. These strains had never been domesticated, and had never feasted in a wine barrel or a beer vat."