Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [23]
An Illinois girl from agrarian stock and the former chair of the volunteers’ fund-raising board for the Santa Fe Farmers Market, Cheryl loves farmers, at least the ones who raise crops in sustainable ways to sell at local markets. Before we left home, she e-mailed so many people for information about the Barossa Valley market that eventually word of her interest reached Thalassa and Tony. They offered to show us around, and Cheryl eagerly accepted.
Thalassa finds us instantly, as soon as we open our mouths at the information booth. “You must be the Americans we’re expecting. We don’t get many accents like that around here.”
“You pegged us,” Cheryl acknowledges.
“Well, let me give you some background on the market, then we’ll round up Tony and look around. This is modeled in many ways on the kind of farmers’ markets that have become so popular in the United States in recent years. Local growers raise everything they sell, from the top-notch produce to the chickens that lay the eggs and the livestock that gives milk for the dairy products. Everyone in the Barossa Valley lives in easy driving distance of each other and the market, so many vendors and buyers show up each week, year-round. We all know one another in the valley, so it’s like a community gathering spot.”
“How did you and Tony get involved?” Bill asks.
“We moved here from California several years ago, about the time that people began talking about a local market. We already knew many Barossa residents because my father grew up in South Australia before emigrating to the States. So they asked us about California markets, and we quickly got drawn into the planning. Here’s Tony now. He can start showing you around, and I’ll catch up in a minute when I finish some business at the booth.”
As soon as she introduces us to Tony, he spots and stops a friend heading outside with a cigarette and lighter in his hand. “Peter, I won’t keep you from your smoke, but I want you to meet these Americans.”
“More of your kind, eh? Are we being invaded?”
“The wisecracker,” Tony says to us, “is Peter Lehmann, the one we all fondly call ‘the Baron of Barossa.’”
Thrilled to run into the legendary winemaker, Bill says, “We’re coming to your winery this afternoon. Will you be there?”
“Nope, going fishing. But I’ll ask Margaret, my wife, if she can give you a few nips of the good stuff.”
“Wow,” Bill tells Tony when Lehmann leaves, “that’s like bumping into Robert Mondavi at the Oakville Grocery and being invited to a private tasting at the estate. Barossa really is a small and laid-back world, isn’t it?”
“Yep, it’s nothing at all like Napa.”
Thalassa joins us again and the couple gives us a guided tour of the forty stalls, introducing us to most of the vendors and telling us about their goods, which include spring fruits and vegetables, pastries and breads baked as much as possible with local products, and lots of Germanic pickles of green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, figs, grapes, horseradish, and more. Tony says, “German farmers settled much of the Barossa, and their food and wine traditions still flourish. They planted the original vineyards just to make wine for themselves. Nothing changed substantially until recent decades, when wine became a big business here and elsewhere. Even today, many of the Barossa farms and vineyards remain small-scale operations.”
“Oh, look,” Thalassa interrupts, “there’s Maggie Beer. Would you like to meet her?”
“Of course we would,” Cheryl says. “She’s the Alice Waters of Australia,” referring to the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, who helped stimulate American interests in fresh, local produce. “We’re going to Maggie’s restaurant for lunch.” Thalassa handles the introductions while Cheryl gropes into her purse for the camera and Flat Stanley, handing him to Bill while shoving both toward Maggie for a photo of the three of them together. It’s now barely