The wine and bison dinner

It's not often you get the opportunity to eat something that's still on the hoof. You'd have to be a real carnivore (and likely awfully hungry) to get that close to your meal but there we were, eating bison (it was cooked) while some of the meal's relatives were watching us balefully through a double-wire fence. It was the second annual "Wine and Buffalo" dinner at Dave and Sue Whittlesey's High Wire Ranch on Rogers Mesa about 35 miles southeast of Grand Junction. The Whittlesey's have been raising grass-fed bison since 1981 and elk ranching since 1987, so they are two of the more-experienced "alternate livestock" raisers in western Colorado. Incidentally, even though their Web site (and nearly everyone else) refers to the big, furry animals wandering the pastures as "buffalo," both Dave and Sue will tell you the temperamental critters really are bison. The difference? While both bison and buffalo belong to the same family (Bovidae, for those interested), true "buffalo" are native only to Africa and Asia. Chef and winemake Yvon Gros serves some of his bison dishes at the "Wine and Buffalo" dinner held recently at High Wire Bison Ranch near Hotchkiss. The bison diner was paired with wines from Yvon and Joanna Gros' Leroux Creek Vineyards, located about a mile down the road from the ranch. Yvon, a classically trained French chef-turned-winemaker and innkeeper, lured several of his chef friends up from Denver to participate in the weekend events. There were appetizers and entrees featuring various buffalo (oops, bison) dishes and Yvon's distinctive wines, particularly his unique hybrids, the French-bred Chambourcin (red) and Cayuga (white), both grown organically at his vineyard. It was a fascinating meal, if for no other reason than how often do you get to sample bison skirt steak roulade, a brochetté of bison medallions and grilled bison sirloin steaks? This certainly wasn't the meal for vegans, although the local produce (from North Fork Valley farmers including TLC Greenhouse in Paonia) provided a fine balance for those who eat less meat. The chocolate desserts were provided by chef and chocolatier Johannes Busch, a long-time fiend of Yvon and the pastry and confection instructor at Johnson & Wales University in Denver. Later that evening, accompanied by yet another glass of Yvon's wine, Johannes gave a few of us late-night lingerers an insight into the fervors shared by true chocolate devotees. "You savor chocolate, you don't just eat it," commanded Johannes, sharing with us tiny pinches from a prized bar of dark chocolate he had recently "smuggled" into the country after a visit to Europe. And the next morning, during breakfast at the Leroux Creek Inn, bakery chef Ron Levallee, also from Johnson & Wales, talked of baking at high altitude and shared some his pastry tricks.