Food writer? Ummm...

Some friends recently recalled this 2005 story, which involved my eating gourmet food and drinking wine with Fess Parker. Looking back, I can think of about half a dozen ways to make this a better story. But I post it here for their enjoyment. And in case anybody else needs a story that involves me eating steak and drinking wine with kindly TV stars.



From the May 7, 2005 Dallas Morning News

COWBOYS & CABERNET
Buffalo Gap festival takes the
starch out of pairing wine and food

MICHAEL MERSCHEL

BUFFALO GAP, Texas - Lisa Perini feared the wine list.

Never mind that she and her husband, Tom, operate one of the
best-known restaurants in West Texas, the Perini Ranch Steakhouse.
Never mind that they have served Tom's acclaimed chuck wagon-style
meals everywhere from the White House to the Beard House.

"If you go to a restaurant and see the leather-bound wine list
that's 35 pages, and the price is ranked from $20 to $20,000, then
it's overwhelming," she says. "And it's intimidating and it's
scary."

And then, at a seminar in New Orleans a few years ago, she ended up
sitting next to a master sommelier - a wine expert's wine expert.

"I said, 'Gosh, I live in a town of 499 people. We have a
destination restaurant, but I don't know how to sell wine. I don't
know how to educate our wait staff.'

"And he said, 'Whatever you have, throw it out, don't worry about
it and serve what you enjoy drinking.' And I thought, 'Gosh, that's
easy!'"

Sharing that epiphany - that finding good wine and pairing it with
good food should be fun - became the goal of the Buffalo Gap Wine
and Food Summit, held last month in Buffalo Gap, just south of
Abilene.

The three-day event was partly about networking, bringing together
Texas and California winemakers and some top Texas chefs for a
chance to compare notes. And it was partly about business, bringing
in customers (who paid up to $300 each).

But by design, it was mostly about education - demystifying wine in
a way that was totally Texan.

"This isn't about having your nose up in the air and seeing who can
outdo the other with 'hints of blueberry' and 'aromas of oak,'" Ms.
Perini says. "We're trying to say, 'Here's why red wine, blue
cheese and a piece of beef go, "Oh, my God!" in your mouth. So that
when you want to have that experience, you're comfortable in
picking out a wine at the grocery store, or your local liquor
store, or on a menu without feeling like it's just overwhelming.

"This is kind of just Wine and Food 101 for those who might really
like it."

Low-key and fun

Keeping things simple is a Perini trademark. Hours before formal
events start, the celebrated cook is watering down the red dirt in
the parking lot. He wears old boots, one held together by green
duct tape, and his elbows poke through tattered shirt sleeves.

He says he's just learning about wine. "Normally I'm with people
who know wine lists and they order. Now, Lisa's good at it. But I'm
not. I spend most of my time doing the food part of it." So the
summit is a learning experience for him, too.

"I think everybody learns," he says. "When you don't learn, you've
got a problem."

He credits Lisa as being the driving force behind the summit, but
she says it was his friendship with actor-turned-winemaker Fess
Parker that got things rolling, about two years ago. Another Perini
friend, Dr. Richard Becker of Becker Vineyards, near
Fredericksburg, was brought in, and a partnership was formed.

They are bound by ties to the region. Mr. Perini, 61, grew up on
this ranch. Dr. Becker, 64, grew up in Abilene and was a high
school friend of Mr. Perini's brother before he became an
endocrinologist. Mr. Parker, 80, studied at Hardin Simmons
University in Abilene before he became famous as Davy Crockett and
Daniel Boone.

At the summit's opening meet-and-greet, Mr. Parker drinks a toast
and speaks about wine's glories and frustrations.

"You have to look around," he says, gesturing toward clusters of
people standing and chatting, glasses in hand. "And if anybody is
drinking wine over there, I mean has had half a glass, they're
smiling. They're laughing. They're ready for a great cuisine, or
whatever."

He blames the Old World for squelching that joy.

"I think it was a disservice what the French people did to this
country, because they discouraged Americans, who are normally quite
self-reliant, pretty sure of themselves in most
situations....That's just a mass inferiority complex that's been
foisted on us."

Building confidence

People seeking to overcome that complex are drawn to one of the
summit's main events the next day: a class on umami (oo-MOM-ee),
"the fifth taste," a savory flavor that goes beyond sweet, sour,
salty and bitter.

Guests take their seats at tables under a white party tent, which
is decorated with purple balloons arranged into a giant grape
cluster. In front of each person are several glasses of wine and a
plate that looks like an artist's palette. It holds a slab of
mesquite-grilled flatiron steak, surrounded by cheeses, dabs of
unidentified sauces and a cup of jelly beans.

Tiffany Collins, culinary director for the Texas Beef Council, uses
the jelly beans to open up the guests' minds, and taste buds.

"We taste with our mind, and we taste with our eye," she says. "We
also taste with our olfactory system. You're going to hold your
nose, then pop in the jelly beans and grind them in your mouth. Do
not swallow these."

The guests comply.

"Tell me what you taste," she asks.

Replies are shouted out. "Sour. Nothing."

She instructs everyone to release their noses and breathe deeply.

Eyes light up as flavor fills mouths. Now the responses are
enthusiastic: "Orange! Apple! Sherbet! Margarita!"

"Do you get it?" Ms. Collins asks.

She leads the class through a series of tastings - matching beef
with everything from sweet and sour sauce (which drowns umami) to a
diced mushroom concoction (which enhances it).

Next, it's time to learn about pairings. A cheese - Queso Blanco
With Green Chiles and Epazote - is matched with a Llano Estacado
Chenin Blanc. The spicy heat of the cheese dances with the cool
sweetness of the wine. A variety of reds bring out different
flavors with the beef.

Later, the Texas/California wine taste-off gives participants a
chance to savor 22 wines in a scene that is vintage Texas.

Sure, there are abundant wine-geek speak and references to
Sideways. But nearby, a mockingbird sings. Afternoon sun filters
through the leaves of tall live oaks. Deer leap through the
mesquite woods. Off in the distance, Tom Perini keeps his longhorns
from meandering through.

Somewhere in the distance, a grill is fired up, and a vintner
suggests, "If this smells a little bit like mesquite, or smoky,
it's not the wine."

Guy Stout, a master sommelier from Houston who is here representing
the Rombauer Vineyards of Napa Valley, lauds the "almost angelic"
setting, and the laid-back feel.

"I mean, Fess Parker is up here washing glasses! And I was handing
out waters and picking up glasses, so everyone sort of pitched in.
It felt like it was at somebody's house, not like some big wine
event."

Pairing? No prob

The weekend's top draw, attracting 275 people, including about 200
paying guests, is "Cowboys, Cuisine and Cabernet," featuring five
Texas chefs serving meals that are paired with wines from the
represented winemakers. The chefs, Lisa Perini says, are "people
we've known for a long time, people with a spirit of adventure
coming to a first-time event," and known for their Texas cuisine.

On the ranch grounds, the flavor of Texas is in the air. Literally.

The aroma of Tom Perini's mesquite-smoked peppered beef tenderloin
mixes with smoked buffalo tenderloin by Jeff Blank of Hudson's on
the Bend in Austin. A space in the buffalo is stuffed with wild
boar tamales as a culinary pun off of " Buffalo Gap."

Paula Lambert of Dallas' Mozzarella Company is serving an
assortment of cheeses. Her Queso Blanco from earlier in the day is
still being talked about.

Matt Martinez Jr. of Matt's Rancho Martinez in Dallas has prepared
a pulled wild boar on sourdough bread, with chipotle barbecue sauce
or orange marmalade sauce with jalapeño coleslaw.

He's in the process of educating himself about wines and is
preparing to go to an all-Texas list at his restaurant.

"We're finding the sweeter, softer wines go really good with our
spicy foods," he says. "Some of the wines they're producing down
here go great with our shrimp and our salads. I've gotten offers
from people down here, and they're really gonna help me really
fine-tune my food and my wine mix."

Next to him, Fort Worth's Grady Spears, in an orange sweatshirt and
sunglasses, is serving barbecue quail tostadas with blue cheese
slaw. He's also chasing his toddler away from the grills and the
fire ants. Perhaps defining the laid-back spirit, he jokes that he
thought umami was some kind of bean.

Greg Bruni of the Llano Estacado Winery, whose Cellar Select Port
is one of the wines paired with the chocolate-dipped strawberries,
grapes and apricots from Candies by Vletas of Abilene, loves the
Texas feel of the night.

"Nobody's acting like a wine snob," he says.

"You go to California and you go to Europe in particular and you
get around these events, and the next thing you know, rather than
just trying to reach out and enjoy each other's company, everybody
has to put on their wine snob hat. So it can become very
intimidating. What's fun about Texas is we don't have that kind of
approach for the better part."

Indeed, it's hard to imagine a wine event in, say, Bordeaux, where
a winemaker could sip a Shiner. Or where the band would serenade
the audience with "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother."

By 9:30 p.m., the crowd is filled with the smiles that Fess Parker
spoke of. They also are carrying full bottles of wine back to their
tables with them.

Michael Thomson of Michaels Restaurant in Fort Worth, who has
served a Chilean sea bass with chipotle lemon butter sauce and
fried capers, thinks the event has been perfect.

"The thing that makes this one so magical is where it is," he says.
Wearing a T-shirt and clutching a Coors Light, he rushes outside
the tent and thrusts a finger up toward the oak branches and the
star-filled West Texas sky.

"Look at that. It's a full moon! Of all things."

A conga line of two women in tiny red cowboy hats dances by.

"Go, girls! Go, girls!" he chants.

Looking back

Sunday morning, at a champagne brunch that closes the event, Lisa
Perini is happy.

Winemakers have had a chance to get together and compare notes
under the trees. About 28 cases of wine have been enjoyed.

Participants are comparing her inaugural event with the feel that
other major Texas food and wine events had when they were launched.


And a couple of hundred people have heard the message she first
heard from the master sommelier in New Orleans: Wine should be fun.


She's looking ahead to bringing more guests, more winemakers and
more chefs to her little corner of West Texas again next year.

"I think I'm gonna e-mail that guy this weekend and say, 'Not only
have we made a wine list, but let me tell you what else we're
doing!'" she says.


For information about next year's summit, visit www.perini
ranch.com, or call 1-800-367-1721.

E-mail mmerschel@dallasnews.com