Sonoma Valley winery offers top-ranked pairings menu

For much of last year, the Sonoma Valley was embroiled in the controversies surrounding an explosion in wine tourism, and a citizen's group – convened by Tennis Wick, director of the Permit and Resource Management Department – explored this and other issues as the Winery Events Working Group.

The objections – of traffic on narrow roads, loud parties, inappropriate activity under use permits – echoed the other local controversy of vacation rentals run amok in striking ways.

Foremost of concern: the effect on the neighborhoods, rural or otherwise, where these perceived permitting violations were taking place.

So in November when St. Francis Winery in Kenwood won an Open Table poll of best restaurants in America – finishing first for the second time in three years – the indignation was to be expected. How could a winery be a restaurant?

'We're not a restaurant, we're a tasting room,' insists Christopher Silva today. 'We offer a wine and food pairing to our guests, three times a day, indoors adjacent to our tasting room in our dining room.'

The confusion may have come from Open Table's rating system, which simply asks customers who use their online reservations service to rate their experience of 'meals' that they've booked. St. Francis's came up with a 4.9 rating (out of 5) from some 400 customers, enough to place it at the top of a prestigious list.

Second place finisher was a more traditional restaurant, Mama's Fish House in Paia, Hawaii, with 4.8 points. Other local restaurants on the Top 100 list include the French Laundry in Yountville, Auberge du Sol in Rutherford and the Farmhouse Inn in Forestville.

Mayo Family Vineyards, just down the highway in Kenwood, also has a 'Reserve Room' pairing, which is booked through Open Table, and also rated 4.9 points – but as it was based on a smaller sampling, less than 200 votes, it did not show in the Top 100 list. According to Jeff Mayo, they opened their Mayo Reserve Room 10 years ago, though he said their food-and-wine tasting experience was the first in the Sonoma Valley.

'When the county health inspector came out in 1997, he said 'Wow you're really lucky, now you've got this commercial kitchen and you also have commercial zoning, you could do a little deli or a restaurant if you ever wanted to',' said Mayo. In 2004 he did just that, turning what had been a collective tasting room for five or six wineries into a single food-and-wine pairing station for Mayo Family Vineyards.

Often recognized as the first pairings program in Sonoma County was the celebrated Bubble Room at J Vineyards outside of Healdsburg, where sparkling wines have been paired with complementary dishes as early as 1998. But in the past 10 years food-and-wine pairings have become more common.

The Sonoma County tourism website lists nine wineries in the county that have pairings, three of them in the Valley. St. Francis, Mayo, and Ram's Gate in Carneros are obviously in the business of selling wine, not food. So the wine is where they start: the varietals they have available, perhaps especially the lesser-know varietals that might not jump off the shelf, are given to a chef who creates a dish that best complements the wine.

This is where the kitchen hits the open table, so to speak. Each of the wineries has their own dedicated chef – and in some cases sous-chef and kitchen staff – who prepares the small plates to bring out the characteristics of the wine they are paired with.

The wineries all boast 'executive chefs' to underscore the focus on food first. Mayo's current executive chef is Sam Frumkin, most recently at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn's Sante restaurant, who started this fall. Previous Mayo chef Clayton Lewis is opening his own restaurant in Inverness.

St. Francis's former chef David Bush also moved up, opening OSO in Sonoma last year. Their present chef is Bryan Jones, formerly chef and general manager of the Fig Café & Wine Bar in Glen Ellen.

At Ram's Gate, Taylor Behnam is now in charge of the kitchen, taking over from Jason Rose in 2012 when he moved over to Napa to become culinary director of the Rudd Collection of wines.

Clearly, these are celebrity-chefs-aborning, not idle kitchen hands whipping up a grilled cheese to go with the claret. Take Jones's soup offering at St. Francis: a cucumber gazpacho, with cucumber-mint granite, almonds and micro-cilantro, to pair with their 2014 Sonoma Valley viognier. (The varietal can be floral and full-bodied, perhaps a bit cloying on its own; but when paired with the cold soup and its accents, the depth of the wine stands out, its flavors unpacked.)

The St. Francis 'Culinary Food & Wine Pairing' ($68) is five courses, each with a different wine, from pan-seared bay scallops with sauvignon blanc, to mocha pot de crème with their port. Although it sounds like a lot, the food courses are intensely flavored but not large: the so-called 'ham & cheese sandwich' is open-faced (one piece of bread only, with a thin black truffle slice on top) and about the size of a postage stamp, albeit a high-value postage stamp.

Similarly, Mayo calls their dishes 'micro-appetizers' and says that even the seven courses and wine samples only adds up to full-sized appetizer and a glass or two of wine.

'It's a sit-down, food-and-wine pairing,' he said. 'We do a flight of three whites and a lighter red with three different food items, then we do a second flight of three, all heavier reds with three more dishes.' A dessert course with either a port or late harvest wine concludes the hour-and-a-half pairing ($40).

'Some people use this as a lunch spot, and there's not much we can do,' Mayo admits. 'The bottom line is there's a small, very foodie-centric higher-end experience seeker that loves the tasting.'

The third Valley winery to offer pairings is Ram's Gate.

'Chef Behnam approaches her menu preparation with a reverse-pairing method; meaning that the finished wines are presented to her first, as they are the focal point of the winery, and she then creates specific pairings that complement each wine,' said the winery's communications contact, Caroline Craig.

Their 'Palate Play' program is also booked online, but not through Open Table, hence it is unrated. It is open to the public but is targeted at wine club members – or prospects. In fact one visitor to the Ram's Gate pairings program was put off by the 'hard sell' to join the wine club, though if a diner chooses to join the club the $90 pairing fee is waved.

Christine Sosko, director of the Sonoma County Division of Environmental Health and Safety, confirmed that all three of these wineries have valid food preparation permits from her department, though she could not confirm in they had corresponding use permits from PRMD to allow food services. (Inquiries to PRMD were not responded to by presstime.)

Sosko also noted that many other wineries also have food prep permits, and said her office has issued over 5,000 to places that serve food in the county, from Michelin-starred restaurants to food trucks, quick-marts and farmers markets.

So are the food-and-wine pairings actually restaurants? According to the county, the chefs, the patrons and the owners, not really. And if a customer wants to give them four stars, or five, that's between the guest and his or her palate – and Open Table.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com

(Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that a sign at St. Francis touting their #1 Rating as a restaurant had been changed. This is not correct, the paragraph has been deleted.)