Spring Awakening
New Rooted Spring Menu
As the seasons change, so do our menus, and if you look at our newest Rooted menu, you can certainly tell that spring is in the air!
Chef Thomas is heavily inspired by the seasons and what they offer, striving to keep each dish as fresh, sustainable, and local as possible. Growing up playing and fishing in Brittany, a coastal region in northern France, he loves to incorporate seafood into his menus. As he crafted this menu, he considered what would be coming into season in our estate gardens and how to pair our wine with exciting and unique flavors. The citrus-cured king salmon, paired with our 2020 Kick Ranch Sauvignon Blanc, is the perfect example of his cooking philosophy. Not only was it the first course that Chef Thomas developed for this menu, but it also features estate produce and Bodega Bay salmon to create a match made in heaven with this bright and crisp white wine.
Each course truly embodies what wine-driven cuisine means to Chef Thomas, and showcases the direct result of an intimate relationship between our wine and the seasonality and sustainability of the ingredients. When first tasting the 2020 Unoaked Chardonnay, Chef immediately knew that he wanted to pair its vibrance and stone-fruit notes with a citrus-infused heat. From this inspiration, he created the lemongrass-ginger barbeque sauce that now coats the hibachi-grilled shrimp featured in the third course. The sixth course, which includes sustainably-sourced Superior Farms lamb, highlights an impossibly-velvety mousseline made from carrots grown on the estate by Farmer Mikey, as well as a garnish of garden-fresh sweet peas to give you a taste of our terroir in a new way.
Across the menu, we incorporate goods and ingredients from local vendors as much as possible. The crostini in the first course comes from Nightingale Breads, a long-time Forestville favorite for wood-fired baked goods. The mushrooms in our fifth course are freshly foraged from around Sonoma County, and the variety available depends on what the foragers at Napa Wild are able to harvest weekly. In the same course, the ceramic crock holding the mushroom consommé was custom crafted by Hayes Ceramics, whose owner, Stephanie Gwilliam, is one of our Starr Road neighbors! She has partnered with us since the start of the winery to create bespoke serving pieces, and we love to invite her to showcase her goods at our seasonal markets. It would be impossible to list all of our local partners, but we are so grateful to be able to build them into our menus.
As one of the first Rooted menus developed by Chef Thomas, these epicurean delights tell the beautiful story of how our wines relate back to the landscape around us. As spring awakens, we are eager to experience it the way he does as we taste his new creations. The best way to experience it is to reserve a Rooted wine-and-food pairing for yourself. We hope to see you at our tasting table this spring to enjoy this special menu.
