ALTHOUGH I'VE LONG been an admirer of Alice Waters, I'd never actually heard her preach the gospel of fresh food until this past Sunday. Setting: the arbor at Niebaum-Coppola Winery in Rutherford. Rows of chairs set up on the grass under shade trees rustling in a light breeze. Behind the podium, a small pavilion selling copies of Waters's latest book, Chez Panisse Fruit (HarperCollins, $34.95). As we sat there under the waving branches, listening to funny stories about peaches, it struck me that the whole scene was very 19th century. It could have been the Fourth of July in Hannibal, Mo.; or perhaps Lincoln and Douglas would follow Waters to the podium to debate the issues of the day.

They didn't, of course, though Waters did mention Bill Clinton, whom, she confided, she had planned to enlist to her cause by feeding him an all-peach dinner. An image of deep-fried peaches – perhaps supersize deep-fried peaches – flitted through my mind. But of course there is no such thing as deep-fried peaches, at least I hope not, and if there were, I can't imagine Alice Waters dealing in such heresy.

Much as I enjoy reminiscing about the former president's low appetites, much as I was charmed by the bucolic setting and by Waters's stories of three decades at Chez Panisse, I found myself thinking mainly of traffic. Hellish traffic coming and, surely, going. Traffic so bad that before we'd gotten over the Golden Gate Bridge I found myself asking aloud whether the jaunt was even worth making; traffic snarled through central San Rafael, at the intersection of Highway 37 and Lakeville Road, at the Sears Point Raceway, where hundreds upon hundreds of pickup trucks had assembled for some sort of automotive spectacle.

There is a certain irony in talking about the "wine country," as if the Napa Valley were still rural and slow instead of tense and clotted with Land Rovers. Every now and then you do see an unvarnished little building beside the road, or a side lane without much traffic on it, but for the most part the valley now screams "exurbia." If the wine country ever was a place to escape the city and its consumption madnesses, it is no longer. It is, in fact, the city, packed in and out by weekend day-trippers whose idea of unwinding is to drink their lattes from paper cups.

I would like to say that I bore each traffic affront patiently, that I thoughtfully ate a ripe peach while waiting for the Sears Point mob to make the turn east for Vacaville. But that sort of calm is no longer the custom of the country.