New C. Donatiello pairing emphasizes green

There’s a new wine and cheese pairing available at Healdsburg’s C. Donatiello Winery—an experience that showcases the facility’s on-site garden and organic goodies from around Sonoma County.

For $20 per person, visitors receive four 2-ounce glasses of wine, modest hunks of cheese from Bellwether Farms in Petaluma, and a variety of delicious condiments and other accompanying items. The cheese-and-accoutrement combinations have been specially prepared to bring out the very best in each wine. They do the job nicely; on a recent visit, pairings were out of this world.

First, the 2008 809 Clone Chardonnay was paired with a hard Crescenza cheese and sweet-and-sour Meyer lemon marmalade. The lemons in the marmalade hailed from McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma.

Next up: The 2008 Orsi Chardonnay, a full-bodied wine that was paired with a Gorgonzola-like Carmody cheese and fresh, raw honey.

The honey, which featured hints of eucalyptus and lavender, came from Donatiello’s Healdsburg estate. It also offered strong and sweet tones of caramel and butterscotch. It definitely was not your Supermarket variety.

Later in the afternoon, servers paired the 2007 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir with a raw sheep milk farmstead cheese and organic pomegranate jelly (from Kozlowski Farms in Sebastopol).

The final act was by far the best of all worlds: A heavy pour of the 2008 Floodgate Block 15 pinot noir, served with spicy Pepato cheese and organic Blackberry syrup and sauce (also from Kozlowski).

In a word, yum.

Interested visitors take note: The winery requires reservations for the pairings, and they ask that guests make them at least 24 hours in advance. It’s clear that pulling together such delectable menus takes time, especially when you’ve got to drive 30 miles south to pick up fresh cheese every day.