@jasonbarwikowski and @nate_ready talking about the final course from last weekends feast. We created a dashi based on smoked pork belly from our pigs and kombu. Then we served the slices of belly in the dashi with cabbage slaw dressed with lemon juice, shoyu and a garum from chinook collars that we made earlier in the spring. The dish was served with 2019 Avellana a field blend from the west side of the farm based on Blaufrankisch, Kadarka and other Eastern European cultivars. The dish takes flavor components, pork and cabbage, that play an important part in traditional Germanic cuisine and takes them in an unexpected direction by intensifying elements of smoke, fish and fermentation based umami and acidity. The wine performs a similar type of twist. It begins with Blaufrankisch, but the mix of other cultivars, the presence of animals among the vines, the building of the diverse biome of microorganisms from soil to canopy to cellar, the untouched whole cluster infusion, allow to the wine to follow the food into another dimension. When we started the farm one of the foundational ideas was to create an array of micro-parcels based on field blends with grapes of many colors. These fields are grounded in the genetic history of the grapevine while also reaching toward a future with more diverse flavors. One of the reasons to do this was to create ecological stability in the vineyard based on complexity. The other reason was to create a range of wines that could follow the food we were creating in the tavern in whatever direction it might head. The food and the wine are born from the same wild convergence of plant, animal and microbe. But they emerge from this world at totally different times and through different processes and workflows. For a time the relationship of say a sea berry, to a pig, to a field of Riesling, Furmint and associated grapes is opaque. Then spontaneously, they will align during a dinner while integrating the human elements of belonging, joy and wonder that happen when we gather at the table.