WINED, DINED IN YOSEMITE VINTNERS, CHEFS STAND READY TO ENHANCE A WINTER VISIT.

Byline: Eric Noland Travel Editor

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK - On the tramp through the snow to Mirror Lake and back, the sub-freezing chill will seek out and assault every patch of exposed skin. It will threaten to penetrate any protective covering you've donned: wool, down, nylon, leather. Each footfall will find you crunching two or three inches into the snow, the exertion approximating a trudge along an extremely cold beach.

Such an undertaking can be exhilarating in the still of winter at Yosemite National Park, but by day's end it's understandable to want to mitigate the experience by engaging in some simple indulgences. Fine food and drink in a stately lodge, for example.

Yosemite has you covered. Imagine sitting down to a dish of tea-smoked duck in red curry, accented with a smooth pinot noir from Sonoma County's Russian River Valley, then walking across the feudal hall that is the Ahwahnee hotel's dining room to discuss the wine with the woman who made it, or inquiring about the entree's spices with the man who prepared it.

This is the sumptuous experience that awaits anyone who ventures into the Yosemite Valley during its slackest - and arguably its most blissful - season.

The park is renowned for its Bracebridge Dinner, an Old English feast and music program that is offered on a few occasions over the Christmas holidays. But that event is a tough ticket; so popular, in fact, that a lottery is held annually to select the guest list.

Infinitely more accessible but just as much fun are the park's Vintners' Holidays and Chefs' Holidays, two- and three-day events held over weekday periods during the winter.

The Vintners' Holidays, offered in November and December, feature informational tasting seminars presided over by notable winemakers, and conclude with an elegant dinner at which courses are matched with the vintners' wines.

At the Chefs' Holidays, offered this month and next, cooking demonstrations are conducted by renowned restaurant chefs, with tasting portions of several courses provided to participants. This session, of course, also concludes with a lavish dinner presided over by one of the guest chefs.

The wine and cooking seminars help take up slack during Yosemite's slowest tourist season, said park concessions spokeswoman Karen Hales. They also provide a dash of spice for travelers who are already drawn to Yosemite for the park's astonishing beauty and serenity in the depths of winter.

There are fewer outdoor activities to engage in when the high-mountain valley is nestled beneath a blanket of white, but there are also far fewer people. The park welcomed 3.55 million visitors in 2000, but less than 14 percent of that total was logged in January, February, November and December.

Many visitors at this time of year venture out in the morning to survey icy waterfalls and navigate snow-shrouded trails, then duck into the Ahwahnee's Great Hall when the chill begins to wear them down. The afternoon seminars and evening dinners are available to all visitors, whether they're staying in the luxurious Ahwahnee, the comfortable Yosemite Lodge or the spartan tent cabins of Curry Village. Regular-running shuttle buses in the valley can serve as designated drivers.

The sessions provide obvious mutual benefits. Food-and-wine enthusiasts can learn about their passions from the actual people who produce them - not tasting-room personnel or wait staff. And the vintners and chefs - particularly those hailing from small operations with minimal marketing budgets - get an opportunity to enlighten potential customers.

``Any time I can get the word out, more power to me,'' said Nick Blinoff, chef at the acclaimed Mandevilla restaurant in Westlake Village. He'll be conducting a cooking demonstration at the Ahwahnee as part of a Chefs' Holiday late this month. ``People on these holidays are doing a lot of traveling. They may not be from this area, but I'm sort of alerting them. When they're in the (Los Angeles) area, they might think of Mandevilla and drop by.''

Blinoff, whose demonstration will highlight cooking with fresh herbs, added: ``It's exciting for me to showboat a little bit and open some eyes to the style of what I'm doing over here.''

For guests engaging in the seminars, one of the appeals is the amount of information dispensed in such a leisurely setting.

At a Vintners' Holiday in early December, Merry Edwards, who presides over a small namesake winery in the Sonoma County community of Forestville, provided a glimpse behind the scenes of a fascinating business - but did so in a gentle manner using terms that laymen could grasp. She talked of her favorite plots of vines as if they were cherished pets. Edwards hasn't yet tapped the L.A. retail market, so her session was a revelation for visitors from Southern California.

Kent Rosenblum, who doesn't own vineyards but instead buys zinfandel grapes from regions all over Northern California, produces his wines at Rosenblum Cellars, a small operation in San Francisco's East Bay. He brought several barrel samplings to his session, then held forth (with droll humor) on what he expected of the wines come the bottling stage.

Bob Lindquist, of highly acclaimed Qupe in Santa Barbara County, doesn't have a tasting room at his winery, so this was a prime opportunity to gauge the subtle differences in his syrahs and hear about where the grapes were grown, which weather conditions they favor, etc.

The two-day session was presided over by Doug Frost, a wine expert from Kansas City, Mo., who had the rare gift of being able to impart an impressive store of knowledge, pepper his remarks with humor and never once lapse into snob-speak. While straying into the technical details of de-stemming pinot noir grapes, he caught himself and said, ``I don't want to geek out on you here.'' And while inviting guests to a special 10 a.m. session of Madeira tastings (some bottled more than 150 years ago), he grinned and intoned, ``Breakfast of champions!''

But the highlight - as is surely the case with all the vintners' and chefs' events - was the concluding dinner, held under 34-foot ceilings and massive sugar pine rafters of the Ahwahnee's baronial dining room. As we arrived at our table set for eight, even the place settings hinted that it would be a lavish affair: three forks, three knives, three spoons, and four wine glasses lined up like sentries along the upper-right side of the plate.

The day's exertions in Yosemite's winter wonderland would surely be soothed with this lineup:

Barbecued lobster with pea-shoot relish and ginger-corn puree, accented with a chilled glass of Lindquist's viognier. ``You're drinking 1 percent of my production,'' he told the assembly of 200 or so. Then came a black-mushroom consomme with Chinese cabbage, which caused vintner Steve MacRostie to lament that his delicate Carneros chardonnay was such a poor pairing with the sledgehammer spices of the course. (The winemakers are consulted about the appropriate dishes for their wines, but somehow the ball got dropped on this one.) Then, after a refresher course, there was the tea-smoked duck with Edwards' pinot noir, followed by an array of cheeses with one of Rosenblum's robust zinfandels, followed by ... oh, who knew by that point?

Guests this month and next will be afforded similar experiences at the Chefs' Holidays. Hales, the spokeswoman, noted that all chefs in the program are either winners or nominees of prestigious James Beard Foundation culinary awards. They will work from a riser, she said, with a mirror angled above them, and will field questions from the seminar participants throughout the demonstration.

Blinoff said his 90-minute session will involve the preparation of a five-course meal, with enough prepared to provide tasting samples of each course for 200 guests. ``The general premise of my demonstration is just to show how easy it is to heighten the taste of dishes with fresh herbs,'' he said. ``Every course is going to highlight one herb.''

He and the other chefs presiding over the upcoming sessions are likely to be assured a rapt audience. That was certainly the case in December, as guests seized afternoon opportunities to sip and learn at the knees of master vintners, sometimes by the fireplace after the sessions concluded.

It was an easy call. Hey, it's cold out there.

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: From Los Angeles, travelers will drive north on Interstate 5 and Highway 99 to Fresno, then face a choice. Highway 41 offers a more direct route to Yosemite Village, but it is more susceptible to winter weather travails. A better option in winter is to continue north on Highway 99 to Merced, then proceed into the park on Highway 140, which is more roundabout but follows lower elevations. The former route is a 314-mile drive from L.A., the latter 354 miles. Snow chains are an imperative on either route. One shortcut tip: As you near Merced on Highway 99, watch for the turnoff to the town of Planada. This short detour on a country road will save you a lot of time and miles en route to Highway 140. And don't worry about missing an opportunity to fill up the tank. There are gas stations in Catheys Valley and Mariposa along Highway 140, and we discovered (too late) that fuel here is priced significantly lower than at the Merced stations at the 99-140 junction. Information on Yosemite road and trail conditions: [phone].

GETTING AROUND: Once in the park, you can abandon your car and take advantage of Yosemite's free shuttle, which regularly services the areas open in winter - the village, the Ahwahnee, Yosemite Lodge, Curry Village.

COSTS: A fee of $20 per vehicle is assessed for entering the national park. It is good for seven days.

LODGING: In Yosemite's slow winter season, standard rooms at Yosemite Lodge and Curry Village can be had for about $100 per night (rates slightly lower midweek). At the Ahwahnee hotel, rates are $326 nightly for all days of the week. Inclined to rough it? You can get into a tent cabin at Curry Village for about $50 nightly. And if you're really hardy, you'll find two Yosemite Valley campgrounds open throughout winter. They are Upper Pines ($18 per site per night) and Camp 4 Walk-In ($5 per person per night). Lodging information and reservations: [phone]; www.yosemitepark.com. Camping reservations: [phone].

DINING: It's difficult to beat the majesty of the Ahwahnee's dining room - a 130-foot hall with 34-foot open-beam ceilings, 75-year-old stained-glass windows, and medieval battle banners hanging from above. The cuisine here is outstanding, and the experience memorable, but it can put some deep dents in your bank account if you eat here regularly. For a change of pace, consider the Mountain View restaurant at Yosemite Lodge, which has excellent food and a strong wine list at much more reasonable prices.

CHEFS, VINTNERS, BRACEBRIDGE: This year's chefs' program runs through February. Packages for two people for a two-night event are priced at $729 for the Ahwahnee, $449 for the Yosemite Lodge. For a three-night event, it's $999 at the Ahwahnee, $529 at the Yosemite Lodge. Priced separately, the chefs' dinner is $139.75 per person. The schedule for next winter's vintners' and chefs' events has been set, although the winemakers and chefs have not yet been identified. The Bracebridge Dinner, held annually on several occasions around Christmas, is so popular that a lottery is conducted to select participants. Requests for applications for this year's dinner will be accepted through Jan. 15, and completed applications must be received by the park's concessionaire by Feb. 15. Information: [phone]; www.yosemitepark.com (click on ``Special Events & Offers'').

INFORMATION: Upon entering the park, keep an eye out for the Yosemite Guide, a newsprint publication that is packed with valuable information. It costs 25 cents and is available at the Yosemite Valley Visitors Center and other locations. The Yosemite Concessions Web site, listed above, is particularly helpful. The national park Web site has not been operational in recent weeks. When it is up and running, its address is www.nps.gov/yose.

CAPTION(S):

7 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 4 -- color) Yosemite's stately Ahwahnee hotel is the scene of seminars of fine wine, above right, and dining during the winter season. Yosemite Valley is a snow-shrouded idyll at this time of year, allowing visitors to take in such sights as granite faces reflected in the Merced River, right, and deer searching for nibbles of greenery in the snow.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

(5) No need to worry about traffic jams in Yosemite during the winter. With the summer crowds gone, even roads near Yosemite Village - where Half Dome looms in the distance - are all but devoid of vehicles.

Reed Saxon/Special to Great Escapes

(6) Some well-bundled tourists negotiate the icy walkway at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls.

(7) Bob Lindquist, left, of the Qupe Winery in Santa Barbara County, and moderator Doug Frost answer questions at a wine seminar at Ahwahnee Hotel.

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IF YOU GO (see text)