By Virginie Boone

Sonoma County could be the poster child for the long standing adage that whatever grows together goes together; so diverse are the winegrapes the region grows and vast the array of other ingredients that come from its fields, orchards, vegetable beds and waterways.

Restaurant chefs here have typically taken the lead on showcasing Sonoma County food with Sonoma County wine, but wineries too can be imaginative and forward-thinking in flipping that scenario, bringing in chefs or restaurant partners to create dishes to go with their wines.

Bartholomew Estate Vineyards and Winery, which is outside of the town of Sonoma, is one of them. It just launched a lunch series collaboration called “The Spread” with local chef Cristina Topham, who owns Spread Kitchen in Sonoma. After traveling the world and working in a variety of kitchens, including on superyachts, Topham, whose roots are Lebanese, made Sonoma County her home in 2014. She describes her food as Lebanese with a California touch.

Spread’s Wine Country-inspired Lebanese cuisine, sourced locally and seasonally, is paired at the winery with a two-glass flight of wines. Lunch comes in a 3-tier tiffin (a type of lunch box) that encases each course.

Sonoma County food people who love wine is nothing new, of course. Food writer Mary Frances Kennedy (M.F.K.) Fisher lived in Glen Ellen from 1971 until she died in 1992. Before that, she had lived in St. Helena for many years, helping to develop the Napa Valley Wine Library.

The New York Times credited her with creating “a whole language of food – a syntax, a rhetoric, a poetry of eating.” She was described during her lifetime as “one of the wittiest, most fluent and sensible of the great modern gastronomes” and as “the finest writer on food now using the English language.”

Fisher often wrote about wine, too, stating, “Wine is life,” in the University of California Sotheby Book of California Wine published in 1984, before adding, “I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.”

This and many other of her writings about wine were compiled into an anthology by biographer Anne Zimmerman, M.F.K. Fisher: Musings on Wine and Other Libations.

“To M.F.K. Fisher,” Zimmerman noted, “wine was sensual, transformative and beautiful – capable of translating truths and revealing flaws.”

Fisher believed most of all that wine belonged on the table, an essential part of every meal.

“I imagine M.F.K. Fisher tasting her way through an afternoon in Sonoma,” Zimmerman mused. “She’d be the old woman with bright lipstick and white hair piled elegantly on top of her head. She’d make biting comments and roll her eyes if something overly lofty was said within earshot. But she’d also be the one to pull the winemaker into a corner, pressing for answers about what made a certain bottle so special and then buying a case.”

One of the wines she was buying was Sebastiani Mountain Chablis, a clear favorite of hers, mentioned in both “The New York Times” and “The Press Democrat” profiles.

The rich culinary tradition rooted in Sonoma County wineries continues around every corner of the region, from Bricoleur Vineyards, with its four-chef culinary team, to Jordan Estate, which cooks sustainably, connecting each dish to the land, to St. Francis Winery, which consistently wins awards for its expansive culinary experiences.

Steps from its culinary gardens, Kendall-Jackson offers a five-course menu and pairing, while at Vérité Estate, a seasonal three-course menu is prepared in-house to go with six wines.

J Vineyards and Winery pushes the boundaries even further with its Shifting The Lens food and wine dinners, bringing in chefs from around the world to share their perspectives on wine, food and culture.

When it comes to wine, whether it’s a gourmet extravaganza, a three-tier tiffin, a groundbreaking dish or a humble cheese plate, it’s good to remember M.F.K. Fisher’s words: “Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.”