Serving wine, food and the community

Fête Rouge, the last of our three famously collaborative annual wine events, is now behind us. Traditionally the smallest of our Fêtes, it is usually held inside the Gallery at the tail end of November. The Pink Party gloriously launches spring, arbors spilling over with wisteria, everyone on a Rosé high. Fête Blanc, at the height of summer, attracts guests from across the state for its elegant selection of fine white wines and an almost (but this being Healdsburg not quite) Hamptons appeal. Fête Rouge proffers some of the finest red wines grown and produced in Northern California - most from family held vineyards - and attracts our most wine educated audience. But while a red wine party going into the Holidays makes perfect sense - finding the energy it takes to pull it off at the tail end of harvest has always been a challenge. Not this year. Barndiva’s decision to donate ticket sales in support of two organizations who played a huge role in keeping us safe and cared for during the Kincade fires brought out the best in everyone on Sunday - our wine and food partners, our staff, and especially the wonderful crowd who attended. Just knowing Corazón Healdsburg and Wine Country to the Rescue (supporting the fire departments of Healdsburg, Cloverdale and Geyserville) would benefit from all the fun we were having shifted the whole group dynamic. It was a golden fall afternoon that faded into a magical evening. Hard not to keep smiling.

I wrote in the blog last week that in choosing a definition of community which is intrinsically connected and reflective of a particular landscape, with a deep appreciation and respect for what it produces, we have the chance to create durable social networks that can take us through the hard times and be capable of bestowing upon us great joy. I worried what I wrote sounded hyperbolic, a bit pie in the sky knowing as I do this is a highly competitive community. Yet there it was in the garden on Sunday: 22 uniquely talented vintners finding a way to celebrate their individual achievements, together. There was a palpable feeling of relief in the air - that we had survived the fires, that the first big storm was on its way, that we were blessed to have such bounty from our food and wine sheds spread out before us to enjoy. But beyond that was the sense that when the common goal is greater than all of our singular accomplishments this is a community of abundant good will, one that has no problem paying good fortune forward. FYI: Our very existence, fortitude, and future may depend upon it.

Eric Sussman of Radio-Coteau, pouring center, among an illustrious group of primarily family owned and operated wineries that included Hirsch, Hafner, Mauritson, Small Vines, Occidental, brick & mortar, DuMOL, Ramey, Raen, Preston, Vivier, Sutro, Aperture, Rodney Strong, Paul Hobbs, Senses, Newfound, Read Holland, Pont Neuf, Failla, Notre Vue, and Merry Edwards.

For the first time, Fête Rouge felt like a proper Christmas market as five extraordinary food purveyors joined us with an abundance of tastes from their farms and kitchens. We wish to thank Pennyroyal Farm, Preston Family Farm, Jeff and Susan Mall of Volo, and the Seghesio Family of Journeyman Meat Co. for their generosity in supporting Fête Rouge, Corazón Healdsburg and Wine County to the Rescue. (And what a treat to see Ralph Tingle behind the slicer!) We are equally appreciative of Barndiva’s lead sous chef Randy Dodge for his exquisite bites - divine fried chicken sliders, crispy Hasselback potatoes, fragrant arancini and those gorgeous shooters of wild mushroom soup with their beautiful swirls of chive and basil oil.

And, as always, to our hardworking FOH staff, notably Natalie Nelsen, our wonderful events coordinator, and my creative assistant K2 and her children Teagan and Atticus for their work on the hot air balloon- now moored in the Barn for Christmas. Last, but hardly least when it comes to all things wine, a shout out to our wine director Chappy Cottrell who has, in addition to winning us greater wine awards and recognition this year, shepherded all our sell out wine events. Stay tuned.

As the Smoke Clears...

Photo Credit: Mike Lucia

Well it wasn’t fake news, that’s for sure. It took all the resources we could throw at it - with help from across the state and the country - to fight back the very real, swiftly moving, voracious Kinkade fire. Winds were against us, and the terrain made it extremely difficult, but in the end determination, experience and bravery were on our side.

Even the evacuations - widespread, emotionally upsetting, and costly for many - were by any standard known for this kind of calamity remarkable for how well they unfolded. In Healdsburg alone, only 84 residents out of 11,000 refused to leave in order to let the firefighters do their job unfettered. Families, friends and strangers opened their homes; shelters and organizations like World Central Kitchen and Corazón Healdsburg housed the homeless and fed the first responders. Incredibly, thanks in great part to coordinated efforts by Cal Fire and remarkable teamwork between City, Fire and Police Departments, there was no loss of life. How we got through Kinkade as a community, the outpouring of concern and care, is something I hope will not be lost as we eagerly return to our lives in this beautiful place.

 While there is no making light of the destruction, property loss, and fear for life this fire generated, there are larger questions now for those of us picking up where we left off during harvest, reopening our businesses, restaurants, shops, tasting rooms and vineyards. How do we proceed if this is - as it’s being touted everywhere - as ‘The New Normal’?

Normal, as compared to what? California has a wild rugged history we take pride in rewriting every time tragedy strikes. Climate change - call it what you want… something has changed, and drastically - will no doubt bring increased challenges. We have populated out instead of up, increasing our use of fossil fuels, been forced to put our lives into the hands of utilities that are run for profit before safety, mismanaged our forests and strained our water resources. It’s important to take stock, to ask what Northern California can do to mitigate the challenges ahead, but calling something which threatens to turn our beautiful landscape into a disaster movie ‘normal’ doesn’t seem quite right. Is acquiescing the best we can do?

Tip the country, the old saying goes, and whatever crazy thing isn’t tethered will roll down and stop here. My father was fond of this saying even though he came to California of his own volition; the same inexorable drive spurred the gold rush, the film industry, aerospace, tech. I knew nothing about farming when I homesteaded on a ridge in Philo with two small boys three decades ago. Geoff, Lukka and I knew nothing about restaurants when we built Barndiva and naively but passionately joined the farm to table movement. The thing about California and the folks who tend to set up camp here is that – for good or ill – it inspires schemes and dreams that have always found a home in the West.

But it’s important to understand we came into a landscape that has been here long before us. A professor I worked with in film school at UCLA had been burned out of Malibu – in the appropriately named Carbon Canyon- four times. He told me this almost as an aside one evening as we sipped tequila looking out over the chaparral: “It needs to burn, to cleanse itself from time to time.”  The way he saw it he had the choice to get out of the way when that happened or lose what it gave him when it was whole, when the coyotes sang their sad poems and the clean dry winds blew, clearing his mind. That was many years ago. Up and down the state we have built too much, love too much of what we have built to move aside and let it burn, though sometimes it may be out of our control. What is in our control is what we must focus on now.

The rueful headlines generated as we fought the Kinkade fire were meant to sell papers and push likes on social media. While the next sensational headlines have already taken their place there is great concern that several years of fires have reached a tipping point that is going to cause great harm to many sectors of our economy. I don’t believe that in the long run people will stop coming to Sonoma County to visit or to live. Not a chance. Because it is a very good life here indeed, a landscape of extraordinary beauty, a phenomenal food shed, great wines, chefs that cook with passion and purpose. It may well flip our tourist seasons, which would not be the most awful thing. The greater issue is how we, as a larger community, move on.

My family was lucky we had our farm to retreat to when evacuation started in Healdsburg and spread to Windsor and Santa Rosa. When the electricity cut out we were still able to cook by propane. We dined by candlelight, and as a talisman, drank fine California wine. By day we picked the last of the apples, put the gardens to sleep for the winter, cleaned far corners of the barn. Incessantly, we checked Twitter for news. By Tuesday, waiting for the second round of red flag winds, we wandered out to the coast, haunting darkened hardware stores looking for generator parts, restaurants for a hot meal. In the town of Mendocino we ran into so many neighbors from Healdsburg it began to feel like a reunion one hadn’t planned on attending but found, in its satisfying sense of camaraderie, oddly comforting. People draw together in times like these. Then they forget.

We should not forget. As we get on with our lives we should move forward with new resolve to ensure we run our businesses and our homes so they are formed to fit a new paradigm of using less, more wisely. It is time to rethink the manner of all development to come, and the way we are set up to run our local economies. If we are private or public stewards of open land we must do better in managing our seasonally volatile terrain.

Photo Credit: Erik Castro

Some fires will not be preventable in the coming years, for those we must plan as they do in the Midwest for hurricanes or tornadoes. Improve lines of emergency communications, support infrastructure necessary for temporary housing and feeding residents. It is most essential we make sure there is adequate support for first responders - we were only able to contain Kinkade because Cal Fire took a proactive tactic in which evacuation was key, allowing strike teams to focus on making a stand to stop the fires and not have to worry about saving lives.

Crucially, despite the fact that no one in positions of authority or power seems to be held accountable for anything anymore, as taxpayers and consumers we must reconsider how California’s resources are being managed. There is no avoiding the fact that some fires, and it’s looking like Kinkade is among them, are preventable. It is time to seriously consider moving a bankrupt PG&E into public ownership, which would not be without its own problems but a step forward in having safety of the citizenry as its primary concern.

Whether it’s political action or the nuanced changes we must now take as individuals as we approach the ‘New Normal,’ we will only continue to thrive in the coming years if we commit to growing a more pluralistic definition of community, town by town by town, building a citizenry less obsessed with their own version of the good life, more invested in a good life for all, one that educates as it moves every income bracket forward. The smoke has cleared. What do we see?

The entire Barndiva family will forever be indebted to the bravery and talents of the following organizations: Cal-Fire, Central World Kitchen, Corazón Healdsburg, The Healdsburg Police and Fire Department, supported and working with the City of Healdsburg.