Tasted: Wine Country Weekend

Here’s something you don’t ask a chef at an important culinary event with throngs of hungry guests crowding around: “can you change your recipe just for me?”

Here’s what you do say to a chef who’s slaving away in the hot sun, feeding you incredible delicacies: “this is so wonderful, I would kiss you if I wouldn’t get arrested.”

Such was the scene at Saturday’s Taste of Sonoma, when a record 2,500 food and wine lovers converged for a fantasy picnic on the sprawling grassy meadows of Healdsburg’s MacMurray Ranch. For five hours, it was a non-stop feast, brought to delicious life by more than 60 chefs and paired with the best from more than 150 wineries pouring a deep, fruity ocean of fine Sonoma wines.

Enormous fun for the guests; enormous work for the culinary talent.

So for the yahoo who asked Duskie Estes, chef-owner of Santa Rosa’s Zazu Restaurant & Farm if she could get her BLT without bacon, Estes had a simple answer: no way. The hand cured Black Pig Meat Co. product was kind of the whole point of her spicy, savory sandwich, she explained, shooing the self-proclaimed vegan guest away.

For the gentleman sampling foie gras terrine and duck rilettes from Sonoma’s Artisan Foie Gras, meanwhile, his desire to kiss the chefs was understandable, if equally appreciated when he didn’t follow through.

While this year’s event didn’t offer up any completely bizarre recipes as in some years’ past, there were a few standout creations.

Props go to Pizza Politana for its Neapolitan style fig, bacon and arugula pizza, cooked to crispy perfection in a wood-burning oven mounted on a trailer (Joel Baecker, a veteran of Chez Panisse, and his wife, Naomi Crawford, imported an oven from Italy and tow it to farmers’ markets across Sonoma County).

Sonoma Organics of Sebastopol did a dynamite rock shrimp and cotija tostada, made brilliant with their impossibly creamy raw zucchini slaw. At Petaluma’s Canvas Ranch, on the other hand, guests did a double take for the lettuce, carrot and tomato soaps (nope, not edible).

“I love the portions, nobody’s beings stingy,” said one man, tucking into a nearly meal-size plate of hoisin ribs, coleslaw and four-cheese macaroni studded with ham from Santa Rosa’s Bruno’s on Fourth. Another guy nearby anguished about possibly missing out on a dish, any dish, while his wife sighed, “You’re embarrassing me. Lord knows there’s plenty of food here, you won’t go hungry.”

Some of the plates were rustic – Emily’s Spaghetti Shack, new to Sonoma, put out divine Niman Ranch and Duroc pork meatballs bathed in organic heirloom tomato marinara – while others were the things of fine dining. For A la Heart Catering of Santa Rosa, Shanghai duck sushi meant cooking the bird in light and dark soy with brown sugar, star anise, ginger and scallions. Then the meat was married with cranberries, cashews and cranberry-orange juice reduction to be tucked into little rice rolls wrapped in nori.

Several dishes were creative rethinks of ingredients, like Kendall-Jackson’s sangria slushy, or Bovolo’s dreamy gelato made of Delice de la Vallee Sonoma cow-goat cheese. A few seemed like they must have broken the budgets, such as Inn at the Tides’ Bodega-fresh offerings of house smoked sturgeon with American sturgeon caviar and horseradish crème fraiche, alongside house smoked salmon on pumpernickel with caraway-infused vodka sauce.

A few of the treats weren’t food at all, like Cyrus’ new cocktail, a knock-your-socks off “Gravenstein Apple-lation” concoction of apple brandy, yuzu juice, ginger gastrique and ginger poached apples that was shaken then served over ice. Mutt Lynch Winery, meanwhile, catered to a four-legged crowd with its clever toys of purple tennis balls fashioned into grape clusters and trimmed with bright green “squeaky” leaves – new sign-ups for the wine club got one, with the promise that all future wine shipments would include another dog toy.

As guests lolled in happy comas under shade trees on the lawn, their reveries were interrupted by the loud clanging of cow bells. “Bacon!” yelled Estes, from behind her Zazu booth, shaking the bells in the air. A patron had just purchased two plastic-wrapped pounds of her Black Pig Meat to go, and was rewarded with celebratory clanging.

“Keep it cold,” she warned, but the buyer, Kenny Rochford, assured her it was no problem. “We’ve got wine, we’ve got ice,” the general manager of Alexander Valley’s Medlock Ames Winery said. “We just needed some bacon to go with it.”

Details: sonomawinecountryweekend.com.