Gather: Casual Cooking From Wine Country Gardens

Even for a longtime Napa Valley resident like me, Wine Country continues to offer more to discover. Despite being married to a winemaker and drinking more than my share of the world-renowned local product, I only recently learned how many wineries maintain edible gardens alongside their vineyards. I’m not talking about a few herbs in halved wine barrels or a patch of chiles for the cellar crew. I mean extensive, ambitious plantings intended to actually feed people.

This realization culminated in Gather: Casual Cooking from Wine Country Gardens (Jennifer Barry Design Books, 2021), a book inspired by these magical culinary landscapes. Every one of the 13 that I showcase in Gather is impressive in its natural beauty and bounty. Some are manicured like palace grounds, with nary a wilting lettuce leaf; others are more laissez-faire; but all reflect their owners’ belief that California sun and fertile soil should never be wasted. “To not have a garden in a place like this would be a crime,” Katie Wetzel Murphy of Alexander Valley Vineyards told me as we walked her extensive garden.

A lot of the produce pulled from these glorious gardens goes straight to the winery kitchen and ends up in lunches or fancy dinners for winery guests. What touched me most, however, were the gardens devoted, at least in part, to nourishing winery staff. Many of the people who work in winery cellars, vineyards and tasting rooms don’t have the open space at home to grow food for themselves, so garden access is a treasured perk.

Trefethen Vineyards in Napa makes world-class Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, and has for 50 years, but it’s the culinary garden that speaks most loudly to me about who the Trefethen family is. Although winery chef Chris Kennedy draws from the garden for the winery’s hospitality activities, most of the harvest goes to Trefethen’s employees. Bins of just-picked produce are delivered to the winery’s different departments in rotation, and employees take what they want. A professional gardener manages this year-round endeavor; the staff reaps the benefits without so much as lifting a hoe.

As the Alexander Valley Vineyards, Trefethen and other winery gardens profiled in Gather demonstrate, edible gardens not only bring fresh food to our tables, they can nurture a spirit of community, as well.