Wine lovers like to share that a winetasting experience involves all the senses—the look and color of the liquid and how it clings to the glass; the aromas, literally the bouquet that erupts to the discerning nose; the “mouthfeel” of the wine, as well as its actual flavor profile on the palate.
Sight, smell, feel, taste … and the fifth sense, sound—the bell-like clink of the glasses when a toast is made.
That’s the sensory world evoked in Farm + Market: Healdsburg, the fresh-off-the-boat pictorial book about the harvests and people of the Healdsburg area. It’s a comprehensive guide as well as a beautifully photographed 325-page book that appears this month. Its author, Liza Gershman, is a Sonoma County resident again, though not always; raised in Bennett Valley, she returned here just a couple of years ago with the embers of a new book catching fire in her imagination.
We agreed then that she should contribute a column every couple of weeks for The Healdsburg Tribune, and in last fall’s newspapers one can read earlier drafts of some of the chapters in this new book, and see some of the photos that are printed, in much better quality, in this work as well.
Soon Gershman had set up a partnership with the Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market and the Friends of the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market for the book, which took over a year to write, photograph and produce.
As the new book came closer to completion, eventually to be boxed and shipped from China, Gershman said, “I’m a traveler,” at the outset of a recent interview. “I got my first passport when I was six. We went to Eleuthera in the Bahamas for my seventh birthday, and they had a pink sand beach, so it was pretty special.”
It wasn’t a one-off. “We traveled a lot when I was growing up,” she continued. “I’m an only child, and so that made it feasible.” That broad background in travel came to define Gershman’s journey, although it was as a photographer that she began to build a career, including as an associate chair of photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Georgia.
The travels, however, ranged far and wide, and the sense of discovery—perhaps the most important of the senses—led to a career in international publishing.
“I do a lot of place-based work, where I deep-dive into a community and a culture, and share stories of and about that location,” Gershman said, a description that fits this current book perfectly. “This was a natural progression of that work. And it felt like for my 20th book, doing a piece about home felt really meaningful.”
Not only is it about a landscape familiar to her, but she has taken greater control in the publishing process with each book. Other titles include Cuban Flavor, County Fair and Drink Vermont: Beer Wine and Spirits of the Green Mountain State. All are as visual as they are learned, delving into the history and spirit of their locations.
Among her favorite books is Nantucket, her most recent title before Healdsburg, and clearly another of her favorite towns. She often speaks of the small island off Cape Cod, formerly a whaling center, now a popular New England Destination. She visits often, and has a web of friends there as deep as her local network.
That aside, this book is all Healdsburg. To turn the pages is to see familiar faces, to read the recipes is to begin to collect ingredients. For us, it’s not hard: it’s a hyper-local book, and every recipe in it could be made with market ingredients (including for the archetypal Prune Spice Cake, a flavor from another era). Each is beautifully represented by rich, colorful photographs, one on every spread. Her work is about visual appeal, not only in the photographs in the book but its whole layout, context and the tastefulness of the talent behind it.
The book makes it easy to appreciate the agricultural bounty of Healdsburg, and the narrative in many ways traces the growth of the city into a culinary destination. It’s about wine only insofar as wine is a food.
“I think that’s how our community will survive,” she said. “You know, the wine industry is not sustainable, and food is something that we need forever.”
Her mother, Nancy Gershman, still lives deep in Bennett Valley, past Sonoma Mountain Road. She, too, is an artist, and her work decorates Farm + Market: Healdsburg subtly and effectively. “Artistic expression runs in the family,” she told me at a book-release party held recently at J Winery. Healdsburg friends, farmers, winemakers and a few other familiar faces gathered to enjoy what felt like the first perfect weekend of the year, to say nothing of a Russian River pinot noir.
I told Nancy Gershman I met Liza many years ago, when she entered a Sex-in-the-City fashion contest at the old Rialto on Summerfield. When I lifted my camera to take a photo, she struck a pose, and held it until the shot was right. It was perfect.
Reminded of that moment, Liza Gershman leaned over to say, sotto voce, “I’ve never entered a costume contest I didn’t win.”
I found that entirely believable.
‘Farm + Market: Healdsburg’ will soon available at select local bookstores, shops and tasting rooms. Or see www.healdsburgbook.com.
