Yes, we are in the middle of crush here in Sonoma County. Yes, trucks hauling bins behind them are clattering up and down the road dropping whole clusters in their wake. Yes, when you walk into The Flying Goat, half of the people there have bags under their eyes and cuticles dyed purple.

But I’m not talking about those grapes.

I’m talking about the giant box of blush-colored table grapes my neighbor left on our porch the other day. I have long been enamored with the romantic notion of cooking with the excess bounty of harvest, as the Umbrians are wont to do. But while wine grapes are perfect for (duh) making wine, I find their thick skins and pesky little seeds less than desirable in the kitchen. So I took one look at that box of seedless beauties (grown in Dry Creek Valley, mind you) and set out to find the skewers.

{  Grilled Sausage and Grape Skewers  }

This recipe, my slightly off-kilter ode to harvest, was adapted from Micol Negrin’s gem of a book, The Italian Grill.

1–1/2 pounds fennel sausage links (about 4), pricked several times with the tines of a fork
1 pound red table grapes (or, if you’re adventurous, wine grapes)
24 1–inch cubes of rustic bread
Olive oil for brushing
Salt and pepper
12 long metal skewers

Preheat grill to medium high and grill sausage links for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until just about cooked through. Remove from grill (keep the grill on, though) and cut links into slices roughly the width of your grapes.

Thread one cube of bread onto the skewer, followed by 2 or 3 grapes, a piece of sausage, a few more grapes, another sausage, and so on until you reach the top of the skewer. Top it with another cube of bread and repeat with the rest of the skewers.

Brush (or spray) the skewers with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then grill for 1–2 minutes per side, until grapes are just starting to collapse and bread has toasted golden-brown.

Serves 4

What to drink: We opened a 2006 Clos du Bois Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (I think I was inspired by an e-mail from Erik that day) and it was FABULOUS with this meal. There’s a good amount of complexity to this wine—as there is to this dish, despite the short ingredient list. The flavors meld well with the fruity, earthy, yeasty flavors of the skewers, yet the tannins are soft enough that they don’t run roughshod over the nuances of the pairing.