Pairs for the Courses A Virtual Food and Wine Event with the Potato

I wrestled a little desk out of my cabin and set a dinner table outside for one. I hunted up a wine key, my favorite bowl, and a water bottle. Across the table, I perched my laptop on a stool at eye-contact height. Dinner would begin in just a few minutes.

I was alone except for the faces of friends and strangers who appeared on my computer screen when I logged in. Most fellow diners showed up in pairs, plus one quartet, all Zooming in from either McCarthy, home of our host, the original Roadside Potatohead restaurant, or Valdez, five hours away, where a second Potato location opened in 2014. Two others also came solo, though, and from different planets—a wine importer in Northern California and António Esteves Monteiro, founder of Quinta das Arcas winery in Portugal’s Vinho Verde and Alentejo regions. It was 2:30 AM in Portugal when we began at 6:30 PM in Alaska. While envying the food the rest of us enjoyed, Monteiro walked us through his winemaking philosophy and experience from the screen across the table.

Chef, artist, and Potato co-owner Ian Gyori and Chef Scott Whitus created a fantastic meal to complement the wine. We started with the Arca Nova Alvarinho, a single grape wine grown in very old schist soils (“Arca Nova is the schist!” goes the joke). We enjoyed the first bottle with pear peel-smoked halibut cheeks, garden herb crackers, and a rich potato leek soup that cut the crisp dryness of the wine.

The vision behind this pandemic bright spot largely came from one of The Potato’s owners, Rebecca Bard. Plan A for this meal was a reprise of a big face-to-face, prix fixe affair with full table service. Last spring, The Potato faced the heavy question of whether and how to open their seasonal restaurant at all. They opted against any indoor dining, implemented strict coronavirus protocols, and expanded their outside seating. They never considered the idea of just canceling the popular pairing event, though. Instead, the first Potato Virtual Wine Pairing was born. “Take the Food & Wine home, then Zoom with us in your PJs,” read the menu they posted when tickets went on sale.

Bard co-owns The Potato with Gyori and near-lifelong McCarthy local and Bristol Bay fisherman Malcolm Vance. Bard is also a buyer for Turnagain Vines, an Alaska-based distributor that’s played a large hand in spicing up liquor shelves in Alaska. “We are very knowledgeable about everything we have,” said Bard. “We only deal with small portfolios that want to work with us because we represent the same concepts.”

I knew that I’d enjoy the food and wine. I was less prepared to enjoy the experience itself as much as I did— a casual mix of conversation and banter among neighbors and fellow Alaskans, blended with stories about the wines from their vintner. After months of pandemic living, too, and terrifically less eating out than normal, it really was novel to eat at home, alone but not alone, and for the fare to be something special and made by someone else. Everything was boxed or vacuum packed; besides opening and plating everything, the only at-home prep required was heating the soup.

Next, we opened the Arca Nova Vinho Verde rosé, a bright framboise-colored wine with the light structure, crispness, and acidity of the Vinho Verde, well-blended with the rosé’s fruitiness. The Portuguese drink the most wine per capita than any other nationality, according to Monteiro, but mostly only drink while also eating. Here was a wine, though, “that you don’t have to drink with food,” he said. We did, though—with duck prosciutto, black currant chutney, and alp blossom cheese. Surely few places exist in world where it’s possible to eat and drink so well in such remote proximity to truly wild nature and beauty. Viva l’Alaska.

A year ago, the idea of getting takeout, returning home, firing up the computer, and joining folks online while eating and drinking would have seemed absurd. Now, after months when the face to face public dining forecast has read mostly impossible with a chance of complicated, the new experience of live, virtual gatherings has become normal for many of us. From cocktail hours with friends on Zoom to virtual classes, book groups, and even conferences, we humans— many, anyway—have practiced one defining characteristic to a tee: adaptation.

The logistics behind the dinner were significant—they staged three dinners in three days, all featuring Monteiro and the importer, with meals and wines available for pickup in both McCarthy and Valdez. Running a restaurant in the Wrangell Mountains even under normal circumstances is a feat, really. The event seemed like a great success to me, and to Bard, too. “I was worried at first,” she said. “This year it was not just repeat offenders. So many people from Valdez bought tickets, and some random people. But we’ve heard nothing but good things about it. During this weird time, we brought a sense of coming together again.”

The daylight dimmed and no one had to drive. We opened the Penedo Gordo Tinto last, an intense, dark red that pairs with sweet and savory flavors both—like our final course of rabbit rillettes, pickled mushrooms, cherries, and triple crème brie. “Penedo Gordo we harvest at night,” Monteiro said. “We start at four in the morning because it can get so hot outside during the day—like 110 degrees.”

I imagine a clock in Portugal chimed 3:30 AM just when he said that and a gray jay landed right on the screen in front of me. Just below it, little live movies of people flashed. No one else could see the jay, eyeing me and the food. From their side of the screen, maybe it looked like I pointed a big-lensed camera at them. A few inches away, the computer’s camera stared at me, not unlike a bird’s eye. I focused on the wild bird, though, perched on the computer, a surprise little neighbor reminding me of where I was—off grid in the boreal forest enjoying good food, wine, and virtual company. I fed it bread and crackers as Monteiro waxed impassioned about the Portuguese climate, the grapes, and the people responsible for the very wine we enjoyed here in Alaska, separately but together.