At Sage Eastbluff, summer begins when the Black Mission Figs are in. Every year Chef Rich slices them up and serves them with prosciutto and a handful of arugula tossed with balsamic vinaigrette and pine nuts, topping it with a warm round slice of goat cheese for spreading on grilled rosemary bread. As the summer produce comes in, he’s thinking up new salads every week. The current Farmers’ Market salad has a just-picked crunchiness and a silky tomato vinaigrette. Sweet grilled corn and shaved fennel, tender garbanzos and snappy haricots verts complement crisp, peppery sliced radish, citrusy green almonds, and heady caramelized Bermuda onions. He made a warm pancetta balsamic vinaigrette for a salad of Bloomsdale spinach, an heirloom variety with heavy, bumpy leaves that’s notably mild and untannic, then tossed it with caramelized Bermuda onions, walnuts, and goat cheese—all of which made a bed for a big, juicy grilled bratwurst with whole grain mustard cream.

Mark got the first summer peaches and baked them into turnovers, with vanilla bean ice cream, bourbon caramel sauce, pecans and berry-peach relish. The latest were sliced up and grilled for the roasted duck breast with blood orange sauce. In between, Rich paired them with Serrano ham in an arugula salad with balsamic red onions and goat cheese. Serrano hams are spiked and screwed and displayed like prized geodes in Spanish homes and bodegas, where all and sundry wield the long, flexible knife called a jamonero and trim off a paper thin slice as they pass by. Spanish ham has less salt than Virginia hams, which are soaked and cooked, and less fat than Italian prosciutto, which is cured for a few months under a coating of lard. Jamón Serrano (after sierra, or mountain) undergoes an extended air curing at high elevation after a couple weeks packed in sea salt. The legs of the Landrace breed of white pig are hung on knotted ropes in a secadero, a hut or even a cave, over the long cold dry winter, with low humidity and an abundance of fresh air, and cured for as long as 18 months. The moisture dries off, the sea salt infuses the meat, the crucial mold enhances the flavor and the fat filters evenly through it, further concentrating the flavor. It is a great match with ripe, luscious, Regier Farms peaches.

The name may come from Vienne, a Roman outpost near Condrieu, or from the Latin via Gehennae, or Road to Hell—it’s long had a reputation for difficulty. Imported from Dalmatia (now Croatia) by the Emperor Probus in AD 281, viognier either replaced the vines torn out by Vespasian to punish the insurrectionary locals or (even better) was seized from a ship heading up the Rhone to Beaujolais by the outlaw farmers of Condrieu, who, vexed by Roman edicts, set the vessel ablaze, enslaved the crew and covered the hills with stolen vines. Either way, when the Romans were forced out of Gaul the grape was uncultivated for centuries, only to be “rediscovered” by the locals in the Middle Ages. The phylloxera infestation in the 1800’s decimated the vines, which were then abandoned during the First World War. By 1965 there were only about 30 acres in cultivation. Again the grape was rescued from obscurity, this time by the Rhône Rangers in California, and again there were mishaps. Many of the roussane clones imported from the Rhône turned out to be viognier (there were lawsuits, re-labelings), and much of the viognier was treated like chardonnay (set in oak, given malolactic fermentation), making it awkward and unmarketable.

But the “true character” of viognier that vintners strive for today is no bed of roses. It starts growing so early in spring that it’s prone to damage from late frosts. It’s susceptible to powdery mildew in humid climates. It tends to drop its flowers, making yields unpredictable. And it takes forever to ripen—flavors of lychee and pear-apricot develop only at the peak of maturity, just when the aromatics and acidity are ready to crash. Turpine, rare in white grapes, gives the wine its creamy texture, but phenols, compounds in the soft yellow skin, can make the wine oily. Warm, sunny weather can over-ripen the grapes, giving the wine too much alcohol or too much sweetness, which has to be finessed with reverse osmosis or stirring of the lees. It’s a real challenge, which accounts for the vast range of styles and general perplexity of the buying public. The Tangent Viognier, made by Christian Roguenant from fruit grown in the Paragon Vineyard on the Central Coast, pairs well with heavier sauces, rich shellfish, spicy dishes with curry or coconut milk, or fish or chicken with fruit salsas. Try it with the pork tenderloin or softshell crabs at Sage Eastbluff, where for a limited time it’s poured by the glass, or order a bottle with the coconut-crusted halibut with coconut rice and mango salsa at Sage on the Coast.

Next an ecstatic tangerine beurre blanc sweetens a small plate of scallops perched on a cake of duck confit-potato hash—a taste so fulsome and robust it at once arouses and satiates appetites you didn’t know you had. You will stop, but not yet: there’s a fillet of monchong with artichoke hearts and morel mushrooms in a pinot noir sauce. Also known as sickle pomfret, monchong is a deep water fish landed by the longline fleet out of Honolulu, with clear white flesh and a firm, flakey texture that’s served, ingeniously, with an asiago and parmesan cracker crust. A night so laden with contraband pleasures could finish only with ice cream, and Robert LeSage’s peach, honey and thyme ice cream is subtle and perfect. Using scads of ripe peaches, Robert keeps their effulgence in check with lots of vanilla and a whiff of thyme-infused cream. The honey acts like the sugar and corn syrup that bind sorbet, so that even on a hot night the ice cream keeps its shape and stays cold enough to eat with a fork. You leave restored even as the fog thickens, obliterating the torches in the distance, like Pharaoh’s set from The Ten Commandments sinking in the shoals.