A Sonoma Vineyard Wedding at Gundlach Bundschu

The winery provides no catering of its own, so the entire food side was ours to design and bring. The bar was the opposite: Gundlach Bundschu supplies all the wine for an event on its property and permits no spirits, so the plan was beer and wine across two bars, with the couple providing the beer and wine themselves. A white wine spritz was tray passed through cocktail hour as the signature, with a watermelon spritz as the mocktail and a self-serve water station running all evening.

The menu ran through two cuisines at once, which is exactly what the couple wanted. Passed appetizers were vegetable samosas with mint chutney, pork belly bao, whipped ricotta crostini with roasted stone fruit and honey, and melon rounds with whipped feta. Guests then sat for a plated farmers market salad of mixed greens, figs and pomegranate in balsamic.

Dinner came off a double-sided buffet, with shoyu braised short ribs and tandoori roast chicken among the mains. The sides carried the same range, roasted broccolini with lemon zest, spiced carrots over shallot yogurt with pistachio mint pistou, a seasonal vegetable curry, and jeweled rice. Tiramisu closed it.

Two operational notes are worth naming. First, the room was not one room. Twenty-five guests were vegetarian and twenty of the meat eaters did not eat red meat, so the buffet had to work as a full meal for three different diets without anyone feeling handed a substitute. The vegetable curry and jeweled rice are not a vegetarian afterthought on that line, they are a main.

Second, the quantities. The mains were prepped well above their share of the headcount rather than to it. Building above headcount per dish is what stops a buffet running out of one main before the last table goes through, and on a double-sided line it is the whole game.

There is no potable water on the property, so we brought water in, on top of a full kitchen and service equipment for a wedding roughly a day’s travel from home.