Trefethen Vineyards

A JOYFUL JUMBLE

Some wine-country gardens look as if they are tidied around the clock, with nary a wilted leaf or pebble out of place. The Trefethen family takes a different approach in managing the flat, sunny plot that employees refer to as La Huerta—Spanish for a garden or small farm. This joyful jumble of clambering kiwi vines, sprawling squash plants, and towering tomatoes is more about nourishing people than impressing them. In a garden largely grown for employees, yield trumps tidiness.

“It’s a bit of a wild garden,” admits Hailey Trefethen, the third-generation vintner who oversees nearly an acre of beds behind the winery in Napa’s Oak Knoll District. “We don’t mind some weeds.”

Even so, a lot more than weeds comes out of this fertile former vineyard: hundreds of pounds of chiles, eggplants, Roma tomatoes, tomatillos, and green beans along with more esoteric heirloom produce, such as Jimmy Nardello sweet red peppers, Indigo Apple tomatoes, and Mexican sour gherkins. Although winery chef Chris Kennedy uses some of the harvest for guests, the vast majority goes straight to the staff.

Hailey grew up on garden produce—her mother, Janet, is an avid gardener and renowned home cook—and her grandmother Katie planted many of the fruit trees that still thrive at Trefethen. “Our family ate out of our garden most of the time,” recalls Hailey. “So why didn’t we do the same for employees? Why didn’t we have a garden at the winery so people could go home with produce grown where they work?”

The family has always tried to promote wine as part of a healthy lifestyle; enabling employees to make better food choices seemed a good fit with that message. With that goal in mind, winery executive Jon Ruel initiated the garden program in 2008, and the garden now produces year-round, its harvest supplemented by the fig, persimmon, quince, kumquat, apple, and stone-fruit trees on the premises.

The produce is picked into bins and delivered to different departments on rotation; employees take what they want. “We switch it up so not all the zucchini are going to the tasting room,” says Hailey, who also posts pictures, descriptions, and usage ideas for less-familiar produce. Chris often contributes an easy recipe, especially for an item, like the skinny Jimmy Nardello peppers or the mild shishito peppers, that staffers might otherwise pass up.

Many winery owners might look at this garden and see only an expense that’s hard to defend, but the Trefethens think otherwise. “The employees value it,” says Janet, “and we get paid back in their satisfaction.”

Chiles, both hot and hotter, are the most in-demand crop, says Hailey; no matter how many seedlings she plants, it’s never enough. Around Labor Day, an annual salsa-making competition encourages employees to flaunt their own creativity. All tomatoes, chiles, and tomatillos used in the salsas must come from La Huerta, and the winning entry is determined by popular vote of the staff. “We are trying to increase everybody’s connection to the garden,” says the vintner.

The prolific edible landscape at Trefethen was one of the lures for Chris when he accepted the job. What chef would not feel stimulated and challenged by the bounty this property yields? In Hailey and head gardener Paul Hoffman, he has found partners willing to experiment with planting African cucumbers, yellow wax beans, okra, and rhubarb. And Hailey can be sure that whatever Paul harvests, Chris will make it his mission to use every edible part.

“I like using what most people would get rid of,” says the chef. In his toss-nothing kitchen, tender carrot tops aren’t jettisoned for compost; they’re transformed into chimichurri. Nasturtium blossoms aren’t merely strewn over salads. They’re braised with the leaves and sautéed shallots, then blended, reemerging as a peppery, emerald-green sauce for fillet of beef. Convinced that toasted sunflower seeds make a great bridge to the winery’s Chardonnay, Chris extracts the seeds from the mature sunflower heads by hand.

“The garden has honed my palate,” says Chris, a longtime chef and restaurateur. Far more than most chefs, he pays close attention to how fruits and vegetables interact with wine (see sidebar, Page 16). In regular wine-tasting sessions with Janet, he notes the scents and textures that might find an echo or complement in the garden: Riesling with citrus and cilantro, Merlot with fire-roasted red peppers, Chardonnay with melon and tarragon. From those tasting trials, he develops a wish list of wine-friendly fruits and vegetables to plant.

“The thousand pounds of chiles we grow do not fit in that realm,” jokes Hailey. But the chiles might find their way into the monthly “blue-plate lunches” that Trefethen hosts for small groups of employees, so staffers can connect across departments and get some fresh ideas for their own home meals.

Good cooking and home entertaining have been part of the Trefethen brand since at least 1973, when Janet and her mother-in-law, Katie, helped to start the Napa Valley Cooking Class at the winery. The valley had few good restaurants then, and vintners had visiting customers to entertain. Initially, the vintners’ wives taught favorite recipes to one another, but the school’s ambitions quickly grew, and over the next twenty-five years, many celebrity chefs held classes in the Trefethen winery kitchen. “I grew up on a stool there,” says Hailey.

The valley has countless fine restaurants now, but many wine-country visitors still seek to have a more personal wine-and-food experience at a winery. Weather permitting, Trefethen’s guests get a quick tour of La Huerta, and they reap its benefits in the small seasonal bites that Chris prepares for the winery’s Taste the Estate sessions.

“Chris continues to expand what we can pair with our wines,” says Hailey. “He thinks up so many different ways to process-what we grow.”

A serious student of food preservation—salting, drying, fermenting, pickling—Chris keeps testing the limits of where fruits and vegetables can go. In the fall, he makes hoshigaki, Japanese-style dried persimmons, but he has applied the same techniques to kiwis and apples. He hangs colorful ristras of Goat Horn peppers to dry in the potting shed and then grinds them for a sweet spice to use all year. He dries tomatoes, blueberries, apples, kale, and oregano. He pickles cucumbers and eggplants, cans hundreds of quarts of tomatoes, and makes wine vinegar and sweet-tart verjus from the juice of underripe grapes. Many cooks make salt-preserved lemons, but Chris makes salt-preserved kumquats scented with star anise for use in salads and vinaigrettes.

This informal garden is at its most riotous in late summer, when peppers, beans, squashes, and melons jostle for space. But every season here has its allure. For a late-spring menu, Chris makes the most of the garden’s tender sweet carrots, beets, spring onions, and English peas and the leafy delicacy of spring cilantro and thyme. The meal opens, as it often does at Trefethen, with the winery’s beloved Dry Riesling and concludes with its elegant Cabernet Sauvignon, a demonstration in five courses of the delicious possibilities when linking garden to glass.

CHEF TIPS

WHAT THE GRAPES WANT

Although many cooks focus their wine pairing on the “center of the plate”—such as seafood, chicken, or beef—Chris finds that many fruits and vegetables can echo or complement the textures and aromas in a wine. Over frequent tastings with Janet, Chris has refined his ideas about the garden produce that flatters each of Trefethen’s key wines.

Riesling: green apples, Asian pears, Bosc pears, cucumbers, braised cabbage, quinces, kiwis, cilantro, citrus, chiles

Chardonnay: tarragon, melons, golden apples, fennel, butternut squashes, radishes, persimmons, sunflower seeds, brassicas, corn, carrots, delicata squashes, zucchini, romaine, white figs, oranges

Dragon’s Tooth (Bordeaux-style blend): mushrooms, toasted garlic, charred sweet peppers, Goat Horn peppers, parsley, nasturtiums, mustard greens, eggplants

Merlot: mushrooms, stewed tomatoes, grilled peppers, nasturtiums, Swiss chard, sage, roasted squashes, figs, charred corn, polenta, green garlic

Cabernet Sauvignon: thyme, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, arugula, caramelized onions, toasted garlic, beets, chives, eggplants

Menu

Dungeness Crab Roll with Pickled Ginger, Cilantro, and Yuzu Crème Trefethen Vineyards Dry Riesling

Oven-Roasted Baby Carrots with Cumin Yogurt, Carrot Top Chimichurri, and Spiced Pumpkin Seeds Trefethen Vineyards Chardonnay

Handmade Pappardelle with Wild Mushroom Ragout and English Peas Trefethen Vineyards Merlot

Spring Lamb Chops Scottadito with Charred Tomato and Black Olive Tapenade Trefethen Vineyards Dragon’s Tooth

Black Pepper–Crusted Beef Ribeye with Balsamic Spring Onions and Smashed Beets Trefethen Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon