The Good With The Bad

What’s keeping us apart is bringing us together!

It is hard to be convivial in a pandemic. Our mission for the past 35 years has been to bring people together over the common bond of food and wine. Well, that mission has been altered a bit, at least for now. We can’t, for now, gather at that large, sixty person winery table for seasonal feasts with guests from around the world. I miss the summer food and wine festivals (mostly I miss seeing my friends at those festivals) and I can’t hop on a plane to share our wine at wine dinners in restaurants around the country. Forget about overseas – the rest of the world… they don’t want us anyway. Instead we video chat happy hour with our friends and family, Zoom with our colleagues from wine shops and restaurants and dine with our immediate family.

There is an upside – time. We are home. We gather our family and, except for take-out here and there, we make dinner together. We talk. We actually work on projects and have time to complete them. So far we have built tables, planted gardens, built a greenhouse, cleaned out sheds, played music, gotten exercise, played with the dog and, in the evening, we take the veggies from the garden and fruit from the trees and make things. Fresh Anaheim chilis get roasted, peeled and stuffed for Chile Rellenos. Squash and eggplant have become nightly staples as they are either simply prepared and sautéed or turned into a tart or baba ganoush. Radishes are served with Maria’s special “crack” butter as an appetizer. Peaches that aren’t eaten fresh become a peach frangipane tart, a morning smoothie or grilled and served alongside an heirloom bone-in pork chop from our friends at Fatted Calf.

We now have time to make these things together, sit together and raise our glasses as we enjoy the fruits of our labor and talk. We discuss our fears and our dreams. We complain about the government. We reminisce and tell stories.

Food and wine is better than therapy. It slows us down, gives us pleasure, sustains and relaxes us, but, most importantly, it brings us together so we can solve our problems and achieve our goals together.

Rob Sinskey