This past Monday I had the pleasure of attending the 5th annual Summer Harvest Social at Restaurant SIX89 down here in Carbondale as assistant sommelier for their legendary wine guru, Bill Bentley. The event is put on by SIX89 owner Mark Fischer at the end of every summer as a benefit for the Roaring Fork Valley's chapter of the national Slow Food group.
The Slow Food movement was founded in 1978 by Carlo Petrini, an Italian food and wine writer as a response to the opening of McDonald's restaurants in Rome and Paris in the late 1980s. Petrini was also dismayed at the industrialization of the food industry, the harm it was doing to the environment, the lack of nutrients in processed foods and the annihilation of thousands of food varieties.
The movement has since caught on in more than 100 countries around the world, and it continues to fuel a growing number of food-related projects, from nutritional upgrades for school lunch programs and teaching sustainable nutritional awareness to children, to studies in permaculture and the sustainability of food production. All of the work is done on a volunteer basis.
At the core of the Slow Food movement is both a modern rebellion to what we have seen done to food during its industrialization, along with a tremendous resurgence in the idea of local kitchens, featured in restaurants and cafes all over this country that specialize in seasonal and regional cuisine, and reflect back to more simplistic, old-world standards, like the wonderful cafes and bistros in Italy and France. This also undoubtedly creates community. Let's face it, many of us live in outlying areas in the valley and community is hard to create, seemingly even more difficult amongst Aspen's mass of tourism.
In great timing with this week's event, Mark Fischer and SIX89 are celebrating 10 years of bringing the Slow Food movement to Carbondale and the valley. Fischer began courting local growers - along with meat and cheese producers - early on to the idea that the time was right for locally sourced, high quality, organic foods. Once it caught on, the idea has since spread to include wine and spirits, even more like the old world when people only drank the local juice. The idea paid off and today it is de riguer that nearly every top new restaurant be fashioned in some way around these ideals of fresh and local.
Add a bit of spectacle to fresh and local and you have the Summer Harvest Social. In addition to Fischer's home team, six guest chefs from the area crowded in behind the line, each with their own stash of secret local ingredients. Frank Bonanno, of Mizuna, made his own ricotta earlier in the day. Shane Coffey, of LuLu Wilson in Aspen, brought Paonia farm fresh eggs and a melon chutney. David Von Holten of The Artisan, in Snowmass, offered "nibbles of closer to heaven Cornish hen," which was quite possibly the most delicious bite of food I've ever had, conjuring up memories of a thousand Thanksgivings. Kelly Liken, of Vail's Restaurant Kelly Liken, had high-altitude peas for her Colorado rack of lamb. Ryan Hardy, executive chef of Montagna at the Little Nell, prepared roasted bone marrow for crostinis, Carbondale's Ian Kipp of ella served his trademark Maine lobster in canellonis with the wild micro-green salad garnishes supplied by yours truly, and Fischer broke out the Palisade peaches, the bellwether sign that it is still summer. The peaches are perfect. Get some!
Watching the activity behind the line as the white coat-sleeved arms of 20 chefs busily prepared each other's magical creations for 125 people - for seven courses - was a sight to behold. Not your everyday local kitchen scene.
To match the approximately 1,000 small plates that were assembled and served, we poured equally as many glasses of wine. Gruet's wonderful organic sparkling wine from New Mexico led off, followed with Kevin Doyle's all natural Woody Creek Cellars' unfiltered chardonnay, then attendee Lance Hansen's Jack Rabbit Hill Wild rosé. Reds included Alfred Eames' Paonia pinot noir, Steve Rhodes' Paonia merlot and then the fabulous Verso Cellars' cabernet sauvignon, from East Orchard Mesa, above Palisades, which is proving to be one of the finest wines to be made yet in this state.
The Woody Creek chardonnay and the Verso Cellar's cabernet seemed to win the most praise from the revelers.
The various dining rooms, patio and bar were filled with laughter and the clinking of glasses throughout the evening, and it appeared that all were amazed by the evening's tasting spectacle that the distinguished chefs, sommeliers and servers put on, all racing around at the Slow Food benefit to make sure that all the guests were treated to a splendid evening of food, wine and community. Cheers! Remember, wine reveals truth.
Drew Stofflet is the sommelier for Ella, in Carbondale. Correspond with him at aspendrew@hotmail.com.
