Save a seat
Buy tickets to The Wilderness Table by visiting forestwatch.org. The June 7 dinner runs from 4 to 8 p.m. at Larner Vineyard (955 Ballard Canyon Road in Solvang). For more on the food and beverage providers, visit larnerwine.com, rock12distillery.com, and highonthehogcatering.com.
One summer evening, 50 strangers will have the luxury of breaking bread together. They’ll be seated amid the grapevines at Larner Vineyard and Winery, looking out at where the contents of their glasses ripened. The breeze whispering by might’ve blown in from a farm that grew the produce that’ll soon dress their plates.
“The Wilderness Table specifically is an event that’s really about celebrating the relationship between healthy landscapes and healthy communities,” Keri Setnicka told the Sun.
She directs communications for Los Padres ForestWatch, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting public lands. The organization’s third Wilderness Table dinner is planned for June 7. Proceeds fund ForestWatch’s ongoing educational outreach to preserve the wilderness, like its upcoming town hall series that teaches residents about threats to the federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
‘Public lands and healthy ecosystems are not separate from everyday life. They influence the food that we eat, the water that we rely on, and the places that we recreate.’
—Keri Setnicka, Los Padres ForestWatch Communications Director
One of ForestWatch’s missions is to help community members see how humanity is connected to the landscape.
“Public lands and healthy ecosystems are not separate from everyday life,” Setnicka said. “They influence the food that we eat, the water that we rely on, and the places that we recreate. The places that define the Central Coast.”
There’s no better way to spread this message than to take people out for an experience with the land. These dinners offer an elevated level of appreciation versus attending a meeting or clicking the follow button on social media, Setnicka said.
Guests will be greeted with a welcome cocktail from Rock 12. The Lompoc-based distillery’s orchards produce apples, apricots, and quince for its spirits. Happy hour will also include a locally sourced antipasto table for grazing in between sips.
The group will then set off for a tour of the Larner vineyards. Winemaker Michael Larner deeply understands his land, especially having studied geology before running the winery.
Part of what makes his grapes so special is what’s beneath them. In Santa Barbara County the land typically has a lot of marine layers like chalk and limestone.
“What’s also unique for our vineyard in particular is that we have a very high sand content above that marine sediment,” Larner explained. “It makes a very stressful growing environment, which in this case is good, because opposite to most table fruits, we are growing wine grapes. Stress can actually add a little more complexity.”
If he does his job right, he said, most of the wine is made in the vineyard. It means spending less time in the winery because the maximum expression of the fruit was achieved in the fields.
Larner Vineyard and Winery is certified organic, and the team wants to be a good steward of the land. The team aims to find synergy working alongside organizations with similar missions.
“If a nonprofit organization wants to work with us doing something that’s going to preserve the land, that’s something we always want to support,” the winemaker said.
When it’s time for dinner, Larner will give a rundown of the wines that’ll accompany each course. Diners can expect one white (or two if it’s an especially warm day) and a couple of reds. As a winemaking professor at Allan Hancock College, he’s no stranger to educating.
“I love sharing my knowledge of wine and some of my experiences and passion and hopefully introduce people to new concepts or at least open their minds to new wines that they maybe haven’t tried,” Larner said.
He’ll likely start off with the vibrant malvasia bianca, moving on to the Elemental, a blend of grenache, syrah, and mourvèdre. The winery’s estate syrah will most definitely be poured, too. The winemaker said it’s probably the best representation of his land.
It’ll be hard to go wrong when Larner knows every dish will be “super wine friendly.”
It’s not caterer Brett Stephen’s first rodeo either. Cooking is essentially the only job he’s had since age 14.
“I just love food,” Stephen said. “I love to cook.”
It is, however, the first time his catering business, High on the Hog, is serving the Wilderness Table event. Since it’s a charitable dinner, the chef’s goal was to design a menu filled with “the most dynamic, fun, beautiful food for the most reasonable cost” so ForestWatch can maximize the night.
Stephen enjoys the variability of catering and crafting menus to fit his clients’ wishes. It’s more of a demand, bringing equipment and food on-site, but cooking something new every day is worth it for him.
The June dinner is family style, but each round will be its own course. To start, a greens and beets salad drizzled with an avocado-based dressing alongside his wife’s focaccia bread. Then, roasted rainbow carrots over fava bean hummus topped with za’atar seasoning and parsley. The midpoint will be marked by charred cabbage and crispy shallots coated in a Thai peanut sauce.
For entrées, Stephen will prepare a seared albacore over orzo salad and a classic chicken cacciatore with velvety polenta.
As the last course, the chicken must be able to withstand the time. Stephen penciled it onto the menu partly because it’ll increase in quality while it sits on the burners instead of the opposite.
“It’s the same as slow braising it in the oven,” Stephen said. “I’m just taking it out of the oven and holding it somewhere for it to slowly continue carrying over that cook and finishing, so that it’s tender and moist and not dried out.”
Stephen and his team use local and seasonal ingredients, right down to the strawberries that’ll drape over a brown butter pound cake for dessert. The fruit hails from Buellton’s Sunrise Organic Farm, in the same city as High on the Hog’s commercial kitchen.
“We’re pretty blessed to be in this area and have access to so many amazing farms,” Stephen said.
Though it falls in the heat of the busy catering season, ForestWatch’s cause is one of two (nature and dogs) that Stephen is always happy to support.
Reach Staff Writer Madison White at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 28 – June 4, 2026.