J Vineyards Partners With Underrepresented Chefs To Bring Important Conversations About Equity & Inclusion To Wine Country

J Vineyards is a legendary California wine producer, best known for its world-class sparkling wines and Pinot Noirs. The property was founded by a woman, Judy Jordan, and its head winemaker is also a woman, Nicole Hitchcock. These are not insignificant or casual observations when you go to consider how few women are in positions of power in this global, multi-billion-dollar industry. So, it’s all the more remarkable that Shifting the Lens was born: This first-annual series of two-week residencies makes space for underrepresented chefs to share their considerable talents with visitors to Wine Country who are much more likely to expect duck confit than vegan gumbo with their single-vineyard Pinot.

Hitchcock says the purpose of the series is to shine a light on chefs whose food we might not ordinarily see in wine country, and to pair it with surprising wines. Preeti Mistry, a queer, nonbinary, first-generation Indian chef and a partner in envisioning the series from day one, gives the example of the classic pairing of Riesling with spicy foods. “It makes sense,” they said, “to pair a bright, high-acid wine with a bit of sweetness with spicy foods, but it turns out that other wines work just as well, perhaps even better.” By all accounts, the pairings for this series were all collaborations between the chefs and the winemaking team.

I attended a dinner by the third and final chef of this inaugural series, Shenarri Freeman, and a case in point is the pairing of J Vineyards 2014 Vintage Brut with Freeman’s jerk oyster mushroom with farro, berbere, vegan pine nut ricotta and pickled radish — the crisp, elegant, multilayered wine matched the intensity of the jerk spices and complemented the dish’s complexity.

Mistry was the previous chef in residence in the series. A Beard-nominated chef beloved in the Bay Area for their rendition of Indian street food, Mistry brings a broad lens to the notion of what fine dining is, and can be, as well as a mission to help educate consumers and introduce them to new culinary experiences that are also cultural.

The first chef in the series, Jenni Dorsey, a Chinese-American chef and activist who also runs the non-profit ATAO (All Together At Once), launched the program by working backwards from her favorite J Vineyards wines to craft her menu.

Freeman’s dinner, which was entirely vegan, surprised and delighted with its variations on the theme of soul food, which, it turns out, doesn’t need meat to sing, and the wine pairings were equally creative and successful. The Virginia-born Freeman is currently executive chef at Cadence in New York.

There’s still time to reserve a space at J’s Bubble Room before the end of Freeman’s residency on October 9th.

Organizers say that this series will continue in 2023 with a similar program, so stay tuned for details. Meanwhile, it’s exciting to participate in these essential conversations about equity and inclusion, especially in such traditionally white-, male-dominated industries as wine and restaurants. Kudos to J Vineyards and these visionary chefs for bringing this program to life.