Topic: Effects of Wine on Cuisine in the Hills, Lakes, and Wines Region

Edited 12/31/2013

Wine is so important to the Hills, Lakes, and Wines region of California that it plays a key role in the cuisine of the area.  Therefore, it is not surprising that French, Italian, and American food is popular there.  After all, those cuisines are famous for wine.  Often, two or more of these cuisines are mixed to form a fusion cuisine.

So why does wine have such a powerful influence on cuisine in the HLW region?  It cannot be stressed enough that wine is important not only to the culture, but to the economy.  Wine tourism is a huge money-maker in the area.  But food has been paired with alcohol almost since beer was consumed by the ancient Egyptians, so it is natural that winemakers suggest foods to pair with their wines.  This encourages restaurants, inspired by the local food movement to the north and south of the HLW region, to support local wines by serving those wine and food pairings that winemakers suggest.  This also creates a unique local food movement within the region, one that includes local wines and local food integrated with one another.

Napa County is certainly the culinary hearth of the area's cuisine.  However, Sonoma and Lake Counties have experienced what I call "culinary sprawl", the diffusion of cuisine from an original area to a new one.  As a result, culinary sprawl has also occurred from those counties back to Napa Counties and from and to each other, creating a unified cuisine, with each county having its particular niche that each county originally specialized in.  For example, Napa County's niche is wine, Lake County has its local inland fish, and Sonoma County has beef and seafood.  All of these come together, driven by Napa County's food and wine pairings, to form a cuisine unique to the HLW culinary region of California.

Ranch land in Sonoma County (Photo credit)

A fisherman at Clear Lake.

A vineyard in Napa County.

Photo credit:

1. By Sanfranman59 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons