While the rock stars of the food and wine worlds were hanging out in Aspen last weekend, another group of rockers gathered on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, for Bonnaroo, a four-day Woodstock-esque music festival that brings together environmentally conscious performers like Pearl Jam and Jack Johnson.This year’s festival set new standards for sustainability. Diane Hatz, founder and director of Sustainable Table, the nonprofit responsible for the Eat Well Guide, blogged daily from the event and called me today to share some green highlights:

* The festival hired a sustainability coordinator to help reduce consumption.

* Bonnaroo’s goal is to buy 75 percent of all food it sells from local sources within three to five years, and festival organizers provided food vendors with a list of local farmers they could work with.

* An organic café was selling fair-trade coffee, organic fruits and vegetables, arepas and jerk chimichangas while vendors hawked organic, vegetarian corn dogs and organic funnel cake (festival-goers could pick up leftover oil from the funnel-cake fryer to fuel their biodiesel cars).

* Organic beer from Vermont brewers Orlio and Stone Mill was on tap.

* Sustainable Table volunteers were barbecuing on a solar-powered oven.

* A Solar Stage hosted bands as well as panel discussions on the state of our planet.

I've been coming to the Classic for eight years, and I think it gets better each time. Here, some people who have made my weekend even more interesting:

1. Top Chef Hung Huynh and Jacques Pépin. Each year, the Culinary Institute of America  sends 10 of their top students to the Classic to assist at the culinary demos. Last night, Beringer sponsored a party in their honor, and Jacques Pépin gave an inspiring speech, reminding the students chefs (or baby chefs, as we sometimes call them) to stick to their craft (and not aspire to TV fame), hone their skills, and say nothing more than "Yes, chef" for the next six or seven years they'll be training in professional kitchens. Hung, who was standing in front of me, nodded his head emphatically the entire time, and when it was over, he turned to his companion and said, "He's so good!" It's nice to see that TV fame hasn't diminished his respect for his craft in any way at all.

2. The volunteers. This year, I am most thankful to the volunteers in the Grand Tasting Tent who are tirelessly (and in some cases, even smilingly) manning the trash disposal. All throughout the tent are sets of three garbage bins: one for composting, one for recycling Fiji bottles, and one for plain old trash. At each station, there's a volunteer assisting people sort their trash. Not the most glamorous job, but so great. And it's made me realize that true garbage is kind of a bummer.

3. Restaurateur extraordinaire Drew Nieporent. Ok, flying into Aspen in a prop plane is no party, but this year, I thought I was done for when we crammed onto the tiny plane and proceeded to take off in 40+ mph winds. The saving grace (besides my colleagues who kindly let me clutch them in a death grip with each air pocket) was Drew Nieporent, who sat in front of us and talked cheerfully the whole way, even when we hit such a big air pocket that his water flew up and spilled all over him. Thank you, Drew. I hope you're on my plane next year.

Last night my colleague Emily Kaiser and I gondola'd to the top of Aspen Mountain for a dinner benefiting the Wholesome Wave Foundation, the 2008 recipient of F&W's Grow for Good campaign. We enjoyed a local-minded meal prepared by chefs Roy Yamaguchi, Hung Huyhn (Top Chef's 2007 winner), Ryan Hardy and Michel Nischan, who founded Wholesome Wave last year.

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My Aspen Food & Wine Classic officially started at City Market on Thursday afternoon, when I bumped into NYC's Momofuku All-Star team (sans David Chang but including Rusty Knot's Quino Baca) coming out of the grocery store with cartons of cigarettes, cases of beer, dozens of frozen pizzas and a token grapefruit and apple they said was for the bartender. I decided to put a tracking device on them because, no doubt, the late-night party would be happening in their vicinity. Unfortunately, I lost them.

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Top Chef Hung Huynh and F&W's Gail Simmons

Our F&W Classic in Aspen doesn't get going in earnest until tomorrow, but last night a healthy percentage of early arrivals gathered at the subterranean bar Belly Up to watch the Top Chef Finale like the food tv groupies we are. The party was sponsored by, fittingly enough, the Rums of Puerto Rico. As I sipped on a refreshing Bacardi Superior with lavender syrup and tonic, I tried to look graceful while scrounging for a seat. The place was packed like it was the Super Bowl, folks crammed into tables and along the bars to watch the show on the big screen, everyone from our own Dana Cowin and Ray Isle to chefs like Michel Nischan  and Andrew Shotts (the 2 both said they'd watch a lot more of the show if they weren't so busy cooking, and were glad to have a chance to watch the finale uninterrupted).

Top Chef judges Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi hadn't yet landed, but the fantastic Gail Simmons led the crowd in an informal poll: Stephanie won the warmest applause, Lisa many boos. Once the show started, it was tricky to hear over the chatter (Frank Bruni's take-down of Ago was the topic of the night). I snuck down to the speakers to hear what Richard Blais was teaching Eric Ripert over that steaming pot of liquid nitrogen, when I ran into last season's winner, Hung Huynh. During the commercial break before the judges' table he told me a little about the new restaurant he has planned, and his pick for the winner.

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They’re skiing in Aspen today. At least that’s the rumor, that there’s one ski run open and up to three feet of snow on the mountain (I’ve spotted some on this live cam). I have to wait until tomorrow to see it for myself.

Ski or no ski (I’m bringing my boots just in case), I’m excited for this year’s Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. Aside from the dinners and special events, the seminar lineup is one of the best ever. Here are some highlights:

• A chocolate and wine-pairing seminar conducted by our own Ray Isle and chocolatier Andrew Shotts. Usually these types of tastings are snore fests, but Shotts has created some of the most gonzo, sweet-savory dishes imaginable. Chocolate covered pork rinds, anyone?

• Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi cooking side-by-side using similar ingredients, but in their own respective styles. Think Top Chef meets Iron Chef.

• Grill guru Steven Raichlen’s around-the-globe barbecue seminar. It’s impossible to spend an hour with Raichlen and not learn 50 new things.

• The American Idol of wine: The 3rd annual Sommelier’s Challenge, in which Lettie Teague pits four of the world’s best sommeliers against each other as they try to be the ultimate wine geek. 

• David Chang’s whole hog tasting. ‘Nuff said.

Not surprisingly, the Food & Wine Classic comprises mostly of food- and wine-related seminars and tastings, but the event's singular spirits seminar was the most lively I attended this weekend. Yesterday afternoon in a jam-packed room at the Sky Hotel, tequila evangelist Steven Olson led a tasting of extra-anejo mezcal (mezcal is an agave-based spirit produced anywhere in Mexico; tequila is mezcal produced in one of five designated Mexican states), which included bottles that range in retail price from $175-$450 and are so scarce that mezcal geeks (a rapidly growing force) pay several times more online. The seminar was so sought-after that even legendary mixologist Dale DeGroff couldn't land a seat.
 
There was a huge mezcal buzz elsewhere in Aspen. Del Maguey, which produces several single-village mezcals, had one of the most popular booths at the Grand Tasting. Montagna sommelier, Richard Betts, who is a unabashed mezcal fiend, couldn't stop talking about the stuff. (Partly because he's launching his own mezcal label later this year). Betts, Olson and several other wine and spirits experts said this weekend that mezcal is the next big trend in spirits. After tasting about 20 fantastic mezcals this weekend, I think they're right.

Coming to you live from beautiful, sunny Aspen, Colorado, where we're celebrating the 25th annual Food & Wine Classic. The air is thin, the sun is very hot (and close) and the wine is way too free-flowing--not necessarily a great combination unless you exercise some self-control. But hey, we're talking about chefs here, so self-control and wine may be a bit of an oxymoron.
   
On the more educational (and less debauched) side of the wine experience here, Danny Meyer (the restaurateur behind top New York City restaurants like Union Square Cafe, Tabla and Gramercy Tavern) led a seminar on rose wines. But not before he opened the session with an Ethel Merman sing-along of "Everything's Coming Up Roses." The six wines he poured ranged in color from a pale peachy blush to a ripe, sexy crimson and varied in price from $15 to $75. I loved the $75 bottle (Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne) but was way more into the $15 bottles (L'Aire du Rossignol Côte de Provence and R Ose Cabernet Sauvignon Rose McLaren Vale). I'm always happy to drink expensive wines, as long as they're worth it, but when you find a great bottle at a great price, it's worth the altitude-induced light-headedness (the spit buckets were also a little bit out of reach...).

I had barely made it as far as Denver when I ran into celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto, who was also en route to the Classic--but unlike me, he was toting 75 pounds of frozen hamachi!
 
Once in Aspen, I hightailed it over to Laura Werlin’s awesome American farmstead cheese and wine pairing seminar, which she led along with Brian Duncan, the wine director of the spectacular Bin 36 Restaurant and Bin wine cafe in Chicago. Eight cheeses, seven wines, a lot to learn—delicious! For a taste, check out Laura’s James Beard Award-winning The All American Cheese and Wine Book.
 
Next I got to hang out with the ever-spirited and energetic, wildly gesticulating and inspiring José Andrés of DC’s Jaleo, Café Atlantico, Minibar, Zaytinya and Oyamel. His gave a paella tutorial with a mission—to get everyone across America making paella. One of the secrets of a fab paella—nora peppers! Who knew! José is very big on getting home cooks to “get the ingredients talking to each other” and he swears that using the smoked Spanish parika called pimenton regularly will change your life.This amazing ambassador of Spanish cooking has a PBS show called Made in Spain that’s coming soon, and he's launching a hotel next spring with Philippe Starck in Los Angeles called SLS.

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