McMinnville July 2024

Once spring arrives and before fall closes the summer growing season, we try to get back over to McMinnville in the Willamette Valley to shop at the farmers market and to revisit the town where we used to live before coming across the Cascades to Bend. We have a goal of making the trip once a month, centered around Thursdays, the day of the McMinnville Downtown Farmers Market.

After getting in our morning workouts, we grabbed a couple of to-go trays of sushi at Market of Choice on our way out of town for our combination breakfast-lunch. We got away from Bend at 12:30 and that put us in McMinnville at about 4pm, traffic in Salem trying to get across the bridge into West Salem being a bear.

The timing of our first trip of 2024 could not have been better. It was the prettiest trip we have ever made across the Cascades because the timing placed us right in the middle of an exquisite wildflower bloom.

The wildflower show kicked off between Tumalo and Sisters where the forest floor under the widely-spaced Ponderosa Pines was highlighted with sulfur-yellow blooms of wild buckwheats, spikes of blue lupines, and masses of yellow balsamroots. As usual, traffic is a total pain in the rear in Sisters, but the trip out was far less a pain that the return trip on Friday afternoon when traffic was backed up a mile into Sisters.

As we climbed up toward Santiam Pass, we saw more and more penstemons along the roadside, both Royal penstemons and big patches of mat-forming ones, like Cardwell's. From the pass down into the Willamette Valley, the roadsides were colored by blooming rhododendrons, lupines much larger than we see east of the mountains, acres of oxeye daisies, red and black elderberries, masses of tall yellow dandelion-looking Cat's Ears near Detroit Lake, and ditches full of digitalis, more than I’ve ever seen in one place before. As we descended into the valley proper, masses of fuchsia sweet peas and acres of white to light purple Himalayan Blackberries added to the day.

On arriving in McMinnville, we went back to our old neighborhood and dropped in on friends Pat and Mary Jo. Unfortunately for us, it is hard to go back and see what has become of our magnificent gardens. We spent about 90 minutes catching up with them before heading to check in to our room conveniently located downtown near the county office, court, and jail complex.

After resting for a few minutes and changing into dinner clothes, we walked the block to dinner. This was our first visit to Pinch which opened last December. Located in the former Red Fox Bakery space next door to McMenamin’s Hotel Oregon, it is run by Paul and Emily Bachand, former owners of an old favorite of ours, Recipe, in Newberg.

Having dined at Recipe many times in the past, we already knew that the food would be really good. While it is a new restaurant, it is really pretty much a known quantity to us. 

Champagne to Start
It Would be Rude Not to

Starters: Sardinian Carta da Musica aka Pane Carasau
Olives, Pickled Peppers, Feta, and Manchego

Barbaresco with Dinner

Isn't She Beautiful?

Grilled Octopus, a Gorgeous Plate

Rigatoni with Lamb Ragù

While our preference would have been to have grazed small plates, the menu is a more traditional appetizer-entrée style. No matter; we certainly enjoyed our dinner. While the octopus plate was absolutely gorgeous, the lamb rigatoni stole the show. 

Ann and I agonized over choosing between the two pastas, rigatoni with lamb and cavatelli neri with Dungeness crab. While we much prefer the thicker cavatelli to rigatoni as a shape, really the Barbaresco dictated our choice of lamb over crab. We did not regret the choice at all and the rigatoni could not have been more perfectly cooked. That's our style: simple food, brilliantly executed.

After dinner, while chatting with Emily, Ann had mentioned our indecision and that she was intrigued by seeing a video that they had posted of their cavatelli maker in action making the black cavatelli. Emily retrieved the maker from the kitchen so I could see it. The first thing I did on going back to our room was to order one from Amazon, the price being extremely reasonable. I am not one to buy special purpose kitchen gear, but this machine looks to be a huge labor saver and thus worth finding a place to store it in our kitchen. It will actually fit in the drawer with the rest of our pasta gear.

Coffee at Flag & Wire

Well-served and well-sated, we walked the block back to our room and soon enough it was Thursday morning. The options for good coffee in McMinnville are slim so we always go to Flag & Wire over in the Grain Station building. Their coffee is always good and it is an easy walk from anywhere downtown. If we did not have a more-than-a-decade-long relationship with another Oregon roaster, we might order our beans from Flag & Wire.

After coffee and a brief return to our room, we were on to the main reason for our trip to McMinnville, the farmers market that opens at 11:30 on Thursdays. It is one of the main things that we miss about McMinnville. We managed to fill our cooler to overflowing with green onions, sprouting cauliflower, broccolini, beets, cucumber, cavolo nero, salad mix, small carrots, chives, dill, asparagus, hakurei turnips, sugar snaps, squash blooms, chicken eggs, and duck eggs.

Our Farmers Market Haul

After stowing our two overflowing shopping bags in the refrigerator back in our room, we set out for the half block walk to Two Dogs Taphouse to see our friend Brady. Two Dogs, when it was located on Third Street at Ford, was our old stomping grounds and a must-stop after the farmers market before our walk back to our house on the very northern edge of town.

Lunch at Two Dogs

After lunch at Two Dogs, we headed out to see our former next door neighbor Barb. Her dog Sierra is in a really bad way but was super happy to see us. I'm afraid the poor thing is about at the end of her stay with us and we really feel for Barb. It was great to catch up with Barb and see Sierra, whom we've known since she was a puppy, for perhaps the final time.

Our old neighborhood has really changed. Situated on a hazelnut orchard when we lived there, it felt nestled away and secluded on the far northern edge of town, with lots of wildlife: birds, tree squirrels, ground squirrels, skunks, coyotes, and deer.

The School Board owned the orchards, having bought them some years ago for expansion purposes. The trees were no longer neither young nor in good shape and the production costs for hazelnuts no doubt far exceeded the income that they could generate, so sadly, they decided that trees had to go. And with their demise, the character of the neighborhood changed overnight. Now with the trees all cut, it seems more urban and less welcoming. We moved at a good time.

Speaking of moving, our move across the Cascades took us away from the vast hayfields that hit peak bloom in late May and early June. We could see waves of pollen on the breeze. We arrived back in the valley at peak pollen time and it really hammered Ann. I felt bad for her; on the way back from Barb's, we stopped at the drug store to get some meds for her.

After the drug store, we spent a few minutes resting back at our room before changing for dinner at Humble Spirit on Third Street. We tried this restaurant with Dyce and Rob on our last trip on our last trip over and we were impressed. We were probably even more impressed on this visit.

Pink Shrimp Rolls

Hazelnuts and Pork Belly

Hot Mess Croquette

We started with Champagne and an order of shrimp rolls, hazelnuts with pork belly, and a croquette called a hot mess, a dish we ordered on spec, not really understanding what it was. It turned out to be very similar to a charcuterie dish that I used to make at the restaurant in which I would pick shreds of cooked meat (often turkey neck meat) and pack it into a loaf mold. Then I would set it with highly reduced stock and after refrigerating, would slice it and fry it to serve as an appetizer. In many respects, it is similar to souse or headcheese, but served warm. This one, made of pork, was breaded and fried and served as a croquette. Delicious.

Clams and Chorizo

We still had some Champagne left, so we ordered a dish of small clams braised with chorizo and Sherry to go with it, before moving on to red wine and red wine food. The unusual thing is that it was served on top of a croustade smeared with a beef liver pâté. Ann and I fought over this bread that was soaked in the braising liquid.

2010 Tondonia, Still Too Young

We had been chatting with our server all night long and it is was clear to us that he is as passionate about food as we are. In the course of talking about the restaurant sourcing many of its products from its own farm, Ann mentioned that we are looking for a supplier for a skin-on pork belly from which to make a porchetta for the holidays. She wondered if their farm might be amenable. And while we didn't get an answer other than it would not hurt to ask, it seems a seed was planted.

Unbeknownst to us, the restaurant was hosting a large table of family that evening for which the chef had prepared a special meal, including porchetta. After we ordered a red to accompany dinner, our server asked us to hold off on ordering anything else and went to find out if there was any porchetta we could have. He did; there was; we killed it. As good as the porchetta itself was, the beluga lentils it was sat upon were fantastic, having been cooked with smoky ham hocks. 

Porchetta, Beluga Lentils, Fennel and Herb Salad
Cherry Gastrique

After killing the porchetta, we got a piece of cheese with which to finish our remaining wine. All in all, a terrific meal and one that reinforced for us that Humble Spirit might be the best restaurant in McMinnville.

The following morning, I packed up our vegetables and we set out for coffee once again at Flag & Wire. Caffeined up, we headed south toward Salem, getting gas and sandwiches for lunch along the way. Our goal was to stop at Silver Falls State Park on the way home for a nice walk which is described in the next post.

Friends for Dinner

We're finally settling in to the point where we can start entertaining again. So, Annie invited Valerie and Michael over to dinner. Michael's our insurance agent and Valerie and Ann had connected via a women's group to which they both belong. Long story short, Ann invited them over and let me run with a menu, mostly. She wanted to reprise the mushroom crostini that we had at New Year's Eve and I decided to keep dinner itself very simple: focaccia, an arugula salad, and porchetta. And a little plate to accompany a bottle of Port for dessert.

Thanks to Valerie for taking some of the photos below and giving me permission to use them here. Go have a look at her blog, V. Estelle Travel. It was so awesome to have someone else take pictures for once, but it looks like we both forgot to take people shots and bottle shots! Oh well, you'll have to trust us that a good time happened!

Chanterelle, Shiitake, Leek, and Taleggio Crostini

I couldn't find dried porcini to make the crostini, so I went with fresh chanterelles, which given all the rain we have had, were in really good shape. We had a bottle of Prosecco with the crostini.

Grinding Pork Trimmings for Sausage

I'm still looking for a good supplier of pork. Alas, the best I have found so far is from Carlton Farms out where we used to live in Yamhill, but it is definitely not the Berkshire and Ossabaw x Berkshire I was used to working with in Virginia.

"Porchetta" Ready for the Oven

I would really have preferred to make my porchetta with a suckling pig or a side of pork belly, but that would have been overkill for a dinner for four. So I faked it by butterflying a top loin and stuffing with a fennel sausage that I ground from rib and belly trimmings.

Slicing the Porchetta

Focaccia and Barbaresco

Focaccia has got to be the world's simplest bread to make. I started it first thing in the morning with a very tiny amount of yeast and cold water and let it rise all day. The first rise took about seven hours. We served Barbaresco with dinner and Michael and Valerie brought a wonderfully rustic Chianti Classico that we had as a second bottle.

Annie Making the Salad Dressing

Arugula with Clementines, Red Onion, Pine Nuts, and Ricotta Salata

Valerie's Plate with Salsa Verde on the Porchetta

I love a sharp salsa verde with pork to help offset the fat. This was parsley, anchovy, garlic, capers, red wine vinegar, and olive oil, all chopped together by hand for texture.

Blue Cheese, Candied Hazelnuts, Dates, Pinot Noir Syrup

For dessert, I had a bottle of Port that I helped blend at the winery and so I threw together a really simple port plate of Gorgonzola-like local blue cheese, local hazelnuts that I candied earlier in the afternoon, a pitted Medjool date, crostini from my focaccia, and a red wine syrup that I made from over-the-hill remnants of Pinot Noir from the tasting room.

This was the first time, other than Thanksgiving, that I have really cooked a nice meal start to finish since I left the restaurant back in August. It felt really good to get back in the saddle again and I really enjoyed getting head down in the kitchen again to knock out all the components of this dinner. It's not like the restaurant where we would have premade batches of salsa verde, salad dressing, candied nuts, crostini, or red wine syrup ready to hand. In that sense, it was an awful lot of fun to create a dinner totally from scratch. And an awful lot of fun to share it with Michael and Valerie.

Honeymoon: BridgePort Brewing and Portland Food Carts

Saturday May 4, NW and SW Portland OR

BridgePort Brewing

After touring the incredible farmer's market at Portland State University, we decided to grab a beer and check out the food cart scene, not necessarily in that order. Because we were already in SW, we drove over to the food truck pod at 10th and Alder SW, the one that we had driven by on our way into town and scouted the offerings. Because it was still before noon, a lot of the carts weren't open, but Ann and I each picked a cart to sample later in the afternoon.

Bridgeport: Still Great Beer

We decided to make a beer detour for a while until the food carts got fully ramped up, so we drove a few short blocks up to NW to BridgePort Brewing for drinks and appetizers. I spent a lot of time drinking IPAs and Blue Herons at Bridgeport when I was making regular visits to Portland back in the 1980s. The beer was very good back then and I am happy to report that the beer remains good to this day.

Since then, I have moved up in style from pale ales to imperial pale ales and I really enjoyed the first pint of Hop Czar, a big hop monster of a beer. Me like. After this pint, our server tasted me on a couple of other beers (including the Kingpin Double Red Ale) that he thought I would like as well, but I ended up having another Hop Czar. After you start with a hop monster, it is hard to go backwards.


Ann's "Margarita"

While Ann was off in the restroom, I ordered her a Summer Squeeze Bright Ale, but she wasn't much of a fan: her taste runs mainly to straightforward lightly hopped lagers, Mexican or Asian. So she ordered a pinkish Margarita that looked pretty good. I didn't taste it but it seems like she enjoyed it. I'm totally drawing a blank on what was in it.

At this point, it was about 1 pm and we decided to get a little bit to eat while we were there. And it turns out that they have pretty decent food; in any case, it way exceeded my expectations (which are admittedly pretty low when it comes to brewpubs). We ordered a Mediterranean Plate and an order of warm soft pretzels.


Mediterranean Plate: Decent Brewpub Food

The Mediterranean Plate was pretty tasty even if the pita was a bit odd. I don't believe I have ever seen a whole white pita docked so that it wouldn't rise. It wasn't bad, just odd. On the plate was hummus, a quinoa "tabouleh" that was kind of fun, olives with feta, and a so-called "Moroccan carrot-walnut pate." This appears to me to be a riff on halwa and I liked it because it wasn't sweet.


Pretzels, Quintessential Beer Drinking Food

The pretzels came with a Kingpin Ale-Honey Mustard and a Porter-Cheddar spread. I liked the honey mustard but I didn't get much cheese flavor out of the cheddar spread.

[Note: The iconic BridgePort Brewery founded by Willamette Valley icon Dick Ponzi and Oregon's second craft brewery finally closed in 2019 after years of mismanagement by new ownership. I really miss the great nights there back in the day.]

Portland Food Carts

On our way back to our B&B in SE, we stopped back by 10th and Alder SW to grab a couple of things from the food trucks there. I will say in advance that I think we struck out here. The food we got was not great and not what we expected of the vibrant cart scene. Clearly, we chose poorly. It happens; not often, but it happens.


Click to Read the Fine Print on the Downtown Sign

Ann Chose a Fancy Burger from Sideshow

The Sideshow cart has pretty good reviews for their fries and poutine, but it was the window sign that got Ann's attention. She loves a good burger and was seduced by the Fancy Burger at the Sideshow food cart. Reading that description, what foodie wouldn't want to try the burger? The burger was really meh. Really meh. Super, super average. Meh.

I fared about equally well with a porchetta sandwich at The People's Pig. I am a big porchetta fan and if I do say so myself, I make kick-ass porchetta. I always like to taste other people's versions though, just to widen my frame of reference. Sadly, the People's Pig porchetta might as well have been a smoked pork shoulder sandwich. It had a good smoky flavor, which most porchetta does not, but who can fault a guy for throwing some smoke to a pig? My porchetta is cured for several days in a great fennel, rosemary, and garlic rub. This, this had no flavor other than smoked pork. Which would have been fine chopped with a good bit of East Carolina sauce. But to call it porchetta is something of a crime.


Porchetta? Who Can Resist?

How about So-So Pork Sandwiches?

Love Me Some Pig. Pig Didn't Love Me Back

The "We Finally Got it Scheduled!" Wine Dinner

We got out to dinner at somebody else's house this weekend! How often does that happen? It just doesn't.

Way back before Christmas, Mark and Maggie Malick, owners of Maggie Malick Wine Caves, and Jim and Betsy Dolphin, owners of Delaplane Cellars, came to dinner at the restaurant and at least for a few minutes, we got to catch up. If you're not in either the winery or the restaurant business, you might not know how little free time either business affords you. There just isn't much spare time to catch up and our usual catching up means that at least one of us is working. While we were catching up, we kicked around getting together for a group dinner in the near future.

The idea of having a dinner is one thing; actually pulling one off is quite another. Just trying to find the intersection of free time among a group of constantly busy entrepreneurs is tough, hence the name of the wine dinner that Mark and Maggie hosted at their house just south of Harper's Ferry in Loudoun County: "We Finally Got it Scheduled!" The earliest date we could all find was about six weeks in the future, the 27th of January, that happy convergence of slow times in the wine and restaurant businesses with a non-football weekend (Maggie, in her infinite spare time, plays in the Loudoun Symphony and the Redskins band).

Some weeks ago, Mark sent out food assignments and there have been dozens of emails back and forth talking about dishes and wine pairings. I was getting excited just reading some of the ideas going back and forth.

Maggie's Cave (note Abby on the roof!)

The big day arrived and after the awful weather we have been having, it turned out to be a sunny if chilly day and a nice day for a trip to northern Loudoun County via Harper's Ferry, WV. Yeah, that's right. With WV on three sides of us, it is easier to get to parts of our own state by going through WV. With a river and a mountain range between us in the Shenandoah Valley and them in Northern Virginia, there are only limited options for crossing both. How nice to see the sunshine again, especially glinting off the Shenandoah River on our right and the Potomac River on our left as we crossed the Shenandoah in Harper's Ferry. The sun highlighted the rocks in the rapids, rocks still covered in snow from the weekend snows.

We took advantage of the relatively mild weather to get a tour of the new cave from Maggie. Out behind the house, the cave is a quonset hut dug into the ground so that it has a turf roof. This is a precursor to a full winery that will be built up on the hill several hundred yards to the north, overlooking the vineyards. Maggie plans to open to the public this spring. I don't know where she plans to put people, the cave is jammed with barrels!

Full to the Gills Already!

We got there about three in the afternoon and Mark, in his short-sleeved chef coat, was already hard at work making seafood crêpes. We hung out in the kitchen and yacked with everyone else over a bottle of Albariño. I took a few casual photos, some of which are below.

Chef Mark Making Crêpes

Myret, Beautiful as Ever!

Jim and Karen, Hamming it up

Mark Showing off the Volnay and Beaucastel '88

Sorry to everyone whose photo didn't make the cut. I took dozens, but a lot were just too crappy to publish. Blame the photographer. The photographer blames his too slow lens and camera set up to take food shots.

Fourteen People with Ease at This Table

You Will See These Grape Cluster Napkin Rings Again

Our Menu

Brillat-Savarin, the King of Maggie's Cheese Board

Over the course of the late afternoon, everyone arrived and at some point, Maggie started putting out cheeses while Terry started decanting and tasting the wines for dinner proper. The big platter of cheeses included the excellent Brillat-Savarin that you see above. The traditional pairing for bloomed rind cheeses is Champagne and no complaints about Terry's choice of Clicquot, though I actually liked my cheese better with a sip of a fruity Paso Robles Rhône blend (One Time Spaceman Moon Duck) that Mark had us open.

Now This is a Glass of Champagne!

While we were kibitzing in the kitchen, Terry started pouring around the Veuve Clicquot that he brought along. He was responsible for the wines for the first two courses, Preston for the next two, and Jim Dolphin for the last two.

I would have loved to have had more than a taste of Champagne, but with a long night ahead of us and a 45-minute drive home after dark, a taste was it. Clicquot is always delicious. Terry said he would have rather poured Bruno Paillard, but that he happened to have a case of Clicquot on hand. Poor him. So we "suffered" through the Clicquot, though it has been 20 years since I tasted Bruno Paillard and it was good stuff back then. I would love to revisit Paillard soon.

Mark's Seafood Crêpes with Sauce Mornay

After Mark's crêpes came out of the oven, we all adjourned to the dining room and Terry poured around a couple bottles of Château Montelena Chardonnay Napa 2009. Although it is fairly reserved for a Napa Chard, it is bigger, more buttery, and oakier than I like in a Chardonnay, but it is the style of Chardonnay that I would have chosen to pair with these crêpes filled with crab, shrimp, and bay scallops bathed in sauce Mornay with more browned Mornay and cheese on top. Seafood and cheese is a tough, tough wine pairing.

Porchetta with Bagnat Verd in the Background

After the crêpe course, came my dish and I was the lucky bastard to whom Mark assigned the pork! Lucky because I love cooking pork, any time, any place. I decided to do a porchetta so that I could cook it in advance and not have to worry about finishing any food to order. I was not about to cook on my day off!

A Slice of My Porchetta with Bagnat Verd

To make this porchetta, I cured a Berkshire pork belly with a lot of dried fennel, fresh rosemary, a lot of garlic, black pepper, and Kosher salt for 48 hours. The goal was to impart some flavor without stiffening the belly so much that I couldn't roll it. Contrast this with the pancetta tesa that I cure for at least a week and often two. Inside I put a sausage that I made from all our pork trimmings from last week. It is traditional to put a pork loin in the middle, but I find that it can get dry, so I often put a forcemeat inside my porchetta. After the roll firmed up in the cooler overnight, I cooked it low and slow for about four hours and then blasted it in the convection oven until it got crispy all over.

To go with the porchetta, I made a traditional salsa verde called bagnat verd (green bath) in Piemontese. To make it, I soaked crustless white bread in red wine vinegar, boiled a couple of eggs to get hardboiled yolks, and then pounded the bread, egg yolks, garlic, anchovy, capers with a lot of fresh parsley in the mortar. To this, I added red pepper flakes, salt, and olive oil to taste. I had no idea that we were doing a formal plated dinner (being a wine dinner "virgin" with this crew), or I might have given some thought to plate presentation rather than just a stripe of salsa. Who knew?

Pres brought a 2007 Louis Boillot Volnay 1er Cru "Carelle sous la Chapelle," carelle referring to the square parcel of vineyard downslope from the famous old chapel. Just for grins, I brought a wine that I wanted to pair with the porchetta, a 2007 Thomas Mayr Lagrein Riserva Alto Adige, a sturdy high acid wine that I thought would fight through the fat of the pork belly. I love Burgundy and I loved every sip of the Volnay, but I liked it better on its own than with the belly. The porchetta was a bit too assertive for the delicate wine. I thank Pres for bringing it because he knows that I love Burgundy above all else and on my chef's budget, cannot afford to drink it very often.

Maggie's Citrus and Ginger Sorbet with Limoncello Drizzle

You know that you are at a fancy dinner when an intermezzo is served, in this case, a four-citrus and ginger sorbet that Maggie made! Maybe I shouldn't have worn blue jeans? To gild the lily, the sorbet was topped with a splash of homemade limoncello. I loved it.

During the intermezzo while Austin was outside grilling his lamb racks over charcoal, Ann had the distinction of getting to decorate the busty statue named Arenalla Bella, after the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica whence came this curvaceous sculpture. This is apparently a distinction of dubious nature, born of long tradition, and afforded to wine dinner virgins at the Malick household. Using only a scarf and a feather boa, the hapless victim must decorate the sculpture to amusement of the table. I would say that with the strategic placement of the grape cluster napkin rings appropriated from the dinner table that Ann carried off the mission with nothing short of aplomb, much to the amusement of all!

Decorating the Sculpture

Austin's Lamb Chop with Cannellini and Watercress

While we were carousing at the table, Austin was outside in the freezing cold grilling his racks of Marsala-marinated lamb on charcoal. He served each of us a chop on a purée of cannellini beans on top of a purée of watercress. The lamb was delicious and paired quite well with the cherry fruit of the 2001 La Rioja Alta "Viña Ardanza" Reserva Especial that Pres brought. I really enjoyed this terrific Tempranillo-Garnacha blend and thought the lamb was a great foil for it. This is as good a Rioja as I have ever had.

Between courses, Mark pulled out a bottle of 1988 Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape and sommelier Terry obligingly poured it around. I thought it had aged quite well and the Brett that I thought might have overtaken the fruit had not. It reminded me that I should probably get to opening the remaining 1988 CdPs in my cellar. I better find out if Brett has got the better of them.

Chucks' Beef Tenderloin

Chuck Cardamon took on the biggest plate of food art of the evening, a beef tenderloin for the final savory course of the night. In his own words "Beef Tenderloin Relleno (stuffed with caramelized onions, carrots and peas) topped with mushrooms. Beet Risotto topped with Gorgonzola on creamed peas. Roasted tomatoes (garlic EVOO and Maldon salt) on sweet pea greens and carrot purée (cayenne added)...and a painted strip of homemade demiglace. Paired with a fabulous Delaplane Cellars Syrah 2010." It was quite the reminder of being at work to see Chuck, a graduate of the California Culinary Academy, and his wife Ana plating this intricately garnished dish!

My palate was really tired by the time we got to this course, so Jim's Syrah was kind of lost on me. Fortunately, I had tasted it first thing in the afternoon when Terry was decanting it so I got a good handle on it. It has big tannins for a Syrah along with abundant dark fruit. While I wouldn't usually think of pairing Syrah with beef, this is a big meat wine and the pairing was great. Jim should be proud of his new Syrah!

Betsy's Meringues with Crème Anglaise

We finished the night with some delightful baked meringues from Betsy paired with her 2011 Delaplane Cellars Late Harvest Petit Manseng. I just loved the lightness of the meringues and the idea of floating them on creme anglaise à la îles flottantes. As I wrote in a post earlier this year, the Petit Manseng is excellent now as an infant and I think it has potential to be spectacular in five to ten years.

Thanks to Mark and Maggie Malick for hosting us and inviting us to one of their infamous wine dinners. Thanks to Terry and Karen Sewell, Jim and Betsy Dolphin, and Preston and Myret Tyson for bringing fabulous wines. And kudos for Mark and Maggie as well as Austin and Faythe Rippeon and Chuck and Ana Cardamon for great eats. We had a spectacular evening!