In hindsight, the five-hour winemaker’s dinner we attended at The Southern Exposure Bistro last week seemed a bit misty—a painting, a Renoir-like blurring of lines and colors. At a long table (seven of us on each side) we talked inside, around, over, and with each other, intermixing six top-end wines and six palate-bending dishes—The Glass Bead Game of Hare and Grape. A kaleidoscope. Irreverent. Mirthful. Politely bacchanalian.

Callow fellow me, the phrase, “If you want to dance, you gotta pay the fiddler” (first said by Charlie Daniels, 1984), morphs in and out of my headaches today.

I will attempt to play both gossip and wine columnist here, sort of a Robert Liz Smith Parker, if you will, as the company at the Bistro was the equal of the food and wine. On my left was the very bright Lynn Sheehan, former executive chef at Vertigo and Mecca restaurants in San Francisco. She is now chef-proprietor of the historic Sand Rock Farm Bed & Breakfast in Aptos. Beside her, the aristocratic winemaker, Milan Maximovich, who elucidated and entertained us with the introduction of each wine. He is at once, engineer, wit, and maker of fine wines. He traveled the world and absorbed the techniques of the craft to learn his trade. Across from him, his lissome beautiful wife Sue Broadston. Ms. Broadston not only taught physics at Cabrillo for 27 years, but also coached the Team Santa Cruz boys’ volleyball several years ago, a team that held classmates and compatriots of my son’s from Mt. Madonna School. Then there was the irreverent, hysterical Tess Graham, who teaches woodworking at Soquel High, who gave us a hootish, off-the-wall spin to everything. Her daughter, Kate King, who is an innkeeper at The Babbling Brook Inn, sat beside her. Ms. King, though only 18, has surely seen many a circle on the old Waterwheel of Life. There were the gracious owners of Southern Exposure Bistro, Charlie and Ann Confer, and a mystery couple I did not get to meet, Nancy and Wayne Lussier, new owners of the Blue Spruce Inn in Soquel, and that ever-enthusiastic woman about town, Good Times Food Editor Josie Cowden, looking every bit like a young Bette Davis, and Ms. Linda Calciano. I ranked the people a 97.

Be gone, Liz Smith.

Our slate called for tasting a wine from Equinox winery of Boulder Creek, and several wines from Thunder Mountain Winery. The Equinox rep was AWOL, so Mr. Maximovich of Thunder Mountain, diplomatically, pinch-hit, explaining that the Equinox Harmony Cuvee-Brut-Non-Vintage-Au Natural bubbly wine is hand-harvested, and full-cluster pressed, which I gather is somewhat different from a full-court press. It took me a few minutes to realize that, in his graciousness, Mr. Maximovich was introducing somebody else’s wine, a competitor’s, and succeeded in making me interested in the wine.

The Equinox, “methode champenoise,” golden Brut was luscious, yeasty and buttery, yet had a lemon-zest-spritzer side effect that softly cleared the palate. This lively wine was a great chaser for the first course, a diminutive, one-bite fresh fig, scooped out and stuffed with a Brie mousse laced with summer truffles with a balsamic vinegar demi-glace. The fig was quite suggestive of something I wanted to take home for a bedtime snack, so I ordered two-dozen to go, but Ms. Graham admonished me to “watch my manners.”

Following the fig, which was called “Put on a happy face,” Chef Christian Dreyfus served chive blini (play-sized pancakes, for you clodhoppers out there), with petit haricot vert (tiny green string beans) salad with a teaspoon of red wine crème fraîche shallots—more! cried the crowd—topped with a mini-mound of unctuous, briny, caviar. Something about this particular dish reminded the clodhopper in me how far removed I was from the burnt Spam and Skippy Crunchy Peanut Butter on toast that had sustained my heedless childhood in the Ozarks. Or was it the goat cheese and caramelized cippolini onion ravioli with house made summer truffle oil and rabbit confit that followed that did the trick?

Transmogrification took place. From the velvety Equinox, we went to Mr. Maximovich’s first offering, a lightly oaked, dare I say, Meursault without the salt style, DeRose Chardonnay. My favorite wine of the evening, it transmitted faint gravel and mineral, was completely unbuttered and crisp, yet sustained enough “old fruit” fullness to be quaffable and satisfying. The winemaker avoided being buttonholed by terminology, and attributed the uniqueness of the wine to the “terrain” of the west-facing hills of the Cienega Valley near Hollister. Mr. Maximovich avers that this region has the makings of another Napa Valley.

From the corners of both misting eyes, I made out the black-shirted arms of waiters (one tall, good-looking kid bore an uncanny resemblance to me), freely pouring wine. There was no stinting on the portions as you would find at rigidly controlled tasting rooms. We diners were starting to transmogrify ourselves. I swore I heard Ms. Cowden say something about making Santa Cruz a “plonk-free” zone, and I think Ms. Graham said that her son was working as an “auto air-bag restuffer,” or an “air-bag pirate,” or something like that.

Mr. Maximovich started showing his hand, first with a largish wine that demonstrated conscious love, a successful marriage of Cabernet and Merlot that he calls, Star Ruby. This bodacious wine was so good now, and has so much potential, that our group of “predeceased” people, (a term offered probably by Ms. Graham), all prayed to be around when the wine peaks. Probably about the same time the Giants win the World Series. The winemaker possessed both beefed-up masculine, and soft feminine qualities, the Jackie Joiner Kersey of wines, described the Star Ruby. To test the heft of this wine, Chef Dreyfus and staff served us grilled asparagus with heirloom tomatoes, roasted shallots, and caper gremolata (fresh parsley, lemon peel and garlic)—foods not normally paired with wine. But the Star Ruby stood up tall, particularly by the second and third glass. By then, I thought, if I had this big Star Ruby backing me up, I could handle a grizzly. From hubris, I began to relate to the Conan-like character on the Thunder Mountain label.

The heirloom tomatoes, Ms. Sheehan said, were from pioneer seeds that predated the commercial, no-flavor tomatoes that have been foisted off on us for the last couple of generations—like Reagonomics. Ms. Sheehan suggested the porous, succulent tomatoes were “sexy,” a term I would have been more inclined to apply to the “happy face” fig and Ms. Sheehan.

The Blue Plate Special from Chef Dreyfus was dark Braised Oxtails served on green olive fontina risotto, and surrounded with fritto misto of artichokes, fennel, and Meyer lemons. These garnished vegetables were what all fried vegetables would like to grow up to be. The Oxtails (yes, Virginia, that’s where they come from) were braised stovetop for five hours, to the point where a fixed gaze (becoming increasingly difficult), would cause the meat to let loose and slide off the star-shaped bone. My by now enthusiastic palate thought I had tasted the best meat ever. I maintain, in full daylight sobriety, The Southern Exposure Bistro possesses one of, if not the finest, kitchens in the area.

All the Thunder Mountain wines served were from 1999 vintage, and had received 90-ish ratings from the real Robert Parker. We finished off our little food and wine orgy with a big, inky, plummy Bates Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon (reminding me of the Jordans of the early ’80s), and a powerful, blood red Veranda Pinot Noir, that nicely chaperoned our dessert, softened St. André cheese with shavings of dark chocolate.

The night was really a lot more fun than it sounds.

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