New York Times - Down Off the Farm

THIS coming weekend, the East End of Long Island will be the site of the first Hamptons Wine and Food Festival. With our waters teeming with seafood; our fields overflowing with corn, melons and tomatoes; and our wines gaining national recognition, this is the perfect setting.

And you would think that with all this abundance, the festival (of which this newspaper is one of the sponsors) would be a celebration of the area's bounty. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

Unlike the Bridgehampton Country Fair, which took place in almost the exact same spot more than a century ago as a harvest celebration where farmers from Sag Harbor, East Hampton and Montauk paraded prize-winning hogs and showed off blue-ribbon pies, this festival is taking its cues from flashy foodie events in places like South Beach, Fla., and Aspen, Colo.

Despite claims on the festival's Web site that the event will feature "the best local" celebrity chefs and winemakers, it will not showcase the East End's agricultural heritage. And that's a shame because the organizers are missing an excellent opportunity to boost the area's next generation of farmers, who, rather than selling their land for tons of money, are devoting their creative energies to finding innovative ways to keep the family farm alive.

To be sure, there are a few regional events. My magazine, Edible East End, is organizing some seminars spotlighting local people like Marilee Foster, a member of one of the oldest potato-farming families on the East End who has made the leap from spuds to chips, and Prudence Wickham, whose North Fork farm shifted its focus to growing fruit when that's what the market dictated. And we'll also have seminars by local cheese makers and beekeepers. Unfortunately, these local folks are a sideshow to the festival's main attractions. Of the more than 40 events scheduled, only seven have a regional focus. The beer from the nationally renowned Publick House brewery in Southampton and the legendary pies from Briermere Farms in Riverhead would have been palette pleasing additions to the main stage.

What you'll see at the Hamptons Wine and Food Festival are Moët & Chandon and Johnny Walker seminars, a Tuscan wine and meat tasting and a seminar on the pleasure of pairing Kentucky Fried Chicken with a sparkling wine from California. California! Furthermore, most of the celebrity chefs hail from New York City.

The price of admission, from $150 to $650 per person, isn't cheap. It's clear that at that price during the final days of August, the organizers are trying to attract the upper-income, part-time Hamptonites, not the locals. But why not lower the price so that locals can attend and feature local talent and produce? Marketing an event to the community by focusing on its own is good for the economy and makes sense - and trust me, a festival with a local slant will still draw the weekenders looking to discover the simple pleasures of country life.

So while it's too late to change the program this year, let's think about next year's festival. For starters, let's change the focus to local. Give attendees an insight into the history of the area. Teach them about "Bridgehampton loam" - the perfect combination of sand, clay and silt - that still occupies the top position in the Department of Agriculture's soil classification system. Show them that while the East End is no longer the breadbasket of New York City, it is certainly the supplier of choice for Long Islanders.

And have the families who have worked this land for generations - the Halseys and the Lathams to name just two - supply the fare. Look to the remaining baymen for seafood. Channing Daughters Winery and Wölffer Estate Vineyards pour nationally recognized wines within a mile of the festival and could play the role of wine educators. And finally, instead of holding the festival in August, when local people are the busiest, have it in early October to coincide with the harvest and the availability of seasonal favorites like apples, pumpkins and Peconic Bay scallops.

It may take a few years for people to catch on and for festivalgoers to appreciate the region's wines, cheeses, seafood and produce as much as the high-profile imports. But it will build strong local and regional relations over the long term, and the hard work just might yield the festival everyone wants.