3C

After a few days at EcoFarm and at least seven days of traveling in crowded vans and sleeping in hotel rooms with classmates I needed to look professional. I was meeting the farmer of Meadowood and going to Scribe winery for an industry tasting with five other interested students. This meant my least wrinkly pair of black pants and my trusty cashmere hand-me-down. Meadowood’s farm is in St Helena and Scribe winery is in Sonoma.

After tasting microgreens and sweating through pleasantries with the very smart and accommodating farmer, my selected group headed to Sonoma. The freedom of windows that could fully roll down felt revolutionary. The chosen music was good music, and the volume of it demonstrated how much the chooser believed in its enjoyability.

Scribe’s website mentions that there wines are terroir-driven. From their website: “Andrew and Adam believe that the best wines are a result of a healthy relationship between man and nature, and that a vineyard managed in harmony with the greater ecosystem results in more site-specific wines that represent a sense of time and place. When vinified with non-interventionist methods, the result is a distinct wine that faithfully reflects what the vineyard naturally expresses.”

Their beliefs in line with ours, we made ourselves comfortable at a picnic table atop their sloping vines. The overlook provided a perfect shot of their Sylvaner and Riesling vines. The grapes planted there so long ago thriving once again while the turkey farm venture that had taken their place lay empty. The abandoned barn, the sea and the hilly vines to the left, a beautifully empty pre-prohibition mansion to the right, the six soon-to-be-friends and the sun encircling the table.

After we’d had enough natural wine and sun for the day we headed to the greatly anticipated Hog Island Oyster happy hour. It small space within the market was filled with enjoyers so we happily meandered out to their outdoor area. Finally, my outfit made sense while the rest of the party was offered blankets!

We ordered three rounds of the oysters we had talked about ordering all day. They went extremely well with the getting-to-know-each-other time we had tasted at the wineries. The ice, the mignonette, the lemon wedges and the server’s laugh were all extremely appropriate pairings to the heartbreaking, inspirational and absurd stories I heard from my classmates that I would not have heard had it not been for the time dedicated to taste and paying attention.