An Oasis of Taste : Wine Garden Cheers Culture-Seeking Adults at Fair

It’s a mere 40 paces from the petting zoo and 20 from a beef barbecue stand, yet the Los Angeles County Fair’s wine garden stands gloriously out of reach of caramel- candy- sticky baby hands and far from the scary screams of repetitive carnival music.

Amid the kids, the crowds, the beads of sweat off the carnies’ brows, there is a place at the fair for adults. The wine garden and pavilion, the museum art gallery and the fair’s flower and garden showcase offer air-conditioned civility and even--dare it be said--culture.

“If they didn’t have this, I wouldn’t be here,” said Edward Korajczyk, reclining in the canopied comfort of the outdoor wine garden, pinot noir in hand. “How many fairs can you go to and taste gold medal wines?’

For 17 years, the Chicago native and his family have relished some of the finest fermented fruits of the vine that the fair offers in its annual wine tasting bar. The very best wines, as determined by international panelists sampling some 2,000 entries, are on display at the Wine Pavilion and out for tasting in the wine garden. (Oh yes, and there’s a sectioned off corner for microbrew tasting too.)

Seated around a tres European white metal table, the family of wine aficionados--Korajczyk, his wife, Dorothy; their son, John; and John’s wife, Hanna--said they had sampled a total of six wines by noon. And Korajczyk estimated that by the end of the day, they would have sampled a total of 40.

“We don’t spend 10 hours in here, tossing them down,” he promised. The family said it would go home sober because the attractions that draw other people to the fair serve as time-killing diversions for the Korajczyks.

Like the fans they attract, the wines are not exclusively Californian, or even American. Korajczyk said he was contemplating trying a Texas or Washington variety of red wine once he downed--er, sipped--the last of his 1994 Santa Maria Valley glass.

Those who come to the fair in pursuit of the finer things in life usually know how to find them, said Ed Gong, 70, a Berkeley artist who has made the trip to the Pomona fairgrounds for the last five years.

Studiously writing critiques in his black wireless sketch pad, Gong said he eschewed the wine pavilion, preferring instead the sweeter bouquets of the flower and garden show.

A former dance instructor--who will interrupt himself to correct a passing stranger’s posture with a matter-of-fact “you’re slouching”--Gong traveled south to spend three hours of a recent afternoon analyzing the artistry of the flower pavilion’s 16 floral displays. He rated each display based on beauty, motion and use of space.

And he hated almost all of them.

“Once you have a central idea, you want everything to establish that idea. But this doesn’t do that,” he said, looking askance at a barrel of sunflowers.

Where Gong’s artistic integrity was not insulted, he said, was at the Millard Sheets Gallery.

County fair art galleries elsewhere may display homemade magnets of dried apples painted to look like old people, but at the L.A. County Fair, visitors are greeted by original Warhols as they walk through the door.

With its “Art and the Athlete” theme this year, the gallery has managed to appeal to the black-turtleneck crowd without scaring off the pig farmers, said curator and artist Christy Johnson.

And once they’re drawn in, Johnson makes sure members of the public get an education by stationing four artists in the gallery daily.

The artists interact with on-lookers to teach--and in their best-case scenarios--to sell.

“Yesterday evening, I had a couple in here debating whether to buy this [sculpture] or that one,” said a sculptor who calls himself Dodd, pointing to two chefs-d’oeuvre. Each carried a price tag of $1,200--which at the fair buys a helluva lot of hot dogs. “Which is good.”