A Special Fourth

This Fourth of July 2021, among all the 4ths Ann and I have celebrated, was one of the most special. Thanks to COVID, we have been unable to see our friends Donald and Terry since the end of 2019. Thankfully, now that travel restrictions have eased and (at least here in the Pacific Northwest) vaccination rates are high, we are starting to get back to somewhat of normal. Donald and Terry finally made a trip down to the Willamette Valley from their home in Seattle for the first time since 2019. Their lives have been on hold as much as ours have.

Cheers with Soter Brut Rosé

Ann and I had decided, before we knew that Donald and Terry were coming to Oregon, to keep our Fourth of July food simple by grilling hamburgers. At first Ann wanted me to make my freaking awesome potato salad, but through a somewhat convoluted process, we ended up with smashed potatoes with cheddar, bacon, and green onions on the menu. Ann started off wanting to make a flag cake with fresh berries, but the final menu included her terrific summer pudding made of berries and challah.

To further simplify our meal, we decided to buy hamburger buns and challah from local merchants rather than do the baking ourselves. Accordingly, we walked downtown on Thursday and stocked up for our Sunday feast: berries, flowers, burger buns, red onions, red lettuce, green onions, challah, garlic, and ground beef.

Our Haul

Donald Made a Tin of Awesome Parmesan Stars

Delightful 2017 Jacob Martin Pinot

2010 Ghost Hill Pinot in Magnum

After catching up, we settled into a long afternoon of wine, Wine Opoly, and Cards Against Humanity. A wine glass may or may not have been broken. We had an incredible 2017 Walter Scott X Novo Chardonnay with our games. I have not tasted a finer Chardonnay in a very, very long time. Thank you to Don and Terry for this special treat.

Grace Missed Her Friend

Burgers are pretty simple fare and so they rely on the quality of the beef and the toppings. Although I am spoiled for life by the beef from Bill and Holly at Martin's Angus Beef in Virginia, our local Eola Crest beef is excellent. I grilled the burgers to rare and topped them with bleu d'Auvergne which we got at a local cheese shop and which has the perfect creamy texture to melt well on burgers. Initially I wanted to go with an Oregon cheese, but I'm sorry, I won't pay $39 a pound for any cheese. That's what the cheese shop was asking for a local blue.

After baking the bacon between sheet trays in the oven, I roasted the red onion slabs in the bacon grease for a super decadent treat. For a spread for the buns, I used some of the local fresh garlic (did you know that we grow a lot of garlic here in the Willamette Valley?) to make a chipotle aїoli.

Burger Fixings

Smashed Potatoes with Cheddar, Bacon, and Green Onions

For dessert, Ann cooked a bunch of local mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries) in sugar and then layered them and slices of challah in a soufflé dish. Refrigerated overnight, the pudding solidified and unmolded easily. We served that with whipped cream and a mixed berry sorbet that I made from all the leftover berries in the house, plus a bunch of cherries that I liberated from a nearby tree.

Ann's Pudding: Mixed Berries and Challah

Donald texted the following day to call the day "epic." I don't think there is a better way to describe our first visit with friends since the beginning of COVID in 2019.

Donald's 50th

A few weeks back, Donald said that he and Terry were coming down from Seattle to celebrate Donald's 50th birthday and asked if we wanted to do a shellfish boil. Of course! We thought we were doing the do at our house and I would be cooking. But somewhere along the line, the boys rented a really nice apartment above the Methven tasting room in downtown Dundee and brought everything they needed for Terry to cook from Seattle.

We went out to dinner with them Tuesday night at Pura Vida in McMinnville and then they spent all Wednesday morning running around and all the way into Portland to buy the ingredients for dinner. We showed up at 5:30 as Donald was finishing up making the appetizers and Terry was working away on the shellfish.

The Donald

Terry Prepping the Small Lemons

Appetizers

We brought a bottle of Champagne and a nice Chardonnay to go with the lobster while Donald and Terry kicked in two local sparklers and a bottle of Pinot. Of course, they brought Riedel Champagne glasses with them from home!

One of Many Dead Soldiers

Always a Party When These Two are Together

Getting Suited Up for Battle

The Boys Never Forget Anything

Lobster, Clams, Potatoes, Sausage, and Corn

After the delicious feast that Terry prepared, we cut the cakes. Ann started baking a cake for Donald before she realized that he was making his own. We had way too much cake!

Pastry Chef Donald Made His Own Cake

Annie Made Donald a Cake Too

Donald's cake had marionberry jam and lemon curd between the layers and was frosted with buttercream. Ann's cake was lemon with blueberries and was frosted with lemon marionberry cream cheese frosting and topped with lemon rind and mint and Johnny Jump Ups (violas) from our garden. Both cakes were delicious.

I Can't Believe I Ate All This

Wine Country Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a big thing out in Oregon wine country: most wineries have open houses and special events, ours included. And for us too at home it was special, given that this is the first time that we have seen Don and Terry since we moved to the Left Coast. It was also our very first Thanksgiving (and any kind of meal) in our brand new home in McMinnville. Ann had been struggling mightily for a week to try to make it look like a home.

I was fortunate timing-wise in that I have Wednesdays and Thursdays off so that I could spend some time with Don and Terry. They kidnapped Ann on Tuesday and made her do all kinds of terrible things such as visit Soter and Maysara and they even made it to Coelho where I happened to be in the tasting room. After work, we all met up for a very late dinner at Pura Vida on 3rd Street in downtown McMinnville. I can't believe we don't have any photos of that debauchery as we killed several bottles of local Tempranillo.

Don and Terry are members of a lot of wine clubs and so one of their missions while down from Seattle for a few days was to collect their wine at any number of wineries. We tagged along, starting with Trisaetum on Ribbon Ridge bright and early on Wednesday morning, bright being an Oregon euphemism for overcast and raining lightly, which is pretty much our average winter day. And as for early, well, the boys were 15 minutes ahead of us from their B&B in Dayton because we couldn't get ourselves together on Wednesday morning after a late evening on the town. Never fear: sparkling wine helps everything!

Pashey Sparkling at Trisaetum

After tasting through wines at Trisaetum and buying some 2013 Pinot and some Pashey sparkling, we headed back down Ribbon Ridge. As we were going along the dirt road, a coyote stepped out of the woods, walked across the road and turned to face us, its yellow eyes gleaming in the gray and gloomy morning. I have never seen such a beautiful coyote before. This one had an abundance of long, black guard hairs over its coat, giving it a very dark cast. It turned and trotted off into the woods as we approached.

After Trisaetum in Ribbon Ridge, we headed down to Eola Hills and climbed the hill from Hopewell up to Brooks Winery near the top. Brooks is always a circus, but the tasting room seemed pretty subdued on the day before Thanksgiving. We sat at one of the high tops and had lunch.

Lunch at Brooks

Enjoying Rastaban Pinot

A Plug for our Neighbor Winery

Terry's Salmon

My Charcuterie Plate

Charcuterie and Pinot, Does it Get Better?

View East from Brooks, Note the Starlings

Look at the Crazy Birds!

After Brooks, our mission was to head further south to St. Innocent so the guys could pick up more wine. It was fun in tasting through their Pinots which were made from some of the most famous vineyards in Oregon such as Shea and Temperance Hill.

St. Innocent Winery

Afterwards, we headed back up 99-W into McMinnville where I stopped off at Roth's to pick up some cheese and salame for dinner, while the rest of the gang headed back to the house. Back at the house, we might have opened one or several bottles of 2013 Wahle Pinot made at Carlton Winemaker's Studio from Eola-Amity Hills fruit.

Finishing Off the Day with Cheese, Salame, and Wahle Pinot

We said our goodbyes to the guys with a plan to meet about midday on Thursday for our traditional Thanksgiving meal, one we have missed for the last few years while the guys relocated to Seattle and we remained behind in Virginia.

Thanksgiving in a brand new kitchen and without knowing any local suppliers is tough. The very first time I used my new oven was to cook a turkey. And while gas ovens are super finicky with hot spots and cold spots, still I managed to cook a decent looking bird. Too bad it sucked. We took a gamble on a "natural" turkey out of California and it really turned out to be dry, despite all my tricks of the trade: 48-hour brine, compound herb butter under the breast skin, and frequent basting. Next year, we have got to find a better turkey.

The Guest of Honor

It was pretty much a miracle that we got our stuff moved in from storage 6 days beforehand and that we managed to pull of Thanksgiving. All the credit is due to Ann who worked tirelessly to get us unpacked. We still couldn't find half the stuff we needed in the kitchen, but it managed to work. Ann made the roasted garlic mash and her usual great stuffing. I made the bird and gravy. Somehow the green beans got roasted and Donald brought a fabulous pudding for dessert. He always outdoes himself with his pastry confections.

Cheers!

And now for the Dead Soldiers Parade!

2006 Chehalem Ridgecrest Best Barrel

2010 Ghost Hill Bayliss-Bower  in Magnum

2013 Trisaetum Wichmann

An Oregon Pinot Kind of Day

Sunday was just a fantastic day, but then, almost any day tasting Oregon Pinots is, for a pinotphile like me. Donald and Terry invited us to their place for a celebration of sorts and a vertical tasting of Ghost Hill Pinot Noir from 2006, 2007, and 2008 vintages. That we also tasted wines from Maysara, Willamette Valley Vineyards, and Trisaetum just did not suck!



Donald with Maysara Sparkling Pinot Noir Rosé

Our Chef Terry

First Smile in Months! (Angry Teenager Alert)

These Clowns! Drunk and Won't Hold Still for the Photo!

On arriving, Donald poured us each a glass of a new Maysara rosé sparkling wine (100% Pinot Noir) with a few raspberries in each glass. It was hard to get a grip on the wine for the raspberries, but I enjoyed it as an aperitif. The bottle was sealed with a crown cap; commonly used before the dosage and corking, but I've not seen a wine delivered to the customer like this. It makes sense: 750ml bottles of cider and beer come this way. Why not?




We moved quickly on to an appetizer that Ann and I tag-teamed to go with Pinot. I made a mushroom pâté made from local oyster, maitake, and shiitake mushrooms with just a little dollop of black garlic aïoli on top. Ann made a loaf of her fabulous bread, flavored this time with parmesan and black pepper. These are just over-the-top incredible!



Mushroom Pâté with Black Garlic Aïoli

After the appetizers, Terry took over with three courses of fondue, cheese to start, boeuf bourguignon in the middle, and chocolate to finish.

Making the Cheese Fondue

Boeuf Bourguignon Fondue

Sauces for Meats

Peanut Butter Caramel Corn for Chocolate Fondue

Sweets for Chocolate Fondue

I'm just going to say that there were some piggies at the table. I'm not too good with dairy products and so all I did was taste the cheese and chocolate fondues, but suffice it to say that a major hurting was put on the platters of ingredients by the others at the table, Carter first among pigs.

But I  made up for it where wine was concerned. The rogue's gallery:

Ghost Hill "Bayliss-Bower Vineyard" 2006, 2007, and 2008

Trisaetum "Artist Series No. 20" 2012

Willamette Valley Vineyards "Signature Cuveé" 2012

The Ghost Hill wines were very typical of their vintages. 2008 was fairly restrained with bright acidity and red fruit. The hot 2007 vintage gave darker, more plummy fruit, and more body in a softer more plush wine. The 2006, well, typical of 2006, this blew the other wines out of the water and was one of the very best Pinots I have ever tasted. Trisaetum has always been a favorite producer and that's not a surprise given that I love the high-acid, blueberry-core wines that Ribbon Ridge fruit produces. And it sure wasn't fair tasting the WVV 2010 after all this other wine.

Guys, thank you for a delightful Sunday!