Inspired Imbiber 2.0

White Pinot noir?

OK, I promise this is my last Domaine Serene post for awhile, but I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the Coeur Blanc that Tony Rynders makes there.

This is a white Pinot noir. My business partner reminded me that this is not a unique wine, there have been other so-called "white Pinot noirs" trotted out at various times in Oregon's Pinot-centric history. Those wines are to Domaine Serene’s Coeur Blanc what wine coolers are to Bordeaux. There's been no other white Pinot noir like this one--if only because it is made as a true white wine, not as a pale blush version of a red wine.

I first tasted this wine over a year ago with Tony at a lunch at the Dundee Bistro. It was a hard wine to figure out: golden in the glass and weighty on the tongue, it had flavors of yellow fruits (or was it just my overlay of what I expected from a chardonnay-appearing wine?) with hints of . . . could it be strawberry? It was velvety viscous in texture, plump with flavor, and lingering on the finish. I liked it, but I didn't quite know what to make of it.

Another winemaker, Rollin Soles, of Argyle, stopped by, and Tony gave him a taste of the Coeur Blanc. Rollin sipped it, swallowed, thought a moment, and then wry commented "Where's the acidity?" Well, yes, the wine had a certain soft quality, but it didn't seem that it came from a lack of acidity, but rather a surfeit of smooth texture: it was like satin on the tongue.

The first vintage of Coeur Blanc was in 2004, and the winery has recently released—and quickly sold out of—the 2005 version.

Tony is justifiably proud of his two Coeur Blanc wines. He looks for large-berried Pinot noir (to reduce the skin-to-juice ratio) from estate grapes, presses the whole clusters (again to minimize skin contact) and then barrel-ages the pure Pinot juice on the lees (in this case mostly pulp since no skin contact is allowed). The wine rests 15 months in barrels and then another 12 months in bottle before release.

The color is of light crystalline amber while the aromas are a shifting blend of fig meat, apricot, and pear skin with a creamy quality and almost a tincture of caramel. In the mouth the wine has a sturdy consistency that carries complex flavors of strawberries, ripe apricot, a touch of lemon curd, and suggestions of vanilla crème brûlée. Sufficient acidity enlivens the wine, and a candied fruit finish is pleasing.

Pinot Noir made like a white wine is an intriguing novelty. Does it taste like a Pinot noir? Yes and no. There are undeniable traits of red fruits, yet the color almost forces you to taste Chardonnay-like flavors. It is rich and quite delicious. I almost want to pour it and the winery’s Evenstad Reserve into side-by-side black tasting glasses and see how easy it is to tell the white from the red.

But in the end, it isn’t important: the Coeur Blanc stands on its own as an excellent Oregon Pinot noir—that happens to be white.

2004 Domaine Serene Evenstad Reserve

So as I was saying, I’ve been on a bit of a Domaine Serene binge of late.

It hasn’t been all that purposeful, though, more the luck of the draw. It began at a dinner with some friends a month or two ago when they pulled out a bottle of 2004 Evenstad Reserve that was lush and delish and went wonderfully with the just-caught grilled salmon.

No big surprise there. Domaine Serene is unquestionably one of the most visible Oregon Pinot brands (who could miss their full-page advertising in Wine Spectator, not to mention the laudatory feature editorial piece they did earlier this year), with a reputation for top quality wines. Winemaker Tony Rynders is a deftly skilled and consistently reliable maker of richly satisfying wines from the winery’s estate vineyards in the Dundee Hills and Eola Hills area of the Willamette Valley. The Evenstad Reserve is their flagship wine, the embodiment of the winery's style and approach to Oregon pinot.

What did surprise me about the ’04 Domaine Serene Pinot I had that night was its depth and length. I’ve been a contrarian when it comes to the much vaunted 2004 vintage of Oregon Pinot noir. Most critics have lauded the fruit and the balance of the wines, yet I found an almost universal lack of depth (little or no real sense of layers of different flavors developing in the mouth) and length (the wines seemed all up-front and had little lingering flavor sensations).

It is fair to say I’m not a fan of Oregon ’04 Pinot.

But the Evenstad Reserve did have all those qualities I like to see in a top Pinot: the fruitiness had layers of flavors, ranging from a brambly, wild red cherry sort of fruitiness to ripe raspberry and even a touch of softening blueberry lurking in the background. The fruit didn’t all come out gushing forward, the flavors held back and developed, they also stayed in my mouth nicely. The tripartate balance between acidity, tannin, and fruit was wonderfully managed, with no single component outshining the others.

I don’t recall this wine being this way at release; it seems to have matured nicely in the bottle. Perhaps that is what the 2004 vintage requires: a few years of bottle age. If this Evenstad Reserve is an example of a vintage taking on depth and complexity, then it seems I should start pulling out my other 2004 Pinots to try!

Wine . . . Pouring . . . Down Her Front . . .

I’ve been on a Domaine Serene bender of late. I’ve had a number of their newer and older wines in the last few weeks (more on that in my next post), but I’ve never had a stranger imbibing experience than the one I had with a Domaine Serene wine this last weekend.

Actually, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the wine, and frankly, it was mostly my wife’s experience—but I was a part of it and it was all rather odd nevertheless.

Things went down like this: I stood in my cellar debating with myself (as I always do) which Pinot to open for a straightforward Saturday-night-at-home meal. I looked at my choices and found all sorts of reasons not to choose every wine I looked at (I’m saving that ‘02 Arcus for an Archery Summit vertical . . . there’s only two bottles left of that St. Innocent ‘98—Parker’s favorite from that vintage, as I recall . . . it’s too early to drink that Freedom Hill . . .and so on).

I spied a 1998 Domaine Serene Reserve, counted off five additional bottles in the racks, and decided I could live large with that one. I took it upstairs, opened the cabinet where we keep the Riedel, and pulled out two glasses: an ordinary Riedel burgundy glass and a Riedel Oregon pinot noir glass that had the Domaine Serene label etched on it. That was my glass—heck, why not? Andrea could have the standard glass.

I opened the wine, poured a bit into one of the glasses, smelled it, and poured a serving out into each glass. One in each hand, I took them downstairs where Andrea was sitting reading the paper. I handed her her glass and turned to go into the other room to get something.

Suddenly Andrea sharply exclaimed “AHHH! What happened?” I whirled around to see a pained and puzzled expression on her face as she rather frantically waved her hand with the wine glass—that was empty. “Is there a hole in my glass, or what?” she asked with a panicky edge.

Ha, ha, I thought, very funny. Yes, there’s a big hole in your glass, it’s right up there at the top.

I was about to tell her how irritated I was that she downed that fine, aged, and rare pinot noir in a single slug when she pleadingly said. “I never had any wine! It never reached my mouth! What happened?”

I was trying to understand what she was babbling on about. What did she mean she never had any wine? Her glass was empty. She didn’t pour it out over her shoulder . . . did she?

“It just disappeared,” she said plaintively, “I never tasted it!”

It was then that I noticed a hefty drip of red liquid coming off her arm and spilling onto the rug and not knowing what to say, I just pointed. She looked down, and we both saw a large red stain across her arm, and then a splatter of wine across her chest. The fact that she was wearing a red sweater had at first obscured the spilled wine.

“I didn’t spill it!” she said.

“Yes,” I replied casually, “I’m afraid you did.”

“But I didn’t! I just raised the glass to my mouth and there was nothing there.”

Uh huh. At that point I was getting a little worried. Had she suffered some kind of mini-stroke and was not aware of how her hand must have just missed her mouth as she poured the wine down her front?

“I . . . did . . . NOT . . . spill it," she said with firmness tinged by rising fury, "I don’t know what happened.”

With some concern I gently took the empty glass from her hand. “You just sit there and I’ll clean up things.”

I took the glass and held it up to the light. It looked normal. I turned it a bit. It was fine. A little water on that side perhaps, where a slight reflection caught my attention. I turned to look at the spot. Everything was normal . . . wait, is that . . .?

I turned the glass again and brought it closer. Right there at the widest point of the bowl a small, neat, kidney shaped hole could just be seen. It was reasonably large, but remarkably difficult to see. There WAS a hole in the glass: a strange, unaccountable and barely visible hole in the Riedel glass.

Andrea was right; she hadn’t spilled the wine. The wine had spilled itself!

Apparently the nearly invisible hole had been positioned just right, so that when she tipped the glass to her mouth the wine neatly poured out of the hole so that none of it got to her lips. The bulk and color of her sweater meant that she neither felt nor saw the wine pour out of the glass.

How the tidy little hole got there we’ll never know. But we’re both happy—in the end—that we found it . . . it explained a lot of things that were beginning to become worryingly puzzling.

And the wine? Well, once we got things cleaned up, laughed off a lot of relived tension, and sat back with a new and more carefully inspected glass, the wine proved wonderful (more on this wine, and other Domaine Serene releases I've been reveling in, soon)!

Now It Can Be Told

OK, our issue is out the door and in subscribers' hands, so I can get on with talking a bit more about Kelley's Autumn Sunset cocktail, one of the three drinks we commissioned for our magazine (see the earlier posting "Kelley's Concoctions". . . as well as the image of all three cocktails at upper left).

We had asked Kelley to use a Northwest spirit, which was the basic idea behind the three cocktails we were featuring on our cover. He fiddled with some favorites, and settled on the toughest local spirit I can think of: aquavit.

Portland distillers Lee Medoff and Christian Krogstad make up House Spirits Distillery. Their products are damn good in my mouth, and partly because they tend to be bold. Their Krogstad Aquavit is just that: bold with the flavor of caraway and herbs . . . a difficult base upon which to build a cocktail!

Aquavit is a traditional Scandinavian beverage often consumed with a meal, and particularly favored around Christmas. It is not particularly popular in America . . . the Krogstad Aquavit may be the only purely American-made and authentically-styled aquavit on the market.) The predominant flavor is caraway, and plenty of it—a minimum of 5% in European products. It can be aged in casks to acquire depth and color, or presented as a perfectly clear and somewhat daring shot. In fact, many people drink their aquavit ice cold as a fast shot. Me, I prefer to sip mine.

But Kelley mixed it. To the aquavit base he added the sweetness of Cointreau and the bitterness of amaro. He added two dashes of his house made bitters as well.

The result is a deliciously unctuous cocktail with a distinct herbal edge, lightly sweet, and with a bit of a kick.

When my wife first tasted the drink she said it should be called the Elke Sommer after the Scandinavian sexpot of the Sixties. The drink was sultry like Elke, and Scandinavian to boot. Kelley . . . who is of a younger generation, was not aware of Elke's allure for males of my generation, but he did comment that he liked the edgy aspect of the name.

But, Autumn Sunset won out for Northwest Palate readers. And to look at the drink, you can see why it was given that name: it is a rich hue of warm auburn-to-mahogany color, with a golden glint. Just like a fall sunset in the great Northwest.

If you want to impress Kelley, go into the bar and ask for an Autumn Sunset (it is not on ten 01's drinks menu)! Or better yet go get the ingredients and make one for yourself . . .

Interlude: Dueling Sommeliers

OK, so I promised to continue on the cocktail created by Kelley at ten01 in Portland . . . except that I don't want to scoop myself!

You see, the cocktail and recipe will be featured in the November/December issue of Northwest Palate magazine (of which I am co-publisher), and the magazine itself will not be in the mailboxes of subscribers until November 1. So, I will wait until the print publication to further describe the cocktail. But when I do, I'll also include a neat photo of it, along with the others that we had created. Oh, and you can find Northwest Palate on the newsstands early in November.

In the meantime, there was a recent event here in Portland that I thought was tremendous fun . . . and which is worthy of a short interlude to describe.

Throughout the summer four intrepid Portland sommeliers matched wits and knowledge in a series of “Dueling Sommelier” dinners held at the Heathman Restaurant. With the best wine and food pairings being voted on by the diners themselves, an ultimate victor was acclaimed after the fifth and final dinner, heldlast month.

Raise a glass for Jeff Groh, sommelier at the Heathman whose pairings reigned supreme!

But raise a glass as well for the pluck of Erica Landon of ten01, Ken Collura of Andia, and Jamie Garrett, then of Bluehour. Each of these sommeliers gamely applied their skills in what amounted to a local challenge of the wine-pairing champions.

And the challenge was not easy. Playing off a different menu for each of the dinners, the somms were first served the multi-course meal without wine. They then went away, thought about what they had tasted, and prepared their individual wine pairings for each course purely from memory. A few weeks later the meal was prepared again, but this time for the public, with each of the selected wines served blind to the attentive audience (George Riedel, head of the famous glass company, was in attendance at one of the dinners). The diners then voted on their favorite pairings per course, without knowing which sommelier they were voting for.

After the first three dinners the scores were narrow among the four. The dishes, prepared by Heathman Chef Philippe Boulot (and a few special guest chefs) had offered everything from fusion (vichyssoise with uni) to Northwest (bacon wrapped venison) to the exotic (rabbit confit with escabeche and huacatay ceviche) to French (braised short rib a la Provencal). But after the fourth dinner there were two remaining contenders: Erica Landon and Jeff Groh.

Though the final scores after the fifth, grand finale dinner, were only a hair apart, Groh’s selections had barely edged out Landon’s. (That's Jeff on the left.)

Rematch anyone?

Probably next year. Though there is no set schedule yet, the talk is that the Dueling Sommelier Dinners will return. Which somms dare compete? Whose pairings will win out? We'll all have to wait and see!

Kelley's Concoctions

Imbibing is inspiring—and not simply because of the uninhibitory powers of the accumulated alcohol that can result from the activity. Though that doesn't hurt.

No, imbibing is inspiring because of the cosmos of taste sensations you can experience within the crystal confines of a glass. Much as a fine meal can be an organoleptic orgasm, so a well-crafted beverage can inspire paroxysms of ecstasy.

This truth was reinforced recently as we worked to create three "exclusive" cocktails for the cover of our holiday issue of Northwest Palate magazine. The idea was to use local Northwest distilled products to create a "Spirits of the Season" theme.

Cool, I thought, that will mean research. And testing.

But where to get the recipes in the first place?

One of them was a natural. Last Christmas our office spect the day before our holiday vacation touring Portland's Clear Creek Distillery. During a tasting with proprietor Steven McCarthy, my business partner, Cameron Nagel, had the affrontery (albeit while McCarthy was out of the room) to combine two of Clear Creek's signature spirits into a uniqque drink Cameron calls the Firry Pear.

The second recipe, after some tribulation, was delivered by a premium mixologist in Vancouber, B.C.

And the third I took on as a personal project. (To learn more about all the cocktails, you'll have to get yourself a copy of the November/December issue of Northwest Palate magazine--available on newsstands. But, for the attentive reader of this blog, here's a deal: email me here and request a copy of the magazine—with your name and physical mailing address—and I'll mail it to you for free.)

I knew from the start who I wanted to recruit to make our third Northwest Spirits of the Season cocktail: Kelley Swenson, Bar Manager at Portland's ten 01 restaurant. Though swanky in a polished, upscale sort of way, ten 01 sports a down to earth staff of highly competent professionals. Behind the bar, Kelley is an unassuming but somehow potent presence. Able to blend into the background for patrons uninterested in the cocktail arts, Kelley can quickly take center stage for the aficionado seeking special drink sensations.

I first appreciated Kelley's skills when, in answer to the cliched "What'll you have?" I responded "I don't know . . . just make me something." Not rising to the easy bait, Kelley answered back "What do you normally like to drink?" A cocktail conversation then ensued. The result was a series of Kelley's own concoctions designed to ferret from me his own sense of my spirits style.

Did I like his Truth Teller (rye, a killer vermouth unlike any I'd had before, Fernet Branca, and the perhaps supercillious addition of Kelley's own house-made bitters), or did I prefer the Corpse Lifter (Number Two, no less)—or was the Ol' Flame (remarkably good with oysters on the half shell) more my style?

From my reactions to his concoctions, Kelley began to get a sense for what I liked.

So when I came to him with the idea of composing a cocktail for our readers, he was all smiles.

There were a few restrictions on his creativity, though. We asked him to use a Northwest-produced spirit (not hard to do, when in Oregon alone there are nearly two dozen artisan distillers) and asked him to use something that gave it a bit of color . . . for the cover shot, you know.

Kelley went away and worked. He devised a recipe based on the rather unusual and quite distinctive Krogstadt Aquavit produced by Portland's own House Spirits.

. . . and to see just what the drink was, you'll have to wait for my next post . . .

Pacific Northwest Potation . . . 2.0

Yes, I admit it, I’m a failure.

Well, ok, maybe not a failure—perhaps it’s just that I get discouraged too easily.

I began Inspired Imbiber* full of the promise of the blog, chest jutting out proudly, thesaurus at my side, ready to scribally share my experiences and insights with fellow travelers in the world of Pacific Northwest potation. I strove to write cleverly, informatively, perceptively—even perspicaciously. I found photos to add to the blog, people to quote in the blog, places to visit in the bog, and organoleptic delights to describe in the blog. I awoke each week with thoughts of fresh subjects to write about.

Two comments over three months is all I received in return. And let’s not talk about the blog metrics reports.

So I should expect more?

One source I checked (Technorati) estimates that in September of 2007 there were over 106 million blogs in the ‘sphere; nearly two are created every minute. Someone should care about the Inspired Imbiber??

Deflated and dispirited, I let the light of my vision die out, and the effluence of my verbiage ebb.

I’ll imbibe in silence, I concluded.

Sigh . . .

But NO! That is not the way of the word warrior . . . that is not the spirit of the Inspired Imbiber! There is goodness to share, there are experiences people will want to read about. There is an audience, and I’ll find it . . . by gum.

OK, all humor aside, one of the ways blogs find their audience is through the assiduous linking of posts amidst the tapestry of the web. Simply writing isn’t enough—you have to market your blog spewings in the laissez-faire bourse of the Internet.

I am used to the print world. My day job is co-owner, co-publisher, wine editor for a 20-year old food, wine, and culinary travel magazine called Northwest Palate. We cover the Northwest Epicurean Lifestyle . . . and we live that lifestyle large—in print, and increasingly Internetally.

And we will be doing more of all that. For verily, I have much to say about the wisdom of Northwest Imbibing, the inspiration of Imbibing, and the joys of Imbibing in the great Pacific Northwest (meaning Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Idaho). And along the way, I have the hubris to believe that I can impart some information, some hard won intelligence about the world of drink, that might be helpful—and perhaps even fun—to other interested parties.

Did someone say party?

Stay tuned . . . there’s drinks for all . . .

*Inspired Imbiber 1.0 used a different blogging platform and is accessible at www.nwpalate.com