Northwest Palate January/February 2012 by Peter Szymczak

Winter Warmers new essential Wineries

Page 34

local Cider rules Page 42

big gnarly barley Wines

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Where to eat: Washington january/february 2012

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11-Night Eastern Mediterranean Cruise onboard Celebrity Equinox◊ Rome (Civitavecchia) roundtrip Ports include: Santorini, Greece • Istanbul, Turkey (overnight) Ephesus (Kusadasi), Turkey • Athens (Piraeus), Greece Mykonos, Greece • Naples/Capri, Italy Starting from $ 1,249 †* Reserve your Celebrity Cruise with US Travel and receive these extra amenities**: Welcome Sparkling Wine • Chocolate Covered Strawberries • Luxurious Spa Robes. Other sail dates & itineraries are available. 800-368-4369 vacation@ustravel.com www.ustravel.com WA SOT #601824183 CELEBRITY CRUISES RESERVES THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE A FUEL SUPPLEMENT OF UP TO $10USD PER GUEST PER DAY ON ALL GUESTS IF THE PRICE OF WEST TEXAS INTERMEDIATE FUEL EXCEEDS $65.00 PER BARREL. * Prices are per person, double occupancy, cruise only on select sail dates. Prices are in U.S. dollars. Itineraries and prices are subject to change without notice. Government taxes and fees are additional. Amenities offer valid on new reservations made prior to February 29, 2012 in a veranda or higher stateroom category. Certain restrictions apply. ©2011 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships’ registry: Malta and Ecuador. 11026710 • 12/2011 †

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Volume 25, Number 6 | January/February 2012 | www.northwestpalate.com

Chief Chef

Come along as Matt Bennett, the classically trained chef/owner of a small Northwest bistro, and a couple sous chefs haul volumes of Willamette Valley produce across the country to cook a menu using the traditional foods of the Kalapuya people—foods such as eel, nettle, and camas bulbs—but in contemporary preparations. By bonnie henderson

Donut Revolution

Who doesn’t love doughnuts? No matter how you spell them, or whether they’re glazed with chocolate, filled with cream or jelly, or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, donuts have found a place in the collective hearts of Pacific Northwest chefs, bakers, and entrepreneurs, who are putting their spin on where and how this classic American snack is made and enjoyed. Some are even making the world a better place, one donut at a time. By bonnie hasselbring

datebook 8

30 A Winter Picnic

Mark your calendar with our picks

In this excerpt from his new book, chef and author Greg Atkinson explains why more creative and adventurous souls picnic in winter, and why they’re better off for it—especially if they pack along a baguette sandwich or two. By greg atkinson

of the tastiest food and drink events taking place this winter around the Pacific Northwest.

32 Bravo for Barley Wines

Cheers to the big flavors and burly alcohol content of the beers known as barley wines, our favorite winter sipper with desserts or before bedtime. By lisa morrison

8 Oregon

10 British Columbia 11 Washington

34 New Essential Northwest Wineries

rece nt openings 12

In 2012, five wineries from Washington, and five more from Oregon, emerged as deserving of the rank “Essential.” In this update to his book, Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest, Cole Danehower profiles key wineries that he feels embody the best characteristics of the region.

Dig in to the rustic dishes and down-home flavors at Terra Plata, the new restaurant by chef Tamara Murphy at Seattle’s urban

By Cole Danehower

42 Cider Makes a Comeback

42 www.northwestpalate.com

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culinary mecca, Melrose Market, plus restaurant news from around

It tickles the nose and harks back to earlier times. Cider, the fermented brew made from apples and pears, is attracting a new audience, thanks to a growing number of Northwest cideries and places to enjoy a glass. By Peter Szymczak

Washington.

On the cover: Shrimp Corn Soup by chef Nathan Lockwood from his new Seattle restaurant, Altura. PHOTO COURTESY ALTURA

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Winter Gastronomy

like living in a place that has seasons. I like weather in general, and can make myself happy at just about any temperature over -10˚F and under 100˚F, regardless of whether it is sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy. When it’s sunny and warm, I’ll cheerily galavant outdoors, and when it’s rainy and cold, I’m equally contented to be ensconced by the fire indoors. I don’t rue one season or envy another. I refuse to be one of those people who allow something as utterly out of their control as the weather, to dictate my mood.

Of course, enjoying a weatherappropriate blend of food and drink helps keep the spirits positive regardless of what the elements may be doing. For instance, as I write this a few days before Christmas, the weather outside is what some might call dreary—but in the human-made climate of our home’s interior, all the ingredients of winter gastronomy promise impending enjoyment regardless of the weather. There’s fresh Dungeness crab in the refrigerator; we’ve just completed a homemade batch of beer, from a recipe purported to have come from George Washington; a pot of chanterelle soup with dried apples, hazelnuts, and apple brandy made from Portland chef Cory Schreiber’s recipe is warming on the stove; and mulled Northwest apple cider and house-made eggnog will soon be made for visiting family to enjoy. Winter seems to invite, perhaps even to legitimize, indulgence. One of my seasonal indulgences (besides eggnog) is donuts. Scoffed at by many, good donuts are to savor, and like coffee, they have become a Northwest signature. Writer Bobbie Hasselbring

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takes us on a tour of regional donut crafters in her story Donut Revolution starting on p. 26. Winter is also a time to revisit our roots, to share memories and celebrate our past. Oregon chef Matt Bennett researched native Northwest cooking traditions, and took his modernized recipes to the James Beard House in New York. Read his Chief Chef story, and try his dishes beginning on p. 18. The colder season also invites imbibing. In this issue we take a look at two Northwest beverages that are fast increasing in popularity: barley wines and hard cider. Though really beers, so-called barley wines are higher in aclohol and more weighty and complex than the average brew; our guide to barley wine basics start on p. 32. Cider, historically the most common of American alcoholic beverages, is making a comeback from relative obscurity. We share our tasting notes for 20 Northwest ciders on p. 42. Finally, it wouldn’t be winter without some wine writing in Northwest Palate. Starting on p. 34, I’ve gathered my profiles of 10 Northwest wineries that I consider to be new “essential” wineries of our region. These are producers whose quality and character of wine consistently reflect the best of their home appellations, and who I’d include in any revised edition of my book Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. So no matter what the weather may be when you read this issue, I‘m pretty confident you’ll find much to enjoy in these pages. Photo by cameron nagel

starters

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ail

v oa

s ea

i an

essential wines and wineries of the pacific northwest

A Guide to the Wine Countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Idaho

by COle DAnehOWer photography by AnDreA JOhnsOn

discover the riches of northwest wine in the pages of this beautiful new guide to the wine countries of washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and idaho. written by northwest Palate publisher and James Beard Foundation Journalism award winner Cole Danehower, this book takes you through the viticultural riches of the Pacific northwest. Photography by Andrea Johnson conveys the full beauty of this amazing wine region.

IsBn: 978-0-881920966-9, $24.95 • Published by Timber Press • 503-227-2878 • timberpress.com

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est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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tasting room open friday - monday

11am - 5pm

t : 503 537 3100

WWW.alexanaWinery.com

12001 ne Worden Hill road

neWberg

aDvertIsING National & Regional Fatima Young: 206-954-0157 • fatima@nwpalate.com

Oregon Reagan Nauheim: 503-805-6405 • reagan@nwpalate.com

Publisher

Cole Danehower

founder

Cameron Nagel

Kathy Sanders: 503-481-3051 • kathy@nwpalate.com

British Columbia & Washington Brannan Willson: 503-683-1525 • brannan@nwpalate.com

editor

Peter Szymczak

ProduCtion designer

John Burton

c o N t r I B U t I N G w r I t e r s Greg Atkinson, Bobbie Hasselbring, Bonnie Henderson, Kathleen Mazzocco, Lisa Morrison, Chris Nishiwaki c o N t r I B U t I N G P h o t o G r a P h e r s Angie Norwood Browne, Don Genova, Andrea Johnson, Krishna Dayanidhi, Suzi Pratt, Geoff Smith, Peter Szymczak, Anne Weaver

t a s t I N G P a N e l I s t s Anita Boomer, Cole Danehower, Harry Hertscheg, Peter Szymczak Northwest Palate magazine (ISSN 0892-8363) is published bimonthly by Pacifica Publishing, Inc., 1321 SW Maplecrest Dr., Portland, OR 97219 and is available by mail subscription at the rate of $25 for one year, $50 for two years. • The Canadian subscription rate is $35CDN per year. The European air-mail subscription rate is $57USD per year. Send payment to: Northwest Palate, P.O. Box 10860, Portland, OR 97296-0860 Phone: 503-224-6039 or 1-800-398-7842. • Website: nwpalate.com • Subscriber Services: info@nwpalate.com • Letters to the Editor: editorial@nwpalate.com. • For advertising information and rate cards, phone: 1-800-398-7842. • Retail sales program available. • Periodicals Postage Paid at Portland, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to Northwest Palate Magazine, P.O. Box 10860, Portland, OR 97296-0860. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40035723. RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO EXPRESS MESSENGER INTERNATIONAL P.O. BOX 25058 LONDON BRC, ONTARIO, CANADA N6C 6A8 • © 2012 Pacifica Publishing, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner, including photocopying, without written permission.

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contributors 1

1. Is GREG ATKINSON an accomplished chef who writes, or a gifted writer who cooks? His latest book, At the Kitchen Table: The Craft of Cooking at Home, compiles more than 20 of his most recent essays, plus accompanying recipes, some of which are based on his encounters with M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, and Martha Stewart. “In my work as a food journalist and a chef, I have come to know some of the heroes of the contemporary food movement,” he says. You’ll have to get his book to read about his brushes with gastronomic greatness, however: on page 30 he ponders one of life’s simplest pleasures in the Pacific Northwest—winter picnicking. Atkinson’s chef credentials include six years as the executive chef of Canlis, the storied 61-year-old restaurant in Seattle, and currently he’s working on a new restaurant project, Marché, due to open on Bainbridge Island in early 2012. 2. Freelance food and travel writer BOBBIE HASSELBRING has covered regional specialties from wild game and mushrooms to donuts—see her overview of the Pacific Northwest’s glazed and jelly-filled scene, “Donut Revolution,” starting on page 26. In addition to magazine writing assignments, she also edits www.realfoodtraveler.com, a website dedicated to artisan and regional food and travel worldwide, and is the author of The Chocolate Lover’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest and The Chocolate Lover’s Guide Cookbook. 3. When Albany, Oregon-based Sybaris Bistro prepared to pack its coolers and head to New York City to cook dinner at the James Beard House on September 30, 2011, BONNIE HENDERSON followed along to document the road there and back (see “Chief Chef ’ on page 18). “It’s a great story,” says Henderson, “a feather in chef Matt Bennett’s toque and a huge undertaking.” A freelance writer with interests ranging from rocks and bugs and birds to the fine arts and fine dining, Henderson is a former associate editor at Sunset magazine and continues to write primarily about and in the West. Her most recent book, Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris, was published by OSU Press in 2008 and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards.

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4. An ex-pat now living in Vancouver, British Columbia, KATHLEEN MAZZOCCO travels according to wherever gorgeous scenery and culinary experiences await. In this issue she reports on a beverage on the edge of extinction—perry, a form of cider made not from apples, but an antique variety of pears (see “A Taste of Perry” on page 44). When not writing about her gourmet experiences and life abroad, she’s a public relations specialist and blogger (www.whats-my-story.com and kmazz. wordpress.com). 5. “Beer offers a wide range of wonderful flavor profiles,” says lover of great craft beer LISA MORRISON. The host of weekly radio show, “Beer O’Clock,” on 101 FM in Portland (also available in podcasts on KXL.com and on iTunes), Morrison is a regular columnist for numerous beer publications and blogs, and was the first female recipient of the national

Beer Journalism Awards. Her book, Craft Beers of the Pacific Northwest, was released last year. In this issue she focused on a seasonal, winter warmer variety—see “Bravo for Barley Wines” on page 32—which she likes to pair with figgy pudding or on its own as a nightcap. Visit her online at www. thebeergoddess.com. 6. When chef Tamara Murphy’s new restaurant opened—or any other restaurant in Seattle, for that matter—CHRIS NISHIWAKI was there. See “Recent Openings” on page 12 for his take on Terra Plata and a roundup of the other note-worthy restaurants to open their doors in and around the Emerald City. In addition to keeping tabs on the everevolving Seattle dining scene for Northwest Palate, he also writes about food and wine for Edible Seattle and Wino magazines.

“In the top ranks of Northwest wineries.” —Cole Danehower, author of Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest

Call for a winery tour and tasting appointment

9360 SE Eola Hills Road - Amity, Oregon

- 503.435.1278 -

www.brookswines.com est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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datebook winter march 3–5

ChocolateFest Ashland, OR

oregon JaNUarY 13 & 14 Oregon Wine, Food &

Brew Festival, Oregon State Fairgrounds, Salem, OR. Marking its 29th year, this

homespun event celebrates Oregon’s wineries, microbreweries, and local food artisans with heaps of food and drink samples, live music, and chef demonstrations. Admission is $10. Visit www.oregonwinefoodbrewfest.com for more information.

JaNUarY 20–22 ChocolateFest, Oregon

Convention Center, Portland, OR. Taste some of the world’s finest chocolates crafted by regional chocolatiers, plus watch cooking demonstrations and learn how cacao beans are grown. For more information visit www.chocolatefest.org.

JaNUarY 26 & FeBrUarY 9 Winemaker’s

Dinner Series, Silcox Hut at Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, OR. Located on the

uppermost south slope of majestic Mount Hood, Silcox Hut is so remote the best way to get there is by snowcat! One of Oregon’s premier historic sites, Silcox was once home to the original ski chairlift and served as shelter for weary mountain climbers. Today it’s been fastidiously renovated and transformed into the culinary headquarters for chef Jason Stoller-Smith’s series of multi-course banquets, with pairings from some of Oregon’s premier wineries: Westrey on January 26, and Torii Mor on February 9. For the complete 2012 schedule visit www. timberlinelodge.com/ winemakers-dinnerseries.

Chef Jason Stoller-Smith

The Ashland Springs Hotel is host to the 8th annual Oregon Chocolate Festival, showcasing 40 chocolate artisans and food crafters in one chocolicious weekend. Well-known names such as Oregon-originated national brand Dagoba, and respected local crafter Lillie Belle Farms will join boutique producers such as Sipping Dreams, Love Bucket Baking Company, Stirs the Soul Organic Raw Chocolate, and others, to offer unique taste experiences. In addition to sampling chocolate in all its tasty forms, a Chocolate Makers Dinner, Chocolate and Art Gallery Walk, and other events make this a great getaway for the whole family. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 888-795-4545.

JaNUarY 27–29 Oregon Truffle Festival,

Valley River Inn, Eugene, OR. Chefs, truffle hunters, and gourmets congregate to honor these culinary treasures. Attend weekend seminars on growing, gathering, and cooking with the most hallowed of fungi, plus truffle dog demonstrations, an actual truffle hunt, and marketplace dedicated to all things mushroom. The Grand Truffle Dinner is the ultimate feast of the truffle season, featuring celebrated local and visiting chefs, including Robin Jackson from Vancouver Island’s Sooke Harbour House, Josh Feathers from Tennessee’s renowned Blackberry Farm, and Oregon’s own Stephanie Pearl Kimmel from Marché in Eugene. For more information visit www.oregontrufflefestival.com.

FeBrUarY 11 Premium Ste. Michelle

Wine Estates Dinner, The Cellar on 10th, Astoria, OR. Taste the wines made

by Ste. Michelle’s boutique labels—Col Solare, Northstar, and Spring Valley—during a multi-course meal served in the cellar room at Astoria’s premier wine shop. For more information visit www.thecellaron10th.com.

FeBrUarY 11 Showcase of Wine & Cheese,

Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR.

The Showcase supports the Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland and features hundreds of wines, dozens of gourmet cheeses, hot hors d’oeuvres, and other specialty foods. Guests receive a complimentary wine glass and tasting book to guide them through the wide selection of wines. Silent auction lots feature luxury travel packages, wine collections, and unique gourmet experiences. For more information visit www.bgcportland.org.

FeBrUarY 23–26 Newport Seafood and

Wine Festival, Newport, OR. “Swingin’ on the vine” is the theme of the 35th annual seafood and wine tasting extravaganza hosted by Oregon’s premier fishing town. Enjoy a variety of fine art—from sculpture and photography to pottery and jewelry—plus Pacific Northwest wines, microbrews, and culinary artisans to tempt the palate. For more information visit www.newportchamber.org/ seafood_wine.htm FUtUre FIle march 5 Flavors of Carlton, Ken Wright

Cellars, Carlton, OR. Regional winemakers pour at this fundraiser for local youth programs. Bid on special bottles and cases of wine, plus original artworks, while enjoying a sumptuous spread of locally crafted food and beverages. For more information visit www.carltontogethercares.com.

FeBrUarY 27–march 3

Classic Wines Auction

Portland, OR.

This year’s auction—with proceeds benefiting local children and family charities—kicks off with a Portland reception featuring the wines of Walla Walla, Washington. Regional winemakers collaborate with top chefs during the Winemaker Dinners held February 28 through March 1 at some of Portland’s premier restaurants. Chefs Cathy Whims (of Portland’s venerable Nostrana and newbie Pearl District restaurant Oven & Shaker) and Nancy Oakes of Boulevard Restaurant in San Francisco team up for the Ambassadors Dinner on March 2. The gala auction and dinner takes place on March 3 and features Wildwood-alum chefs Cory Schreiber and Adam Sappington. For more information visit www.classicwinesauction.com.

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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DAteBooK British Columbia |

EIGHTH ANNUAL

JaNUarY 11–FeBrUarY 29

Serious Beer, Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, Vancouver, B.C. Pacific Institute of

C H O C O L AT E F

Culinary Arts, Vancouver, B.C. During this eight-week program, beer styles from around the world will be explored through guided tastings. The history, ingredients, brewing technique, and complete vocabulary of beer terms will be discussed. Cost is $499 CDN. For more information visit www.picachef.com.

M A R C H 2 - 4 , 20 1 2

• OVER 40 O REGON C HOCOLATIERS & S PECIALTY F OOD V ENDORS • C HOCOLATE M AKERS D INNER • C LASSES & S EMINARS • C HOCOLATE & W INE PAIRINGS • FRIDAY CHOCOLATE AND ART GALLERY WALK • C HOCOLATE FACIAL S PA PARTY • C HOCOLATE A RT

Festival ticket $20/day make it a getaway C H O C O L AT E PA C K A G E starting at $189

541.488.1700

212 E. M A I N S T., A S H L A N D , OR F EST I VA L D E TA I L S AT

ASHLANDSPRINGSHOTEL.COM

JaNUarY 24 Taste BC, Four aPrIl 29 Oregon Wine Tasting, Portland,

OR. Sponsored by the Oregon Wine Board,

this will be the largest public tasting of wines from around Oregon ever held. Visit www.nwpalate.com for additional information on venues, times, and costs, as soon as it is available.

local beers, ciders, distilled spirits, meats, cheeses, wines, and a whole lot more at this annual auction and fundraiser for B.C. Children’s Hospital Oak Tree Clinic. For more information visit www.taste-bc.com.

british Columbia JaNUarY 14–22 Winter Okanagan Wine

Festival, Sun Peaks Resort, Sun Peaks, B.C. Wine meets winter recreation at this

annual culinary summit featuring more than 20 food and drink events taking place during the week—from learning the Ps and Qs of fondue, to enjoying brunch with bubbles featuring sparkling wines made in the Okanagan. For complete schedule and special resort rates visit www.sunpeaksresort.com.

FeBrUarY 12–14 Tales of the Cocktail on

Tour, Fairmont Pacific Rim, Vancouver, B.C. For the second straight year the city

of Vancouver turns into a facsimile of New Orleans to celebrate the craft of cocktails. Mix with regional and international bartenders, distillers, and imbibers during three days of mixers and seminars. For more information visit www.talesofthecocktail.com.

Are you enjoying this issue of Northwest Palate magazine?

FeBrUarY 27–march 4

Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival, Vancouver, B.C. North America’s JaNUarY 20–FeBrUarY 5 Dine Out

Vancouver, Vancouver, B.C. The 10th

It's easy to subscribe! Just visit www.nwpalate.com to begin a new subscription, renew your current subscription, or submit a change of address request. You'll also find a complete calendar of culinary events around the Northwest, and additional stories, recipes, and wine reviews.

Seasons Hotel, Vancouver, B.C. Sample

anniversary of Canada’s largest restaurant event, more than 220 restaurants around the city offer three-course prix fixe menus featuring local ingredients, exotic preparations, and tantalizing wine and spirits pairings. New this year will be Street Food City, showcasing leading food carts and a variety of pop-up events and dining tours. Dinners are priced at $18, $28, or $38 CDN and hotel packages are available. For more information visit www.tourismvancouver.com/dov.

largest (and arguably finest) wine festival brings together regional and international wineries for a week of jet-setting tastings, dining events, and well-heeled social gatherings galore. For more information visit www.playhousewinefest.com.

Plus, subscribing online entitles you to a discount price on your new subscription. Visit www.nwpalate.com and save!

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washington JaNUarY 21 WinterHop BrewFest, Ellensburg,WA. Sip your way across the historic town as it hosts more than 20 regional breweries at various venues all within easy walking distance of each other. For more information visit www.visitellen.com.

DAteBooK Washington|

FeBrUarY 26 Seattle Wine and Food Experience, Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, Seattle, WA. Sample the best of the region’s beers, ciders, spirits, and wines from a variety of countries as well as Washington State, California, Oregon, and Idaho, plus gourmet bites from Pacific Northwest chefs. As a bonus, you’ll be doing good: the event benefits The Giving Grapes Foundation, which assists local charities that provide financial assistance to injured or ill service industry professionals. For more information visit www.seattlewineandfoodexperience.com.

FUtUre FIle march 31 & aPrIl 1 Taste Washington, Bell Harbor Conference Center & Quest Field Event Center, Seattle, WA. Wine and taste

makers lead educational seminars on Saturday, while Sunday is your chance to taste among the largest assembly of Washington wineries under one roof—more than 200! To pair, nosh on bites created by an equally prime number of top regional chefs. For more information visit www.tastewashington.org.

JaNUarY 21 Winter Wine Gala, Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, Wenatchee, WA. The Columbia

Cascade Winery Association hosts an elegant evening showcasing wineries and restaurants from Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan, and northern Grant counties. For more information visit www.wvmcc.org.

FeBrUarY 11 & 12, 18–20 Red Wine & Chocolate, Olympic Peninsula, WA.

Tour the area’s eight wineries as they pair rich reds with artisan chocolates. For more information visit www.olympicpeninsulawineries.org.

Pouring Kiona Vineyard wines at Taste Washington

FeBrUarY 18 & 19 Red Wine &

Chocolate, Yakima Valley, WA. More

than 50 wineries offer sips of Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot to accompany chocolaty confections and hors d’oeuvres. If you go, here’s a good tasting tip: When pairing wine and chocolate, taste them individually first. Taste the chocolate again, letting it melt on your tongue, and then take a sip of wine to combine their flavors and textures. Chocolate will not melt at room temperature, so it is difficult to properly taste the chocolate if you already have a mouthful of wine. For more information visit www.wineyakimavalley.org.

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reCent oPenings

S E AT T L

terra plata ON

Photo by suzi Pratt

1501 melrose ave., seattle, wa 206-325-1501 www.terraplata.com

HINGT

Washington

Now is not the time to diet in the Evergreen State! Diners have a loaded plate of new restaurant options covering a hefty set of cuisines, from classic Americana to Northwest seafood, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and French. Compiled by Chris Nishiwaki & Peter Szymczak

dOWN-TO-EARTH CLASSIC hef Tamara Murphy built her career on obsessively sourcing local ingredients during peak season. Eschewing the molecular gastronomy trend, Murphy has stuck to the path of maximizing flavor with time-tested cooking techniques. “Good cooking takes time,” she says, pointing to a dish on her winter menu, a rich, meaty cassoulet containing duck confit, Andouille sausage, ham hock, and white beans, covered in crunchy, toasty breadcrumbs. “It took me two days to cook this dish. Cassoulet doesn’t happen overnight.” Building her new restaurant took time too—two years to be exact—due to delays caused by disagreements with the landlord and

the ensuing legal wrangling. It was altogether way too long and a trying process, even for the patient Murphy, but that’s all in the past now. In late October she and her long-time partner, Linda Morton, finally opened Terra

“Low and slow. It’s about not taking shortcuts. That’s classical training.” — Chef tamara murPhy

Plata. The restaurant is located at the architectural prow of the triangular-shaped building known as Melrose Market, a mélange of food and drink portals at the junction of Pine Street, Minor and Melrose Avenues.

Terra Plata’s 85-seat dining room (plus a 65-seat rooftop patio and garden due to open this spring) is as warm and comforting as the food coming out of Murphy’s open kitchen. Reclaimed wood suffuses the space: the bar railing, for instance, was recycled from Brasa, the Belltown restaurant Murphy and Morton owned for 11 years before closing it in 2009. The food is vintage Murphy. Drawing on her experiences at Brasa and Campagne, the Pike Place Market institution she helped open in 1990, Murphy’s culinary style is equal parts French countryside sensibility and Portuguese flair, using the best possible ingredients she can find. “I buy from the producers who steward the land and CONTINUEd ON PAGE 14 

hoUrs: tuesday through sunday from 5 to 11 p.m., bar menu until 1 a.m. Brunch on saturdays and sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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altura 6 “We WanT our gueSTS To relax,” says chef nathan lockwood. “We want to take the ordering out of their hands.” This past october he and his wife rebecca opened their italian-inspired restaurant called altura (617 broadway e., Seattle, Wa, 206-402-6749, www.alturarestaurant.com) in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. There they offer three-, four-, or five-course menus in an intimate dining room, at the chef’s table, or 10-seat counter facing the open kitchen. lockwood combines his past experiences working at michelin star restaurants such as Hubert Keller’s fleur de lys and Suzette gresham’s acquerello in the bay area. He serves fresh pastas made in-house such as Chioggia squash ravioli, Yukon gold potato gnocchi served with a lamb and beef ragú, and spot prawn panzerotti in a spicy chili oil and prawn brodo. Secondi include a hearty rib-eye steak for two with herb-fried potatoes, baby mustard greens, and bone marrow jus, as well as the more elegant fennel pollen-dusted scallops. Trio of lamb (loin, shoulder, and rib) is a study in lamb anatomy and, more importantly, a lesson in coaxing complex flavors from simple preparations. CONTINUEd ON PAGE 15 

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CONTINUEd fROM PAGE 12

let the flavors be,” says Murphy, whose fondness for meat, bold flavors, and generosity are legendary. While the opening of Terra Plata was delayed, Murphy stayed busy producing food events such as her pagan paean to roasted whole animals, Burning Beast, and the Seattle Chefs Table dinner series with fellow celebrated chefs Maria Hines, Thierry Rautureau, Jason Wilson, Holly Smith, and Johnathan Sundstrom. Murphy also published a cookbook, Tender, and cooked at fundraisers benefiting the Breast Cancer Fund, Ryther

recent openings Washington |

Child Center, the Greater Seattle Business Association, and the Women’s Funding Alliance. Murphy’s commitment to sourcing product traces to her youth as her parents’ jobs took her to Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru, where humble foodstuffs such as potatoes and tomatoes originated and are revered. “I relate to those same cultures,” Murphy said. “The food was different than the food kids in this country were eating.” The menu at Terra Plata changes daily. One evening it’s roasted pig with chorizo, clams, chickpeas, and chicharones. Water

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Buffalo burger with taleggio cheese is Murphy’s mouthwatering take on the classic burger. Seafood specialties include a simple yet flavor-packed whole-roasted branzino with salsa verde, and fennel seed-encrusted albacore tuna with heirloom Rockwell beans and green olive tapenade. Diners can also make a meal of snacks and small plates: crave-worthy crunchy homemade potato chips finished with truffled sea salt and pecorino-chive cream for dipping, roasted marrow bones, smooth and buttery pumpkin soup dotted with pumpkin seed oil, juicy and slightly sweet grilled spot prawns, or capelletti stuffed with squash and served simply with sage and brown butter. The wine list features food-friendly wines from Washington and California as well as Old World regions. During service, Murphy is known to slip from her kitchen perch to greet guests tableside. With each diner, as she does with each ingredient in her dishes, she pays them individual attention. “Low and slow,” she says. “It’s about not taking shortcuts. That’s classical training.”

Photo by angie norwood browne

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january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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Harborside Chef Peter birk 6 PromiSing To Serve onlY SuSTainable Seafood according to the standards of the monterey bay aquarium Seafood Watch list, Harborside (1200 Westlake ave. n, Seattle, Wa, 206-270-9052, www.Harborside Seattle.com) reopened on South lake union with its stunning view of lake union intact, but with a new chef and under new ownership. formerly a part of the Portland-based mcCormick and Schmick’s chain, Harborside was recently acquired by the landry’s restaurant empire, whose 35 brands include the oceanaire Seafood room and bubba gump Shrimp Co. long-time chef (formerly of ray’s boathouse) Peter birk offers a slew of Pacific northwest seafood: oysters on the half shell (up to six varieties shucked daily), seafood cioppino, sautéed weathervane scallops with kabocha squash purée and foraged mushrooms in cream—a balanced dish of earth and ocean—and whole fish, such as rockfish or Petrale sole, served tableside for an impressive treat.

6 THinKing bigger YeT SimPler is chef Shannon galusha, who built his career at fine dining restaurants such as Campagne, 727 Pine, veil, bastille, and The french laundry. He takes a decidedly more casual turn with his latest venture, Cal’s Classic american (504 ramsay Way, suite 107, Kent, Wa, 253-2341913, www.calsclassic.com) at Kent Station. Specialties include entrée-sized salads served with steak or tuna, as well as substantial sandwiches like an open-faced meatball hoagie, bbQ Carlton farms pork, and halfpound “steak house” burger with “too much” cheddar, grilled onion, bacon from Seattle’s Zoe’s meats charcuterie shop, and a fried egg. look for a second Cal’s to open sometime soon in Seattle’s booming South lake union neighborhood. Cal’s Classic american

recent openings Washington |

6 ProPrieTor Keeman Wong, who retired from a 20-year career in non-profit fundraising to open bako (606 broadway e., Seattle, Wa, 206-829-8958, www.bakoseattle.com), becomes a third-generation restaurateur following in the footsteps of his parents and grandparents. a sheepish Wong admits, “This is the last thing they wanted me to do.” diners should be glad he did. His concept is modern Cantonese, with an emphasis on cosmopolitan Hong Kong cuisine: must-try dishes include Singapore rice noodles with white prawns, honey-roasted pork, bean sprouts and curry, and chicken hot pot featuring boneless Jidori chicken (a type of free-range bird common in Japan but until recently almost unheard of in american restaurants outside the los angeles area) with black mushrooms and escarole and tea-smoked scallops. bako

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recent openings Washington | LloydMartin

6 Sam Crannell coaxes big flavors out of the tiny kitchen at his new Queen Anne Hill restaurant, LloydMartin (1525 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, WA, 206-420-7602, www. lloydmartinseattle.com). Game meats and offal feature in dishes like guinea fowl pot pie, elk ragout, and chicken liver ravioli with lamb ragú and mole, as well as seasonal salads, seafood, and a simple, standout sandwich with thin, juicy strips of beef. Momiji 6 Momiji (1522 12th Ave., Seattle, WA, 206-457-4068, www. momijiseattle.com) will have you seeing double, and not from sampling their extensive sake selection or food-friendly shochu cocktails, or the mesmerizing “Kyoto-influenced” garden. The layout of the dining room, in Capitol Hill’s Dawson Plumbing Co. building, is almost identical to its sibling restaurant, Umi Sake House in Belltown, with its artisan woodwork and lighting, as is the menu: sushi, izakaya-style small plates for sharing, and a multi-course kaiseki menu, including lightly fried tofu with yuzu miso, shrimp and scallops wrapped in yuba skin, and slow-cooked pork shoulder.

W I N E RY & V I N E YA R D S

6 Cafe Parco (1807 42nd Ave. E., Seattle, WA, 206-328-4757, www.cafeparco.com) is the new home of chef/owner Celinda Norton, formerly of 94 Stewart at Pike Place Market, who took over the space formerly known as Madison Park Café, a neighborhood institution. She continues the Italian theme with dishes like papparadelle in a braised veal and tomato ragú, ravioli filled with sweet potato and tossed with pheasant, and pan-roasted duck breast with rosemary potatoes. The wine list covers Italy, Burgundy, California, and Washington, with a local emphasis every Monday during the “Meet the Maker” dinners featuring local winemakers pouring their wines.

Cafe Parco 6 Ballard neighborhood hamburger institution Red Mill mashes up with the former seafood-focused Totem House to become Red Mill Totem House (3058 N.W. 54th St., Seattle, WA, 206-784-1400). Fish ‘n’ chips join the menu of juice-dripping burgers that made Red Mill famous.

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6 Blind Pig Bistro (2238 Eastlake Ave. E, Seattle, WA, 206-329-2744), which opened this past November, is the first co-venture for restaurant industry veterans Charles Walpole and Rene Gutierrez. The two met at the original Mistral more than 10 years ago: Walpole as the chef de cuisine, Gutierrez the maitre d’. They reunite in the intimate space that previously housed the original Sitka & Spruce and, more recently, Nettletown. The daily-erased chalkboard announces specialty dishes such as a succulent culotte steak, lamb belly in a rich and layered mole sauce, smoked rainbow trout with avocado and pickled cauliflower, and manila clams with black-eyed peas and Swiss chard.

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recent openings Washington |

Urban contemporary dining. mezcaleria oaxaca 6 THe neW, Younger SiSTer To ballard’S la CarTa de oaxaCa is mezcaleria oaxaca (2123 Queen anne ave. north, Seattle, Wa, 206-216-4446, www.mezcaleriaoaxaca. com). as the name suggests, the focus here is mezcal, the traditional mexican distilled liquor made from maguey, a type of agave native to oaxaca. Seattle artist Spike mafford was commissioned for the photographs of oaxaca that cover the walls of the restaurant. on the menu there’s pozole, tacos carne asada, and the popular tamales de mole oaxaqueño joining new dishes including barbacoa de cabrito (slow-roasted goat), caldo de mariscos (spicy seafood soup), and bistek en salsa de tomate (thinly sliced steak with tomato sauce). 6 Public House 124 (124 e. main St., Walla Walla, Wa, 509876-4511) is just what Walla Walla needed: a convivial place popular with locals, serving approachable bistro fare, priced-friendly local wines and microbrews, and well-crafted cocktails. You won’t go wrong (or leave hungry) by ordering the belly-filling burger with bacon, truffle fries, and garlic aioli, chicken-fried steak smothered with mushroom gravy, or braised lamb (sourced from upper dry Creek ranch) served with creamy polenta and sautéed local greens.

future file 6 Pearl bar & dining founderS bradley dickinson, the chef, and mikel rogers, general manager, are set to open their next venture, Koral (900 bellevue Way northeast, Suite 100, bellevue, Wa), a new american tavern at the bellevue grand Hyatt. expect it to be the place for weekday power breakfasts, lazy weekend brunches, and worthy of dinner nightly, with fare ranging from gnocchi with braised oxtail, to triple-glazed roasted pork shank, and a specialty burger. 6 ex-CanliS CHef and all-around ambassador of Pacific northwest cuisine greg atkinson is hopeful for a January 2012 opening for his new restaurant, marché (150 madrone lane, bainbridge island, Wa, 206-842-1633). a prolific writer (see his essay, “a Winter Picnic” on page 30) as well as renowned culinarian, atkinson is challenging himself to stock his larder with as much of what’s available solely on the geographically isolated island.

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Chef Matt Bennett of Sybaris restaurant in Albany, Oregon, went on a culinary journey, learning about Native American cuisine and landing at the James Beard House in New York, where he prepared a menu inspired by indigenous

Chief Chef

foods of the Pacific Northwest and the food traditions of Oregonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kalapuya tribe.

By Bonnie Henderson Photos By Krishna Dayanidhi

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t’s four hours to dinnertime at the James Beard House in New York’s Greenwich Village, and chef Matt Bennett of Sybaris restaurant in Albany, Oregon, is hunched over a slender smoked eel, painstakingly peeling off the skin. At the other end of the butcherblock countertop are arrayed dozens of veiny, star-shaped wild salmonberry leaves, the tips curling up as they thaw after the flight from Oregon. Bennett is using them in place of the banana leaves or cornhusks normally used to wrap tamales. For this dinner—a celebration of the foods of Oregon’s native Kalapuya people, reimagined by Bennett for contemporary palates—the tamale dough includes acorn flour, and the filling is quail confit. Standing expectantly alongside the leaf-strewn countertop

restaurant’s menus have been informed by all of the above—sometimes all at the same time. Take tamales, for instance. Bennett and his wife, Janel, had become regulars at a little family-run Oaxacan restaurant in Albany that was struggling to stay open across the tracks—literally—from Sybaris. “We said to Willi, let’s do a lunch together and see if we can turn on some of our customers to your food,” Bennett recalls. Which is how, at Willivaldo Guzman’s elbow, Bennett learned how to make Oaxacan pork tamales, to beat the chilled masa a second time to give it that fluffy mouthfeel emblematic of the best tamales. Then there was the Pakistani lunch served at Sybaris and cooked, under Bennett’s watchful eye, entirely by his friend Mohammed Ahmed, an aviation industry executive. “Mo

Hot and Cold–Smoked Steelhead Trout with Camas Bulb Cake and Yerba Buena Crème Fraîche

are three young women in crisp white toques and white double-breasted jackets, students from New York culinary schools volunteering for the afternoon. Bennett breaks from his work on the smoked eel and foie gras appetizers to put the students to work. “Have you ever made regular tamales before?” he asks. The students glance at one another, then all three shake their heads no, smiling apologetically. Bennett pauses, nods, smiles back. “Well, here’s how you do it,” he says, reaching for an ice cream scoop. There are dishes, techniques, ingredients you don’t necessarily learn in cooking school. Some you can learn from written recipes. Others may emerge out of friendships, or travel, or a passion for history, or an instinct to help others. Bennett’s repertoire and his www.northwestpalate.com

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is a friend of ours and a really, really good cook,” Bennett says. “He’d always wanted to have his own restaurant.” But Ahmed’s Pakistani family wouldn’t hear of him becoming a chef. It was, they felt, not a legitimate career for someone of his social class. So Bennett offered the Sybaris kitchen and clientele to Ahmed for a day. “He brought the odd ingredients: fenugreek, black caraway seeds,” Bennett says. “We helped plate the meal. But he was the chef.” And Bennett, in the process, learned how to flavor 15 pounds of tenderloin with a pound each of cumin and coriander and still end up with a delicately nuanced dish. Variations of some of Ahmed’s dishes— lamb tikka, and for dessert, kulfi—now periodically appear on the menu at Sybaris. The story of the Kalapuya-inspired meal

began one year ago, when Bennett learned of local efforts to preserve a natural area on the north side of Albany and build a nature center named for the tribe native to the Willamette Valley. Bennett decided to contribute in his usual way, by hosting a benefit dinner at Sybaris. He knew right away that he wanted to showcase the traditional foods of the Kalapuya people. Now Bennett— native to the Detroit suburbs, his ancestry Anglo-Gallic, his culinary training classically French—just needed to learn what those foods were. He began by talking with the forager who supplies Sybaris with wild edibles. Then he contacted a local naturalist who, it turned out, was a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, of which the Kalapuya tribe is one. The Tribes’ cultural

“We didn’t eat food like this. But I wish we had!” Grande Ronde Tribal Council member Kathleen Tom

department sent Bennett a list of traditional foods, and the menu began taking shape: a series of dishes that incorporated camas, nettles, acorns, wapato, venison, steelhead, and quail, but in new renderings. Based on the overwhelming positive response to the benefit dinner held in April, Bennett was urged to propose the Kalapuya menu to the Beard House, where Bennett had cooked once before in 2008. The Beard House staff greeted the idea with cautious enthusiasm. No chef at the Beard House had ever attempted a meal quite like this—an homage to one Native American tribe’s food traditions, incorporating dozens of wild foodstuffs, many of them unique to that region, flown in with the chef and his staff. But what cinched it was its 

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Photo by Bonnie Henderson

Preparing quail tamales.

menu Hors d’Oeuvres Lightly Pickled Mussels with Sweet Chile Syrup Hot and Cold–Smoked Steelhead Trout with Camas Bulb Cake and Yerba Buena Crème Fraîche Smoked Pork Jowl with Tomato Confit on Biscuit Root Biscuits Piquillo Peppers with Crayfish Salad on Nettle Crackers Barbecued Eel–Foie Gras Mousse Pinwheels with Labrador Tea Gelée

Dinner Duck Fat–Braised Cipollini Onion Skewers with Assorted Fruit and Elk Jerky Dipping Powders Cedar Paper–Grilled Sturgeon with Wild Greens Local Quail with Acorn–Masa Tamales and Oregon Grape Reduction Seared Venison Sirloin with Wapato Root Mash and Wild Mint Choron Sauce

Dessert Oregon Huckleberry Bombe with Toasted Honey–Douglas Fir Ice Cream, Huckleberry Sorbet, Honeycomb and Douglas Fir Sablés

uniqueness, says Izabela Wojcik, director of programming at the James Beard House. “What Matt is doing is examining the preparations and trying to bridge the gap between how those native people would have cooked and how a chef today cooks, figuring out how to make it appealing to a contemporary diner. This is not a historical meal.” But it was a meal that required plenty of research on Matt’s part. He learned from tribe members that camas had been a staple food—the main source of carbohydrates—of the Kalapuya people, who baked the bulbs in earthen ovens. Slow-cooking in a Crock-Pot, Bennett discovered, produces similar results. Nettles, which appeared on the menu in the form of crackers, needed to be gathered in the spring as tender shoots and then blanched (to remove the sting) and frozen. The September dinner in New York—a refinement of what Bennett served in Albany in April—required months of preparation and procuring, as certain foods could only be dug, picked, or gathered in season. In the process, Bennett became a culinary champion of the Confederated Tribes—and they of him. Terminated by the government in 1954, the tribes managed to regain federal recognition in 1983. The success of their casino has since made their Spirit Mountain Community Fund—which helped Bennett take the Kalapuya menu to New York—the tenth largest charitable foundation in Oregon. Selling out the dinner was no problem, thanks perhaps to world-weary New Yorkers’ hunger for something completely different. Bennett’s selection, Continued on page 22 

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Quail Tamales Makes 6 small tamales

For the Beard House dinner, chef Bennett prepared quail confit—a multi-day process—and he used acorn flour (available in Asian food stores) for part of the corn masa. The following recipe is a simpler version for home cooks.

• 3 quail • Salt • 1 quart cold water • 1/2 cup sour cream • 2 cups masa for tamales • 1 tablespoon baking powder • 1/4 cup duck fat or lard, at room temperature • 6 salmonberry leaves* Lightly salt quail and chill overnight. The next day, place quail in cold water, bring to a simmer and poach the quail for about 30 minutes, or until cooked through but still very tender. Remove quail and reserve two cups of poaching broth. Pick all of the meat off the bones. Discard skin, gristle and bones. Mix quail meat with sour cream and set aside in the refrigerator. Mix masa and baking powder with a paddle attachment of a kitchen mixer. Set mixer at low speed and add the two cups of reserved warm broth. Increase speed to medium and add the fat. Taste for seasoning. Chill the (now soft) mixture until firm, about an hour. Prepare a steamer. Lay out six leaves on the counter. Return the chilled masa to the mixer and beat again at medium speed until light; correct seasoning. Divide the masa among the six leaves. Divide the quail into even portions and nestle a mound into the masa on each leaf. Fold the leaves tips in and place in the steamer, seam side down. Steam for 45 minutes or until firm. *Salmonberry leaves (Rubus spectabilis) may be picked and used fresh spring through fall. May substitute cultivated grape leaves, well rinsed to remove any pesticides (if fresh) or excess salt (if preserved). Avoid wild grape leaves (Vitis californica), which according to one forager may have a laxative effect.

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Toasted Honey-Douglas Fir Ice Cream and Huckleberry Sorbet Bombe

Photo by Bonnie Henderson

Many Native families in the Northwest still trek to the Cascades in late summer and make a weekend of picking huckleberries together, typically in the same field year after year. Not many still drink Douglas fir-needle tea, as their ancestors did; here the needles add a faintly rosemary-like flavor to the ice cream inside the bombe, or “mound.” Cooking the honey mellows its flavor. With this dessert Bennett also served a bite of honeycomb and sugar cookies to whose dough he added a sprinkling of finely minced Douglas fir needles before baking.

Huckleberry Sorbet • 1 pound huckleberries cleaned (or subtitute blueberries, thawed if frozen) • 1 cup sugar • 2 tablespoons corn syrup • 1 pint water

Put huckleberries in a strong blender. Bring sugar, corn syrup and water to a boil to dissolve sugar. Pour the hot syrup into the blender. Puree, strain and chill overnight before churning in ice cream freezer according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Douglas Fir Ice Cream • 1 Douglas fir branchlet about 6 inches long • 3/4 cup honey • 1 quart half-and-half • 14 egg yolks • 1/2 cup sugar

Place branchlet and honey in small saucepan and bring honey to a boil. Add the cream and bring it back to a boil. Remove from heat and let it rest 10 minutes (no longer, or the fir flavor will be too strong). Return the mixture to a boil. Separately, whisk egg yolks and sugar together. Slowly add the hot honey and cream mixture, whisking continuously. Return the mixture to a saucepan and heat, stirring, until mixture reaches 160˚ F on an instant read thermometer. Strain and chill overnight before churning in an ice cream freezer according to the manufacturer’s directions.

To serve: freeze a glass or metal bowl (or individual molds) for at least one hour. Line the inside with a layer of frozen huckleberry sorbet, return to freezer and freeze until solid. Remove from freezer; if any sorbet has slumped to the bottom of the mold, scoop it out and press it back into place. Pack the Douglas fir-honey ice cream into the middle of the mold, smooth the top and refreeze for at least several hours.

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two months earlier, as a semifinalist for 2011 Best Chef: Northwest by the James Beard Foundation probably didn’t hurt either. It’s 7:45 p.m. at the James Beard House. Hors d’oeuvres have been passed, and Bennett and staff are setting out the first course, what Bennett describes as “deconstructed pemmican.” Pemmican, to the uninitiated, is the original energy bar: an amalgam of dried meat and berries held together with lard, high in calories and easy to carry. In his redefinition, Bennett has braised cipollini onions in duck fat and served them, quartered and skewered, on a slab of wood accompanied by dipping powders of pulverized homemade elk jerky and freeze-dried fruit. Bennett showcased the ancient source of sustenance in a presentation at once true to its roots and contemporary. “I wanted to take this food that’s been cooked for 10,000 years,” Bennett explains, “but do a modern menu with modern plating, to show the timelessness of these foods and these people. They’re still eating these things—not necessarily every day. They’ve been here a long time. And they’re not going anywhere.”

Chef Bennett, wife Janel, and crew at the James Beard House.

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Ah, donuts! Fluffy, puffy fried dough, rolled in cinnamon sugar, glazed with maple or chocolate, filled with cream or raspberry jam. Who doesn’t love them? Northwest chefs, bakers, and businesses keep improving—and improvising—how this classic American snack is made. Some are even using donuts to make the world a better place.

donut revolution By Bobbie Hasselbring Photos by Anne Weaver

nyway you spell them, donuts (or doughnuts, the terms are interchangeable) have a long and storied tradition in America. Archeologists have found the remains of petrified donuts in Native American middens. Most culinary historians believe the traditional donut we know came from Dutch settlers who made oil cakes or olykoeks, which Washington Irving described as “balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat.” An American sea captain, Hansen Gregory, is credited with punching a hole in the center of donuts, allowing them to cook more evenly. In 1872, American inventor John Blondell patented the first donut cutter and, in 1920, Adolph Levitt, a

Russian immigrant living in New York, created the first donut-making machine, which he gave the fantastic name of the “Wonderful Almost Human Automatic Doughnut Machine.” Incidentally, the only maker of automated donut machines still in existence has been based in Seattle since 1923—Belshaw Brothers [http://www.belshaw.com/]— and you can see a tabletop machine in action at Pike Place Market’s Daily Dozen Donut stand, a must-visit for every donut lover). During the World War era, momand-pop donut shops populated cities and towns across the United States and servicemen, “doughboys,” were sustained by donuts handed out by

At Tom douglas’ Lola restaurant in Seattle, donut holes served with vanilla mascarpone and housemade jam have elevated donuts to a new level.

At Rocket donuts, apple fritters are made the old fashioned way – stuffed with big chunks of real apple. 26

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Mighty O’s vegan donuts use no artificial flavors or preservatives, no trans fats, and no animal-derived products. At right, Mighty O’s vanilla cake donuts roll into the fryer.

Salvation Army “Lassies,” who became famous in the war theater for frying donuts. When World War One was over the Army even gave out pamphlets to soldiers on how to start their own donut shop when they returned home. Since the end of the Vietnam era, emigrant Cambodian families have dominated the independent donut shops of America, providing an economic base and jobs for their families. America’s obsession with donuts reached an economic frenzy during the Aughts with the Krispy Kreme franchise phenomenon and the company’s first public offering of common stock in 2000. (Stock has since fallen from a high of $40 to around $6 per share on today’s market.) Another brand name synonymous with its product, Dunkin Donuts is the international donut king, operating nearly 10,000 fried dough shops in 31 countries worldwide, including more than 6,700 in the United States. In Canada, one never seems very far from one of the 3,750 Tim Horton’s locations serving fast and fresh donuts and coffee to folks on the go. Americans, second only to Canadians, eat nearly 10 billion donuts every year.

Back to the Future

Not surprisingly, creative Northwesterners are putting their own spin on donuts. Brothers Mark and Mike Klebeck, co-owners of Seattle’s Top Pot Doughnuts, have revamped the donut shop, using their design and construction backgrounds to create retrostyled “donut lounges” in six locations around the Emerald City. Their downtown flagship shop features soaring windows and blonde, two-story bookcases filled with cloth-bound books where guests are welcome to gather for hours around small tables with laptops, cups of freshly roasted coffee, and dishes of donuts.

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“We love the modernist architecture of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s,” says Mark. “We wanted to create a library feel in our cafes because it changes people’s perspective of what it’s like to eat a donut.” Recently they introduced their mobile Airstream Doughnut Cart, a shiny silver trailer with a big silver donut on top. The cart parks outside the McLendon Hardware store in Renton and sells donuts seven days a week. The Klebecks keep it old school by rejecting fully automated, assembly line donuts to create what they call “handforged” doughnuts. “Our volume has forced us to make our doughnuts with our own proprietary commercial mixes,” says Mark, “but our bakers still handchop the ingredients and hand-flip and dip the doughnuts.” Top Pot isn’t the only Northwest doughnut company that’s gone back to the future. When Bellingham, Washington’s Jim Smith couldn’t find donuts he liked, he opened Rocket Donuts, re-creating not only the donuts of the 1950s, but also re-visiting the science fiction popular during that era. “I grew up eating donuts from The Big Donut in Los Angeles and Spudnuts,” he says. “I wanted to create classic, high-quality donuts that are handmade and put them in a 1950s sci-fi movie atmosphere.” Outside his downtown shop on Holly Street, a giant metallic rocket bristling with rivets stands ready for lift-off. Inside, TV screens play old science fiction movies and the walls sport movie posters for The First Space Ship on Venus, The Phantom from Space, Twelve to the Moon, and The Forbidden Planet. In one corner, Gort, a 12-foot robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, keeps watch over the counter.

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Bakers sprinkle Top Pot donuts by hand.

Donuts for Dinner, or Whatever For some Northwest chefs, donuts aren’t just for breakfast anymore. Restaurateur/chef Tom Douglas has elevated donuts to haute cuisine. At Lola, one of his many eateries in Seattle, donut holes are fried to order, served with vanilla mascarpone and housemade jams for dipping. Inspired by the little bags of donuts sold at Pike Place Market, Douglas has his donut holes delivered in small paper sacks and instructs servers to hand-shake the donuts with cinnamon sugar tableside. Chef Greg Denton of MetroVino in Portland won diners over with the meatfilled donuts on his bar menu last year. He filled powdered sugar-coated donuts with braised short rib beef and bone marrow, and served them with green olive and quince jam—the sweet yet savory snack paired deliciously well with either a cocktail or glass of robust red wine. On the far side of the donut dial, Portland’s Voodoo Doughnut tops theirs with bacon, sugarcoated breakfast cereals, grape dust, and bubblegum— just a few of the “inspired” toppings conceived by co-owners Tres Shannon and Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson. The entrepreneurs, who didn’t have a clue about making donuts when they brainstormed the business eight years ago, see no boundaries when it comes to wacky ingredients. They even tried making Nyquil and Pepto-Bismol doughnuts (medicine cannot be added to food, and the FDA threatened to shut them down). “There was so little Nyquil in them,” says Shannon with a laugh. “You’d have to eat 30 doughnuts to get a buzz and then you’d be buzzing from eating 30 doughnuts. When we made a speedball with Nyquil and a caffeinated doughnut, Jay Leno joked that eating them would let you stay awake for your heart bypass.”

At Bellingham’s Rocket Donuts, the Raspberry Bismarck overflows with jam filling.

Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Voodoo Doughnut is all about irreverence and having fun. They host weddings, performed under the holy doughnut and the velvet painting of Isaac Hayes, and were recently recognized by the Guinness Book of Records for creating the world’s largest pink doughnut box (666 pounds). One of their best selling doughnuts is the “Cock-N-Balls,” a raised yeast doughnut filled with Bavarian cream and shaped like… well, you know. They also make a Maple Blazer “Blunt,” a raised doughnut rolled to resemble a marijuana joint with red sprinkles for the ember, and the “Memphis Mafia,” a tribute to Elvis with banana chunks, chocolate frosting, peanut butter, peanuts, and chocolate chips.

Their website states “our success is based on more than profit” and their core values include “respect for individuals, community, culture, nature, and the environment.” Can you do all that with just a donut? You bet, says Russert. “We’re creating something that’s good, that doesn’t just taste good, but that’s good for the community and gives back,” she says. Any way you spell them, doughnuts dare to be different and have proven adaptable to the Northwest. Whether revolutionary, classic, throwback, futuristic, high- or lowbrow, donuts are indisputably delicious and one of life’s distinctive pleasures.

Donuts Make A Difference Can you create social change with donuts? Some in the Northwest are trying. Voodoo Doughnut hires young people through Urban Opportunities for Youth, a program designed to help at-risk youth get jobs through subsidized work experience. The youngsters learn the ropes of doughnut making by working in the Voodoo Doughnut van. Those who make the grade get hired into permanent positions. Seattle’s Mighty-O Donuts was the recent winner of the Food Network’s first Donut Challenge against three of the country’s top donut bakers, including Seattle’s Top Pot. They make vegan donuts with certified organic ingredients, no hydrogenated oils, no colors or artificial ingredients, and no animalderived products. “Our donuts are quintessentially Northwest because they’re organic vegan,” says baker Sara Beth Russert, who brought home the honors for Mighty-O. “We make our own mix here, which allows us to control our ingredients and our quality.” They buy ingredients like fresh blueberries from local organic farmers.

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Voo Doo Doughnuts in Portland lays claim to inventing the maple bacon bar and now everyone makes them.

Donut Dipping Sauce Makes 1 cup.

This sauce, the dunking component served with made-to-order donut holes at chef/restaurateur Tom Douglas’s Lola Restaurant, is so delectable you’ll want to dip everything from donuts to fruit chunks in it. • 1 vanilla bean • 1 cup Italian mascarpone • ¼ cup powered sugar With a sharp paring knife, slit open the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the seed paste inside the bean. Put the seeds in a small bowl along with the other ingredients and whip together until well blended.

Recipe courtesy Tom Douglas, Lola Restaurant, Seattle, WA.

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nting em.

doughnut pies makes 15 to 20 “doughnuts play nice, don’t they? they’re so open to collaboration,” says jessie oleson, the seattle-based author (and self-described “Cakespy”) in her recently released book, sweet treats for a sugar-filled life (sasquatch books, 2011). in it she crafts doughnuts into bread pudding, an upside-down cake (replacing every instance of “pineapple” with “doughnut”), and these innovative doughnut pies. while these may look like everyday doughnuts, don’t be fooled. they’re in fact little morsels of piecrust with filling rolled inside of them and then fried. while they’re certainly not health food, they certainly are delicious: crispy, not too sweet, easy to make, and completely open to flavor improvisations.

1 unbaked 9-inch piecrust 1 ½ cups jam or preserves 1 large egg, well beaten 1 cup frosting (optional) sprinkles, to garnish (optional)

• • • • •

roll out the piecrust, and then cut it into strips. the strips should be about 2 1/2 inches wide, and anywhere from 4 to 6 inches long, depending on what size doughnut you’d like. spoon a small amount of jam or preserves lengthwise down the center of each strip. be sure to leave a small gap (about ¼ inch) of uncovered dough all around.

whisk the egg in a small bowl with one tablespoon of water until smooth; using a small pastry brush, lightly brush one of the long, narrow edges of dough with your egg wash. gently fold the unbrushed side of the crust over the filling lengthwise, pinching it lightly with fingers or the tines of a fork on top of the side brushed with the egg wash, so that you have a long, narrow “log” of filled piecrust with filling inside. don’t worry about the look of the “seam”—later on, frosting the tops of your doughnut pies will cover this up. form the log into a circle, pinching the ends together so that they slightly overlap. you can brush the fastened ends with a little more egg wash to ensure that they stay together. set up a large skillet or frying pan with about 1 inch of vegetable or canola oil covering the bottom, and set to high heat. monitor the temperature until the oil has reached 375 degrees f, and then gently place the doughnuts several at a time into the pan, frying each side about 1 to 2 minutes or until golden. take care when flipping the doughnut pies, as they are fairly delicate (they become sturdier as they cool). using a slotted spoon, gently remove the doughnuts from the pan and place on paper towels to blot excess oil. i’m not going to lie: the doughnut pies, at this point, are not extremely attractive. don’t worry—this is why we garnish them to serve. serve with additional fruit pie filling, whipped cream, ice cream, a thick smear of icing, or dunk them in the donut dipping sauce (see recipe on p. 28) and decorate with sprinkles.



ar's New Ye tions lu o Res Can Wait!

JANUARY 20 - 22, 2012 Fri 5:30 - 9:30pm (21+) Sat 11am - 6pm Sun 11am - 5pm Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR www.chocolatefest.org

FULLanthropy at the FareStart restaurant, every meal helps fund job training and support for less-fortunate people in our community. Giving back has never been so easy ... or so delicious. Enjoy three amazing courses for $29.95 every Thursday evening at Guest Chef Night. 7th & Virginia

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•

www.farestart.org

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A Winter Picnic

By Greg Atkinson

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have a weakness for picnics, especially in winter, when the mosquitoes cease from troubling and the ant-hills are at rest.â&#x20AC;? Elizabeth von Arnim

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h sure, there are drawbacks—inclement weather, a lack of willing companions, frostbite, whatever—but the advantages of picnicking in winter provide more than ample compensation. Consider this: When less hardy souls have shuttered themselves indoors, the most scenic spots are yours and yours alone. There are no bugs to speak of, and any company you manage to coax along is bound to be bold and interesting. What’s more, in the cold winter air, everything tastes ten times better than it does in the forced heat of the indoors. I think my fondness for winter picnics might have been born before I ever experienced one. I was probably ten years old when my widowed grandmother surrendered her home to go and live with one of my aunts, and we came into her books. She had mountains of old novels, and since my grandmother knew that I was a reader, she pointed out works by a few of her favorite writers. She loved the poet Walt Whitman and made sure I had her copy of Leaves of Grass. She liked the Victorian novelists E. M. Forster and Elizabeth von Arnim, whose vaguely feminist works included The Enchanted April. “You’ll like these,” promised my grandmother, and I did. “Yesterday by way of a change,” wrote von Arnim in Elizabeth and Her German Garden, “we went for a picnic to the shores of the Baltic, ice-bound at this season, and utterly desolate at our nearest point.” I discovered firsthand the joys of eating outdoors in winter some years later when I was cooking at a ski resort. One of the perks was a free lift ticket for the season, so during my breaks and on my days off, I could ski for free. Since I didn’t want to waste any time not skiing, I would bring a sandwich and eat it standing on my skis in some sunny spot beside one of the less crowded runs, my cheeks flushed with a combination of windburn and exercise. I thought my sandwiches tasted better in the open air than they did in the crowded lodge. When I first started dating the girl who would eventually become my wife, I discovered that she, too, had a penchant www.NorthwestPalate.com

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for taking meals outside in the cold. Raised on ski trips in the Cascades and boating trips in the San Juan Islands, Betsy loves the outdoors. One of our early dates was a short hike the day after Thanksgiving. We were on San Juan Island, and we headed into the woods with turkey sandwiches and a thermos full of hot tea. The leaves crunched under our feet, and chill breezes from the open straits wended their way between the bare branches of the trees around us. After we were married, we went to live on San Juan for a dozen years, and there, winter picnics became something of a habit. I remember one day in particular, when we were trapped inside for days on end by a nor’easter that put out the power, froze our water pipes, and threatened to drive us insane. I probably would have succumbed, but Betsy packed a lunch, filled a thermos with hot tea, and insisted that we go see Jackle’s Lagoon in the ice. We had a child by then, and I was afraid he would freeze. But Betsy bundled him up and stuffed him into a carrier backpack. “He’ll be fine,” she insisted. The trail was a study in frost; lacy shrouds crept over fallen leaves and long, spiked rays stabbed along the ground. And the sky, crystal clear that day, felt as if it had been rent open to the absolute emptiness of space. Beside the lagoon, which was frozen into wide gray and white ripples of ice, our woolly mittens stuck to the frozen sandwiches, and the tea threatened to freeze in the cups. But there, with our baby in one pack and the picnic supplies in another, the world seemed new again. As von Arnim wrote, “The stillness of an eternal Sunday lay on the place like a benediction.” And though the baguette sandwiches, oatmeal cookies, and juicy pears were good, the food we ate didn’t matter at all. What mattered was that we were in the light and the air— what picnics are really all about. “It seems to me,” wrote Walt Whitman in his poem “The Sleepers,” “that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy, Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.

baguette sandwiChes makes 4 sandwiChes

assemble the sandwiches at home, cut into single-portion lengths, and then wrap each portion in parchment paper or waxed paper before heading out to face the elements with a thermos of hot tea, some cookies, and fruit. •1 baguette, about 24 in. long •4 tablespoons olive oil •4 teaspoons red wine vinegar •Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper •eight 1-ounce slices swiss or havarti cheese •eight 1-ounce slices cooked turkey or ham (optional) •4 large leaves of green leaf lettuce, rinsed and patted dry

split the baguettes lengthwise. in a small bowl, whisk the oil and vinegar with a fork until well combined, then drizzle the mixture over each open side of the cut bread. sprinkle the bread with salt and pepper to taste. lay the slices of cheese and meat in slightly overlapping shingles down the length of the bottom of the loaf and top with the lettuce leaves. Plant the top of the loaf over the filling and cut each baguette in half.

This excerpt from At the Kitchen Table by Greg Atkinson is reprinted with permission from Sasquatch Books.

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Bravo for barley Wines By Lisa Morrison

mong the strongest of beers—both in flavor and in alcohol—barley wines are just

what their name implies: wine-strength sippers made from grains instead of grapes. Typically, most craft beers range in “alcohol by volume” (ABV) from 4 percent to upwards of 8 or 9 percent ABV, but barley wines often start at

that amount

and can soar higher than 15 percent. Their high alcohol and rich, complex flavors, often revealing different nuances in the nose and on the palate as the liquid warms in the glass throughout the evening, make barley wines a perfect beer to sip during the winter months.

The actual term “barley wine” can be traced in marketing to England during the late 1800s, first used to describe a Bass Brewery beer simply called “No. 1.” But the beginnings of the style actually reach farther back, dating to a time when, after grains were steeped in hot water to release their sugars, the water was drained off to ferment into a strong beer. The grains were then used several more times to make increasingly weaker beers that were used for everyday drinking for the whole family—children getting the weakest beers. But the beers made from those strong, syrupy first runnings were reserved for special occasions and to share with honored guests. Although barley wines now undergo the same modern brewing practices as other craft beers, the ingredients are remarkably similar to those original

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brews. Surprisingly, very few specialty grains—often added to create different flavors and color—are used to brew such a special beer as barley wine. Instead, the same base malts that are used to make pale ales are often used to make barley wines, just a lot more of them—upwards of more than double the amount for typical pale ale. The brewer also extends the “cooking” time, which caramelizes those sugars. The process deepens the color, aroma, and flavor, often creating intense fruity or dried fruit nuances. Especially in the American versions of barley wines, the brewers also add a lot more hops, which can produce citrus, grassy, earthy, or even tropical-fruit flavors and aromas. Because of the higher alcohol content and that extra level of hops, both natural preservatives, barley wines can be cellared and aged much like a fine fruit-based wine. In fact, many barley wines are brewed with the expectation that they will be laid down. When freshly fermented, the beers possess intense flavors that can be a bit overwhelming, but with time, the flavors begin to marry, and the components become more complementary and rounded. It’s no coincidence, then, that many barley wines are named “Old” something or another, as in “Old Boardhead” or “Old Horizontal”—a tradition from England that implies the beer is expected to be aged before being served. It’s a fun, longstanding tradition to enjoy several “vintages” of a favorite barley wine in a vertical tasting much like those enjoyed with fruit wines. Although designed to be savored alone, barley wines can be paired with food. They are often stunning accompaniments to strong cheeses such as Gorgonzola, blue, or sharp, aged cheddars, and they also can pair wonderfully with fruit- or nut-based desserts. Like cognac or any sipping liqueur, barley wines are best served in handsome snifters that highlight their lovely range of colors—from amber to dark brown—and allow the wonderful aromas to greet the nose.

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gnarly northwest barley Wines Here in the Northwest, our drizzly winter weather is well suited for a rich, warming barley wine, and our craft brewers oblige, with several offering stellar versions. Most are brewed only once a year, but Full Sail Brewing in Hood River offers “Old Boardhead” several times throughout the year, and it is ready to be consumed fresh from the brewery, although at 9 percent ABV it can be aged with good results. Other well-established breweries, such as Big Time Brewing in Seattle and Pelican Brewery in Pacific City, Oregon, release their annual barley wines only once a year, with most of the special bottlings being snatched up as quickly as possible at the brewpub, although some bottles do make it out into the region’s specialty stores each year. Some other key barley wines to try—available only on draft at the brewpubs—include New Old Lompoc’s Old Tavern Rat, Walking Man’s Old Stumblefoot, and Hopworks Urban Brewery’s Noggin Floggin’ Bourbon Aged Barley Wine.

WIdMER Galaxy Hopped barleywine Ale (brothers’ Reserve Series)

PIKE Old bawdy barley Wine

Not sticky-sweet or thick like some interpretations of the style, even at 10 percent ABV. Fruit flavors and caramel malt provide the sturdy structure for the beer, with an array of citrus notes—lemon, grapefruit, and orange peel— joining in at first taste. A hint of pine resin, toffee, and even a suggestion of caramel apple are revealed over time.

A fruit cocktail of a barley wine with suggestions of grapefruit, pineapple, cherries, and even blackberries that are then greeted by a darkly caramelized sugar topping. Lower in alcohol and still complex in flavor, this is an easy one to enjoy—deceptively easy.

HAIR Of THE dOG doggie Claws

At 11.5 percent ABV, this beer is a big dog, with an assertive lemony-citrus and piney nose, but it’s also a teddy bear, with more than a few hints of caramel, some spices and raisins to keep the hops in check. So thick it nearly needs to be chewed, Doggie Claws is a real sipper and reveals myriad flavors as it warms in the glass. Not to be missed fresh from the brewery, it can be cellared for years to come with fantastic results.

fULL SAIL Old boardhead barley Wine Ale A good one for the uninitiated, as it isn’t as assertive as some others. Expect citrus and a caramel/ fruity sweetness in aroma, similar flavors with some light spiciness from the hops and alcohol, and a clean finish that makes you immediately want another sip.

ROGUE ALES XS Old Crustacean

At 11.5 percent ABV, “Old Crusty” can often be found in single-serving 7-ounce bottles, perfect for a solitary pursuit. Redolent with a caramel sweetness that quickly gives way to aggressive, resinous pine notes, this is one to hide away in the cellar and forget about for a few years to give it time to mellow

SIERRA NEVAdA bigfoot barleywine Style Ale

Weighing in at 9.6 percent ABV, this is not one of your higheroctane barley wines, but it makes up for it in flavor. Fans cellar Bigfoot for years, even over a decade, with spectacular success. As the intensely hopped beer mellows with age, it leaves us with a balance of toffee, sweetbread, lemon peel, and grapefruit notes

SWANS bUCKERfIELdS brewery Legacy Ale

Hailing from Victoria, B.C., this barley wine has predominant rich, rounded fruit flavors with orange peel bitterness for balance and a burst of alcohol that lingers well after the glass is empty.

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Essential Northwest Wineries By Cole Danehower

essential wines and wineries

of the pacific northwest A Guide to the Wine Countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Idaho by Cole Danehower photography by Andrea Johnson

The only complete guide to each Northwest wine appellation, Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest profiles every AVA/DVA and 160 leading Northwest wineries. But things have changed since the book was published in 2010. It’s time for an update.

The Pacific Northwest is home to 30 officially designated winegrowing appellations (the newest, Washington’s Naches Heights AVA, was announced as we went to press) and more than 1,400 wineries—this makes us the second largest and second most important wine region in North America. Such a vast wine community is constantly in flux, with new wineries appearing and existing wineries growing and developing their own unique character. When my book Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest was published in 2010, I included profiles of key wineries in each appellation that I felt embodied the best characteristics of their home region. But my picks of the best wineries of each appellation were based on the state of the market in 2008—such is the long process of book writing and publishing. Since I wrote the copy for my book, much has changed in the Northwest, and some wineries—I’ve chosen five each from Washington and Oregon—have emerged or evolved to be as deserving of being called an “Essential Northwest Winery” as any already in my book. These are the “new essential” Northwest wineries, the wineries I’d include in any revised edition, and the wineries Northwest Palate readers should take special note of. Photo by Andrea Johnson

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washington Cadaretta 315 E. Main, Walla Walla, WA 509-525-1352; www.cadaretta.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

Caleb Foster of Buty Winery.

Buty Winery 535 E. Cessna Avenue, Walla Walla, WA 509-527-0901; www.butywinery.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2000 4,000 cases (Buty), 1,000 cases (Beast) Rediviva of the Stones (red blend) ($$$) Columbia Rediviva (red blend) ($$$) Sémillon, Sauvignon & Muscadelle ($$) Rockgarden Estate, Phinny Hill

One of the great things about Washington is the way wineries seed talent throughout the state. When Caleb and Nina Buty Foster decided to start their own winery (while on a backpacking trip), Caleb knew he could draw on his eight years of experience helping Rick Small make wine at Woodward Canyon. The seed of their idea sprouted into Buty Winery in 2000. Almost from the start, Caleb and Nina established a unique identity: they were the first in Washington to produce a Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend—two, in fact—and they are known for a natural winemaking style and a lack of emphasis on oak. Rediviva of the Stones (named for an historic ship that came up the Columbia River in 1792) is their Syrah-dominated blend sourced from the prized cobblestone area of the Walla Walla Valley AVA—and soon to be made from their own young Rockgarden Estate Vineyard. This is a velvety and concentrated wine displaying great aromas, earthiness, and luscious wild fruit characteristics. The Columbia Rediviva is the Cabernet-dominated version of the blend, sourced from estate vines at Phinny Hill Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills, one of Washington’s warmest sites. The expansive aromatics of this wine combine with lush dark fruits and gentle pepper and spice notes to create a rich and age-worthy wine. Buty’s Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc blend from Champoux Vineyard is a focused, full oak blockbuster, balanced in their wine lineup with a Merlot/Cabernet Franc blend that has greater acidity and leanness. Two whites round out the basic Buty bevy: the brightly fruited Conner Lee Chardonnay and the crisp, distinctive Sémillon/Sauvignon Blanc/ Muscadelle blend. Buty sources fruit from a handful of top vineyards as well as their estate block of Phinny Hill and certified organic 10-acre Rockgarden Vineyard. Recently they have added a second label, Beast, made from varieties and sources not part of the Buty portfolio. From growing to making, the Fosters approach their task with a sense of mission, sensitivity to natural methods, and commitment to quality that consistently shows through their wines. www.northwestpalate.com

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2005 3,000 cases Cadaretta SBS (White blend) ($$) Cadaretta Windthrow (Rhône Blend) ($$$$) Cadaretta SBS (White blend) ($$) Southwind Estate

Washington abounds in well-funded wineries that create good quality wines, but which can lack that distinctive something that separates them from the pack. Not so Cadaretta. Owned by the Middleton family, a timber and agriculture family whose Washington roots extend back to the 19th century, Cadaretta’s wines continue to show character, distinction, and promise. Middleton Family Wines has important wine grape holdings in California, as well as the Washington-based Buried Cane brand. For the Cadaretta winery, the family purchased 337 acres (up to 140 are planned for planting) in the Walla Walla Valley, and has recently opened a new tasting room. Cadaretta focuses on relatively small lots of carefully made wine, with early vintages relying on purchased grapes, while their Southwind Estate Vineyard (first planted in 2008) matures. Under the direction of energetic winemaker (and certified sommelier) Brian Rudin, Cadaretta’s limited number of vintages has nevertheless displayed wines of finesse and fruit clarity. Cadaretta’s most widely available wine is the SBS white blend (Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon), which is a lively and fruity wine with crisp minerality and verve. The more boutique-scale Windthrow is a blend of Syrah, Mourvèdre, Counoise, and Grenache that successfully combines rich fruit density with freshness and approachability. An opaque Bordeaux-style blend called Springboard is a savory-yet-fruit-sweet wine with firm structure and plenty of power. The Southwind Estate Vineyard is intended to be the sole source for vintages after 2010. Twenty-two acres were planted in 2008, mostly in wind- and Missoula Floods-deposited silt loams, but a high-elevation section of the vineyard (known as the F Block) is on a unique broken basalt soil that is both loess-less and undisturbed by the Missoula Floods—it should prove very interesting to see the wine character that derives from this soil over time. While only a few Cadaretta wines are in general distribution, all their bottlings are worth seeking out—especially the smallproduction blends, where Cadaretta seems to shine best.

Winemaker Brian Rudin.

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Dusty valley vintners

Amber Lane, Annette Bergevin, and Steffan Jorgensen

Bergevin Lane Vineyards 1215 W. Poplar Street, Walla Walla, WA 509-526-4300; www.bergevinlane.com

Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2002 11,000 cases She-Devil Syrah ($$) Barrel Select Syrah (Rhône blend) ($$$$) Calico White (White blend) ($$) Bergevin Springs Vineyard

When two friends share a love of wine and at least one has roots in Walla Walla, it seems inevitable that they should create a winery. Annette Bergevin and Amber Lane started their winery with the goal of producing wines that reflect the character of Walla Walla—and perhaps a bit of their own vivacious selves—something they sometimes refer to as “wines of sizzle and mood.” Joined by third managing partner Gary Bergevin, Annette’s father and a vineyard veteran long associated with Canoe Ridge Vineyards Winery, Bergevin Lane produces a range of well-made and character-rich wines that are garnering increasing critical attention. Working with key vineyards such as Pepper Bridge, Stone Tree, Francisca’s, and Les Collines (the estate Bergevin Springs Vineyard will begin bearing useable fruit in 2013), winemaker Stephan Jorgensen sources hand-picked fruit and processes his wines in a roomy 20,000-square-foot facility. The Calico Red and Calico White blends are the winery’s most accessible and immediate-drinking bottles, but it is their tiny production reserve-level wines that are turning heads. The She-Devil Syrah is a tasty fruit-forward wine with excellent concentration and fresh fruitiness, while their top-tier Barrel Select Syrah is a black, meaty, and intense wine with stand-up tannins and the bones to age. Two other Syrahs—the layered, complex Francisca’s Vineyard and another co-fermented with Viognier, Oui Deux Syrah—plus a 100% Viognier bottling, round out the Rhône varieties. Bordeaux-style wines are represented by their Moonspell Cabernet Sauvignon, Wild Child Merlot, and the Intuition Reserve Red Wine, an aromatic and thick-on-the-tongue blend. Other bottlings add dimension to the winery’s offerings. Bergevin Lane is an example of the best sort of Washington winery: founded with a fervor for wine, imbued with the spirit of the owners, and managed with a commitment to quality. The result is memorable wines that reflect not only the terroir of their place, but also the terroir of their people.

Walla Walla Tasting Room: 1248 Old Milton Highway, Walla Walla, WA 509-525-1337; www.dustedvalley.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2003 4,000 cases (Dusted Valley), 18,000 cases (Boomtown) Stained Tooth Syrah ($$$) BFM Bordeaux Blend ($$$$) Ramblin Rosé ($$) Sconni Block, Minnick Hills, Birch Creek, Stoney Vine

From the first, I have been impressed with the wines from Dusted Valley Vintners. Partners Corey and Cindy Braunel and Chad and Janet Johnson could be said to be “living the wine dream.” With no previous wine experience, in 2003 the Braunels moved to Walla Walla from Wisconsin and the Johnsons from Oregon to start Dusted Valley Vintners while they held down non-wine day jobs. Jumping in with both feet they produced 700 cases in their first vintage and have continued to grow, adding a more value-priced second label, called Boomtown, in 2006 and a second entity called Blind Boar Wine Company in 2010. Corey and Chad collaborate on winemaking, emphasizing fruit clarity and elegant acidity that tend to differentiate their wines from many of their neighbors. Sourcing from estate Walla Walla Valley AVA vineyards as well as selected other sources, they produce a range of whimsically named wines—Squirrel Tooth Alice Syrah is one example. Dusted Valley’s Syrah wines show rich fruit intensity without the soft jammy qualities often found in the state, as well as excellent earth and mineral tones—the Stained Tooth is a great go-to Syrah for anytime drinking from Columbia Valley sources, while the Tall Tales is a more intense and stylish reserve-style from Walla Walla Valley fruit. The BFM Bordeaux Blend (you can guess what BFM might stand for) is an expansive and concentrated Merlot-driven wine with excellent berry and herb flavors, while the VR Special Cabernet Sauvignon is velvety, balanced, and concentrated. Dusted Valley also makes an interesting set of the so-called “secondary” varieties of the Bordeaux and Rhône regions: Malbec, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Mourvèdre, Cinsault, and Grenache. Finally, a particular personal favorite is the Dusted Valley Old Vines Chardonnay, made from the oldest Wente Clone Chardonnay in Washington to deliver a succulently textured, yet vibrant and fruity wine. Dusted Valley also produces a more value-oriented line, called Boomtown, that offers inexpensive expressions of the five basic Washington wines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay, and Pinot Gris. Though they have grown quickly—almost remarkably— Dusted Valley has not sacrificed wine quality on the altar of market success, and continues to deliver wellmade wines at a variety of price points. Corey and Cindy Braunel, Janet and Chad Johnson.

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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PHOTO COURTESY DUSTED VALLEY VINTNERS

PHOTO COURTESY BERGEVIN LANE VINEYARDS

Woodinville Wine Gallery 14465 Woodinville-Redmond Rd NE, Woodinville, WA 425-488-7373

www.northwestpalate.com

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eFestĒ 19730 144th Ave NE, Woodinville, WA 425-398-7200; www.efeste.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2005 9,000 cases Lola Chardonnay ($$) Tough Guy Bordeaux ($$$$) Evergreen Riesling ($$) North, South, and Efestē Estate

Photo by andrea johnson

When a winemaker eschews fancy manipulation in favor of straightforward, honest winemaking, and makes insightful sourcing decisions to obtain the best fruit, Washington vinifera grapes can display a remarkable purity of varietal expression in the finished wines. For me, there may be no better example of this than the wines of Efestē. Since their first vintage of 2005, and then the 2007 vintage when winemaker Brennan Leighton took the helm, Efestē wines have shined brightly in Washington’s firmament. Leighton, a UC Davis alum who worked on Ste. Michelle’s Eroica Riesling, has proven a skillful selector of vineyards (including Boushey, Red Willow, Weinbau, Klipsun, Kiona, Ciel du Cheval, and Evergreen), using old vine grapes and frequently applying native fermentations and natural ML to produce intense and varietally pure wines. In particular, Efestē’s Lola Chardonnay is a beautifully balanced wine that displays minerality, freshness, varietal flavor, and temperate oak influence with a velvety texture. The Evergreen Riesling is a fresh, peach and honeysuckle-hued wine with bracing acidity, deep minerality, and abundant character. The Feral Sauvignon Blanc (named for the use of wild yeasts) is a deliciously vibrant evocation of white peach, grapefruit, and minerals. While Leighton’s white wines can be brilliant, his reds can also be impressive. Three Syrah releases show distinct differences: Jolie Bouche Syrah (Boushey Vineyard, Yakima Valley) is meaty and elegant, reflecting a somewhat cooler growing region; Eleni Syrah (Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley) is rich, aromatic, and full of earth and ripe berries; Ceidleigh Syrah (three Red Mountain vineyards) is fat and full with juicy blackberry and herb flavors. The Big Papa Cabernet Sauvignon is an exceptionally deep and dark version of the varietal that has a rich texture and a wealth of complex flavors. Efestē (pronounced like the letters F, S, T) is named after the initials of the three families who own the winery: Dan and Helen Ferrelli, Patrick Smith, and Kevin and Angela Taylor. The winery has experienced a rapid rise and is a candidate to enter the elite ranks of cult Northwest wineries.

r o t s A O r e g O niA

ann & tony kischner’s

Bistro l retaei & n wi hop giftnsow ! open

open every day • lunch . dinner . sunday brunch 503.325.6777 • bridgewaterbistro.com • 20 basin street, astoria or

fOunded • 1811

Efestē co-owner Dan Ferrelli (L) with winemaker Brennon Leighton.

www.NorthwestPalate.com

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est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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oregon

Amalie Robert Estate Vineyard

Amalie Robert 13531 Bursell Road, Dallas, OR 503-882-8833 www.amalierobert.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

1999 3,500 cases Dijon Clones Pinot Noir ($$$) The Reserve Pinot Noir ($$$$) Her Silhouette Chardonnay ($$) Amalie Robert Estate

Ernie Pink and Dena Drews moved from high-tech to haute-vino when they purchased 60 acres of not-yet-under-vine, sloping land in the hills southwest of Salem. They removed the Montmorency cherries that populated the place and planted Pinot instead. Their vineyard is now about 30 acres, with added vines of Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay, and—yes, in the cool climate Willamette Valley—Syrah and Viognier. Self educated in the ways of wine, Ernie and Dena learned fast, producing excellent wines from the get-go. A two-person team that does everything at Amalie Robert Estate (the name is a combination of their two middle names), they focus on growing the best grapes they can to reflect the character of their site, the purity of the variety, and the differences in Pinot Noir clones. Amalie’s Cuvée is a selection of each

vintage’s best Pinot barrels, often emphasizing Pommard and Wädenswil clones, that showcase the elegant side of the estate vines, and delivers a Pinot that possesses lots of layers and good complexity. The Estate Selection is another barrel selection that offers a denser, more earthy and structured interpretation of the vineyard, with additional power and ageability. The Reserve is a tiny production (sometimes as little as two barrels) of the most intriguing barrels in any vintage, frequently showing spice, earth, and bright red fruit qualities. A Dijon clone bottling and a Wädenswil release demonstrate how different clones can create different character wines, even though both are purely Pinot. Chardonnay does well at Amalie Robert, as well. The Her Silhouette Chardonnay displays

the fruit purity of sedimentary soils and stainless steel fermentation, with zesty aromas and crisp lemony fruit. The barrel-fermented Heirloom Cameo offers a more velvety and weighty expression of Chardonnay, while retaining brightness and lovely fruit. Intriguingly, Amalie Robert also makes two Rhône-style wines. Their Willamette Valley Syrah (made from a mere 1,188 estate vines) displays lots of olive, white pepper, and spice flavors, with goodly tannins. The Viognier is a very small production (only 594 vines) that is fermented cool to retain bright fruit, and delivers excellent minerality and tropical flavors. While perhaps not as flashy in their marketing as some of their neighbors, Amalie Robert consistently produce superb wines. Amalie Robert Estate is a prototypical example of Oregon’s wine culture: people who left successful career in order to pursue a passion to put their personal stamp on making Pinot Noir. The wines they produce show well the character of their place, the Pinot Noir variety and its clones, as well as the uniqueness of their own personalities.

Ernie Pink and Dena Drews.

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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www.northwestpalate.com

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Riesling. The Willamette Valley Riesling is a bright, crisp, white peach and pear-nuanced wine that showcases the grape’s elegance and vibrancy. Sweet P is the winery’s “medium sweet” Riesling, with a creamy palate and sweet grass and spring blossom qualities; Tethys is made from frozen withered grapes for an intense, honeyed, late harvest version of Riesling. The Brooks Rastaban Pinot Noir is a small-production barrel selection of estate-grown fruit that typically shows depth and power Jimi Brooks in good balance, with freshness of berry flavors and tight tannins—a good cellar candidate. More immediately accessible is the Janus Pinot Noir, a juicy wine with raspberry

BrooKs

and blackberry notes combined with smoke and spice. The Willamette Valley blend is prototypical Oregon Pinot, with black cherry and raspberry character. Brooks winery is no mere monument to its founder, nor does it seek to trade on the power of its story (indeed, most fans of Brooks wines are unaware of its history). Instead, Janie, Chris, and Pascal have continued to employ the principals upon which Jimi founded Brooks winery (organic and biodynamic farming, promoting the potential of Pinot and Riesling, and a focus on non-interventionist winemaking), and have successfully grown the quality of Brooks wines, putting them in the top ranks of Northwest producers.

9360 SE Eola Hills Road, Amity, OR 503-435-1278 www.brookswine.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

1998 10,000 cases Ara Riesling ($$) Rastaban Pinot Noir ($$$) Amycas (white blend) ($) Brooks Estate

The story of Brooks winery is one of the most poignant—and ultimately uplifting—in the Northwest. Just before harvest in 2004 the popular upcoming young winemaker and owner, Jimi Brooks, suddenly died at age 38. It was tragic, yet his friends in the industry, including many legendary Oregon winemakers, stepped up and contributed their time and effort to harvest Jimi’s contracted fruit (from 11 different vineyards), make his final vintage, and keep the winery open. Jimi’s sister, Janie Brooks Heuck, took over management of the winery and Jimi’s son, Pascal Brooks, became the world’s youngest winery owner. A heartwarming story, true, but if Brooks didn’t make superb wines it would just be another story. Today Brooks has a full-time winemaker in Chris Williams, a new winery in the Eola Hills, a biodynamically-farmed estate vineyard with 35-plus-year-old vines, and an ongoing reputation for crafting superb Pinot Noir and leading Riesling wines that remain a tribute to the winery’s founder. I am embarrassed that I did not include them in the first edition of my book. Brooks has always been a leader in Northwest Riesling. Their Ara Riesling is a blend of older area vines and offers rich dried apricot, minerals, white peach, and lots of punch— one of the reference points for Northwest

www.NorthwestPalate.com

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Wines true to the soil Wines true to the vintage® To learn about Amalie Robert Estate, reserve your tasting appointment, or join the A-List, please visit our website www.amalierobert.com or call 503.88.cuvee (28833)

Mercer Wine Estates In our family, the Boardroom is the Barrel Room March-Dec, Wed-Sun 10:00am-5:00pm January & February: by appointment 3100 Lee Road, Prosser, Washington 99350 phone 509-786-2097 | mercerwine.com est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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Crowley Wines

Et Fille

14000 NE Quarry Road, Newberg, OR 971-645-3547 www.crowleywines.com

14000 NE Quarry Road, Newberg, OR 503-449-5030; www.etfillewines.com

Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

Rarely does a winery seem to come out of nowhere and deliver such high quality wines. But Crowley Wines didn’t come out of nowhere at all—it just seemed that way to me. Tyson Crowley started out working at Erath under Rob Stuart, and went on to build his knowledge working with Doug Tunnell at Brick House, Jim Prosser at J. K. Carriere, and as assistant winemaker to John Paul at Cameron Winery—a stellar cast of mentors. In 2005 Tyson made his first four Crowley barrels at Cameron, moving into the August Cellars co-op winemaking facility in 2007. Crowley focuses on the classic Oregon Pinot Noir clones of Pommard and Wädenswil. The Entre Nous release is pure Dundee Hills, with a complex mélange of red cherry and raspberry and herbs, cloves, and spices, made more clear because it is crafted with no new oak. The Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a blend of Pommard and Dijon clone 114 from multiple vineyards, and shows gobs of red fruits, tea, espresso, and spices, as well as bright acidity and freshness. Additional single-vineyard Pinots from Gehrts Vineyard (Dijon clones) and La Colina Vineyard (100% Pommard) show how Dundee Hills sites can display different (and yet somehow similar) characteristics. Crowley also produces a crisp Willamette Valley Chardonnay as well as a superb singlevineyard Chardonnay from Maresh Vineyard (Dundee Hills) that admirably combines jaunty acidity and minerality, with supple warm peach and honey notes for a lean, yet ample wine. 40

Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2005 2,000 cases Entre Nous Pinot Noir ($$) La Colina Vineyard Pinot Noir ($$$) Willamette Valley Pinot Noir ($$) Uses purchased fruit

Tyson Crowley

Crowley works primarily with small vineyards that farm sustainably and with low impact, and then avoids any overt manipulation in the cellar. Native yeasts are used for fermentation, and next to no new oak is employed. As a result, the elegance and balance in Crowley Wines is impressive indeed!

Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

september/october 2011 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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2003 3,000 cases Kalita Vineyard Pinot Noir ($$$) Maresh Vineyard Pinot Noir ($$$) Willamette Valley Pinot Noir ($$) Uses purchased fruit

There is no shortage of family-owned boutique wineries in the Willamette Valley, but small doesn’t always equate to excellent. In the case of Et Fille, it does. Et Fille (translated: “and daughter”) is the collaboration of Howard Mozeico and his daughter Jessica. Both combine backgrounds in science and art—along with Howard’s years as a successful home winemaker—to inform their collaborative winemaking, relying on selectively sourced Pinot Noir from the Dundee Hills, Chehalem Mountains, Eola-Amity Hills, and Yamhill-Carlton AVAs. Et Fille embodies the personal nature of much of Oregon’s wine industry: they walk the vineyards, make growing decisions, sort, ferment, punch-down, top-off, and barrel-fill by hand in small lots to both maintain full control over quality and to maximize the options on their winemaking palette. The result is Pinot Noirs that inevitably show grace and balance, with full aromas and silky textures. The Kalita Vineyard release, to my palate, is the most complex, with plenty of spice and floral notes adding dimension to the focused red fruit flavors. The Maresh Vineyard Pinot tends to be quite concentrated with elegant red and blue fruits, but also plenty of structure and good acidity. The 2008 Nicholas Vineyard is a wine I particularly favored as a judge for the Oregon Wine Awards for its earth and mineral-laced dark fruitiness. Despite the diversity of character reflected in these differently sourced wines, there is a similar sense of purity and elegance in all the wines; Howard and Jessica seem to consistently impart a refinement of both texture and balance that underlies the differences of place. Perhaps it is the terroir of the winemakers complementing the terroir of the fruit; whatever it is, it makes their wines distinctive and delicious. www.northwestpalate.com

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Quady nortH 255 California St., Jacksonville, OR 541-324-0288 www.quadynorth.com Year founded: Annual production: Signature wine: Premium wine: Value wine: Estate vineyards:

2005 2100 cases Syrah 4-2, A ($$$) Flagship Syrah ($$$$) Rosé ($) Mae’s Vineyard

Herb Quady came to Southern Oregon in 2004 to make wines for Troon Vineyard in the Applegate Valley. He brought with him experience as assistant winemaker for Bonny Doon, plus a wine-steeped family background: his father Andrew began Quady Winery in the 1970s in California. Herb established Quady North to pursue his belief that Southern Oregon’s climate and soils were ideal for making wines with their own—neither California warm nor Willamette Valley cool—distinctive identities. He believes that Viognier, Syrah, and Cabernet Franc, in particular, are exceptionally suited for the Applegate Valley. Quady makes single-vineyard Syrahs from Steelhead Run Herb Quady Vineyard in the Applegate and Sam’s Valley Vineyard in the Rogue Valley—the former displaying lighter weight and lots of white pepper, while the latter is often concentrated and dark in character. The Quady 4-2, A is a blend of Syrah sources that, while juicy and warm, also has good minerality and black cherry flavors. Quady’s Viognier offerings are extensive, ranging from a tropical fruited release

“2009 Washington Winery of the Year” Wine Press Northwest

“Best destination winery”

Seattle Magazine

called V.O.G. (Voluptuous, Outstanding, Going to Rock Your World), to a bright and fresh honeysuckle version from Quail Run Vineyard, and even a leaner, less barrel-fermented Viognier from Steelhead Run Vineyard. The Ox Block Reserve is Quady’s top-tier Viognier, featuring a weighty, almost plump palate with a great combination of ripeness and acidity. Rounding out his “love triangle” of varieties, multiple releases of Cabernet Franc show that this grape has the potential to be a signature variety for the region: the Applegate Valley Cabernet Franc is a classically styled wine that shows the grape at its Northwest best. Each year Quady designates a “Flagship” wine, most often a Syrah, that is his favorite wine of the vintage, and an occasional label called Arsenal for the best blended wine of the vintage. Herb Quady’s wines—even his biggest guns—have an intriguing ability to display plump, ripe fruit concentration, but without the high alcohol heat and almost extreme extraction that can be seen in similar wines to the north and south of Oregon. Balance, complexity, and clear fruit seem to be Quady’s signatures.

Come taste our nationally acclaimed wines and enjoy the stunning views on our extensive arbor.

A Toast to Passion Weekend February 18th & 19th

Live music and featured artists www.maryhillwinery.com

1-877-MARYHILL

9774 Hwy. 14 Goldendale, WA

WOOD WARD CANY ON WOODW CANYON Est. 1981

tasting room open daily

ALSO OFFERING PRIVATE TASTINGS BY APPOINTMENT

11920 W. Hwy 12, Lowden Walla Walla Valley

Hand harvesting in the Applegate Valley.

www.NorthwestPalate.com

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www.woodwardcanyon.com 509-525-4129 Northwest Palate | sePtember/oCtober 2011

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CIDER makes a

comeback

By Peter Szymczak Apples are indisputably the iconic frontier fruit, yet no drink has fallen as far out of favor as cider, the alcoholic drink made from pressed, fermented apples that was once the great American beverage, favored equally by commoners and elites. Interest in cider is back on the rise, however, thanks to a growing number of Northwest artisan cideries and cidermakers.

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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www.northwestpalate.com

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egend has it Johnny Appleseed planted orchards on the frontier to feed the pioneer families that moved west. In fact, the fruit from the trees he planted was most often inedible, but made a good cider—a clean sanitary drink in places where fresh water may not have been available. During pre- and post-colonial times, cider was imbibed by all ages as a drink safer and more available than water, but also often subject to abuse, fueling the temperance movement and resulting in the chopping down of fields of apple trees. Thankfully, a few of these orchards have survived, and the fruit from some of these trees—heritage varieties with names like Wickson, Newtown Pippin, and Tompkins King—are once again being made into cider. Supermarket apple varieties such as Red Delicious and Macintosh differ from their cider-making counterparts in that they are generally sweeter and have a texture more suitable for eating out of hand, unlike cider apples which are hard and tart. Even if you manage to take a bite of their rock-hard flesh, you’ll be sorry you did, due to mouth-puckering tartness and tannins. Presses are used to extract the juice from cider apples, and yeast (natural or introduced) is added to activate the fermentation process. After bottling, the resulting lightly effervescent liquid pours somewhere between beer and wine, with a wide range of flavors and aromas—from crisp, tart, and dry, to a creamy mouthfeel with a strong sense of sweetness. It was only a matter of time before regional culinary artisans would rediscover cider and foodies would follow. While more widely available and popular in British Columbia thanks to a more modern European cultural connection, cider has only recently become a trend in Oregon and Washington. Until the past couple years, you could count the number of Northwest cider producers on one hand, yet today there’s more than a dozen cidermakers on the market—and that number will grow if interest keeps apace. Count us among the cider converts. Last year a cider tavern called Bushwhacker (1212-D SE Powell, Portland, OR, 503-445-0577, www.bushwhackercider. com) opened and quickly became one of our favorite new haunts, with more than a hundred bottles from around the world to choose from in addition to several bottles and the occasional barrel sample of their own house-made cider. To the list of choices add perry, cider made from pears—see “A Taste of Perry” on page 46. Other permutations include sparkling cider, super-sweet ice cider, and pommeau (a cider distillate). Similar to Riesling, there’s a cider to match anyone’s palate. As an introduction to cider, the tasting notes that follow read much as our regular wine section would, but they are not based on wine tasting experiences as much as our admittedly more restricted, but not insubstantial, cider tasting experience. For those wishing to explore cider, something we heartily encourage, these notes will provide an introduction to some of the many styles of cider available.

www.northwestpalate.com

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tasting notes cider views & reviews by peter Szymczak & Cole Danehower

Midway between beer and wine there’s cider— lightly effervescent, gently frothy, ranging in shades of color from pale as ale to amber, with a spritzy, sparkling wine nose and fruit-forward flavors on the palate. Cider shares with Riesling the common misperception of its, in fact, broad range of quaffable characteristics, from sweet to dry. Neither is cider thought of as especially sophisticated or complex, but more so the beverage of farmers and country fairs. It’s time for re-evaluation, as a new crop of cideries brings new wares made with apples and pears to the beverage marketplace.

Snowdrift Cider Co.

Washington State Hard Cider Dry Cider, Light & Delicate (8.8% alcohol) Pretty brass color. Aromas of fresh apple peels are clean and, dare I say it, appealing. Gentle fizz at the sides of the tongue. Lightbodied, tart apple flavors, with a slight metallic overtone. Slight earthiness on the nose and mid-palate. Softly sweet and easy drinking with charcuterie, cheese, and smoked seafood.

E.Z. Orchards

2010 Cidre, Willamette Valley (5.7% alcohol) Cloudy golden apricot color. Pours with an impressive foamy head, which is well sustained over time. Sweet scents of earth, apple skin, and floral honeysuckle. Off-dry, with a gentle sweetness that gives the apple flavors some energy. There is a sense of apple peel bitterness and even a subtle note of stemlike qualities, but the overall taste is easy to like and will appeal to many. The finish has lingering tannic tartness that calls for something unctuous, like an omelet. (United States founding father John Adams was said to enjoy cider with breakfast.)

Finn River Cider

Dry Hopped (6.5% alcohol) Bright yellow gold color with sustained and very fine mousse. Aromas of burnt twigs and dry earth are almost pungent, not apple-fruity at all. Pilsner-like hoppiness in the nose, mouth-puckering citric tartness on the tongue. Distinctly unsweet and even unfruity flavors of tart Granny Smith apple. Warm, dry, and fine mousse. Pair with roasted sweet onions and salmon.

Tieton Cider Works

Tieton Blend Dry Cider (6.6% alcohol) Deep amber color with subtle rising soft bubbles. Rich aromas of juicy sweetness, like freshly crushed ripe red apples. Sweet and light bodied, with gentle flavors of dried apples. Lingering fruity finish has a slightly drying affect on the mouth, producing an odd sensation, like it is not quite finished. Pair with som thing substantial, like a pork chop in molé sauce. 

est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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tasting notest cider views & reviews

Forest Edge Vineyard

2009 Pear-apple Cider, Willamette valley (6% alcohol) Almost still, devoid of effervescence, but pretty scents of peach blossoms and apple are quite clear, clean, and coaxing from the glass. On the palate, equally distinct flavors of pear and apple fruit are perfectly dry and lightly tart. A refreshing sipper, the finish is long with sustained fruitiness. Slices of cured ham, fresh bread, and salted butter wash it down.

Finnegan Cider

drinkcider.com

Finnegan Cider (9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;11% alcohol) Amber color with a metallic-like sheen and rising, medium-sized bubbles. Slightly soapy, redolent aromas of spices and candied apple. Sweet ripe apple flavors have an edge as well as a fine mousse, tongue-tingling like soda pop. There is a bitter bite to the finish, and a tannic pucker on the finish. Pair with venison in Cumberland sauce.

Snowdrift Cider Co.

Washington state Hard Cider orchard select, smooth & Bright (8.6% alcohol) Smoky topaz color. Gentle slowly rising bubbles. Warm aromas of sun-ripened apples, apple blossoms, and fresh flowers combine to create a sense of weight as well as liveliness. Sweet apple flavors are clean and satisfying. Medium-sweet, not sugary, with a refreshing tartness of acidity. Has some life and verve with good clean flavors. Sip it beside a well-toasted sandwich featuring your favorite cheddar cheese and bread.

Tieton Cider Works

Wild Washington apple, semi-dry (6.9% alcohol) Deep polished amber color with continually rising fine bubbles. Core apple aromatics have an edge of toffee and burnt honey, giving a sense of density and weight. Distinctly sweet on the palate. Odd sense of viscosity,

but somehow also with vivacious bubbles and a tart wrapper of apple skin. Distinct tannins add a stand-up quality, and the finish is rife with apple flavors that linger nicely. Sip while nibbling on your choice of dark or milk chocolate.

Snowdrift Cider Co.

Washington state Hard Cider semi-dry, multi-faceted (8.1% alcohol) Deep honey gold color. Notes of spices, honey, caramel, and very ripe fruit are reminiscent of the scents from late harvest Riesling wines. Moderate sweetness grows on the palate, nicely balanced with acidity and a tart edge around the tongue. Hightoned apple flavors linger long on the finish, with a pleasing clean apple quality. Quaffable with some sense of complexity, especially on the nose. Sip with chicken salad, green grapes, and toasted almonds tossed in green goddess dressing.

Bushwhacker Cider

semi-sweet (5.6% alcohol) Brassy yellow color. Scents of barn, candy, and flower blossoms. Brettanomyces-like rubber notes on the nose and on the palate behind sweet apple flavors in mid-mouth that devolve into a more biting sense of apple seeds, a little bitter on the finish. Serve with honey-glazed ham.

Blue Mountain Cider Company

An Apple a Day...One Glass at a Time 235 E Broadway Milton-Freewater, OR

dry Creek Hard Cider (6.5% alcohol) Straw yellow color. Apple pie and caramel notes on the nose, with a woodsy undertone. Lightly sweet and gentle green apple flavors are carried on a barely perceptible mousse. Satisfying finish has a sense of dried fruit. Try with potato pancakes, sour cream, and of course, apple sauce.

Snowdrift Cider Co.

Enjoy a sweet "tart" experience. Ice Cider

HardRow.com

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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Washington state Hard Cider Cliffbreaks Blend, rich & Bold (7.7% alcohol) Intense honey amber color. Aromas of honeycomb and Ăźber ripe apples. Quite sweet, but well balanced with tannins and sufficient acidity so it is not cloying. Lighter body than you might expect from the color. Has a sense of apple peel, perhaps core, bitterness, but more as a counterpoint to the sweetness than something that sticks out oddly. A must with mustardgrilled pork chops.

www.NwPalate.com

12/22/11 11:46 AM

stasting notes cider views & reviews

Tieton Ciderworks

Blossom nectar, sweet (6.5% alcohol) Unusual orange/apricot color. Aromas of honeyed fruit (peaches and apples). Sweet center has burnt notes. Distinctly tannic with surprising acidity. The finish almost coats the mouth with tannins. Definite sense of apple skin bitterness. Not as sweet as might be expected. Distinct apple character throughout, from start to finish—like eating a really ripe apple. Very fine mousse. A simple shortbread cookie or starter of caramelized foie gras and tropical fruit would be splendid matches.

Wandering Aengus.

single variety: Wickson (8.2% alcohol) Glittering yellow color. Definite sense of funk on the nose. Notes of barrel and/or wet hay? Tart dry and tangy with extremely fine mousse. Clean flavors of herb-studded crabapple with bright acidity give this cider a sense of verve. The finish keeps the tart apple core, but adds a softer sense of fruity sweetness. Bright and food-friendly. Sip and sup with a simple roasted chicken.

Sea Cider Farm

Alpenfire

Pommeau (19% alcohol)

Pirate’s Plank Bone dry (6.9% alcohol)

Golden yellow color. A confectionary potpourri of cotton candy, candy corn, saltwater taffy, and maple syrup. You could flame this volatile essence of apples on top of hot apple pie and a scoop of ice cream, or as a sidecar to a steamy mug of coffee or Earl Grey tea.

Polished gold color with a metallic sheen. Medium rising bubbles, but mouth-filling when sipped, with a sense of warmth that weirdly contrasts with the coldness of the liquid. Sweet seeming scents of apple blossoms and minerality. Intense sour apple flavor is onedimensional and not expected from the nose. Finishes short, yet clean, like a swim in the cold ocean. Savor once on-shore with roasted fish.

Hard Road to Hoe ice Breaker (9% alcohol)

2 Towns Ciderhouse serious scrumpy (11% alcohol)

Brassy gold color with metallic sheen. No perceptible rising bubbles, but there is mousse on the meniscus. Aromas of fresh toffee and cut green apples are lively and distinctive. Sweet on the palate with forward flavors of apples. Creamy texture. Mousse grows big in the mouth. Finishes with bright apple flavors. Try with turkey pot pie or artisan cheddar macaroni and cheese and turnips.

sCrUMpY

dessert

Despite the unflattering name, so-called “scrumpy” ciders (also known as “real” or “rough”) are usually made from withered apples, yet they pack a punch. High in alcohol (up to 15%), tannins, and haze (due to lack of filtering), scrumpies are synonymous with autumn, the season they’re most commonly made, and can be an acquired taste. But with the perfect pairing, they can be quite a treat.

Once fermented, apple juice that has been turned into cider can be distilled further into pommeau. Cider apples can also be frozen and converted into a concentrated sugary elixir that is similar to icewine. Either way, these higher alcohol and intensely sweet cider variations pair well with dessert courses or as post-prandial sippers, offering yet another way to enjoy the pleasures of Northwest-grown and crafted apples.

Carlton Cyderworks

Pomona (17% alcohol)

scrumptown Hard Cyder (6.5% alcohol) Soft, ever-so-slightly hazy old gold color and rising fine sparkles. Clear and appealing scents of crushed apples with a touch of vanilla crème. Tasty sour apple flavors also deliver plenty of sharp tannins and acidity, creating a bright and lively cider with a touch of mint, basil, and even barrel. Luxurious with lobster.

www.NorthwestPalate.com

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Amber bronze color. Viscous syrupy texture. Roasted apples, smoky campfire grass, and raisin scents shine out from behind a burnt honey character, like caramelized apples (not caramel apples). Rich and intense, this would be tasty with tapioca pudding.

Sea Cider Farm Brown-tinged burnt orange color. Deep caramel honey aromas with an earthy, herby, apple core. Tremendously sweet palate delivers intense— almost hot—apple notes at first, but ripens into floral honey and brown sugar. Distinctly tart with acidity, the flavors linger long on the finish, which is less sweet than you’d expect after the midpalate rush, releasing layers of herbal and spice notes: star anise, fenugreek, and cinnamon. Follow a hearty curry with a snifter of this and an order of gulab jabun (Indian doughnuts).

est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

12/22/11 11:46 AM

Photo by don genoVa

Photo by Peter szymCzak

A Taste of Perry

By Kathleen Mazzocco

Kristen Jordan of Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse.

t was on a visit to England in 2007 that Kristen Jordan first sampled perry, a fermented drink made from the juice of a rock-hard, lime-sized pear. Perry is listed on Slow Food’s “Ark of Taste,” a catalog of gastronomic products in danger of extinction. On sipping the artisanal heritage brew, Jordan mused about the fruit’s potential at home on Vancouver Island. After all, island microbreweries and apple cideries were succeeding in part due to the resurgence of interest in products first introduced by British pioneers. But the last thing Jordan needed was a new project. She had just launched the 10-acre Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse on the Saanich Peninsula. She had contentedly returned to her roots, which trace to an apple farm in the northern Okanagan Valley on the British Columbia mainland, after a career helping East African farmers increase production. Chances are Jordan would have dropped the thought if not for the British Columbia Fruit Testers Association, a volunteer group of retired professionals who scour Vancouver Island, identifying remnants of 46

heritage crops and providing farmers advice on orchard cultivation. A member called Jordan with an intriguing report of an odd fruit orchard languishing on a farm untended for decades. It turned out to be a rare sighting of pears perfectly suited for making perry. And what a find it was. “After adding Champagne yeast and allowing it to ferment, the tannins dropped and we were left with a lightly sparkling, clear, floral drink. Then we realized what we had was extraordinary,” says Jordan. “The fruit is not good for anything except making perry, and is in fact designed by nature to make a beautiful drink without much intervention,” Jordan says. She finds making perry to be less “fussy” than cider; pear juice is higher in sugars, making the finished beverage naturally sweet, and requires little filtration. Faintly bubbly, with herbaceous aromas of dill wafting from the glass, Sea Cider’s perry makes a fine aperitivo and pairs well with simple fare such as cheese, charcuterie, smoked seafood, and salad courses. Tinkering with the perry recipe, Jordan also makes a version wherein she blends

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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chamomile, lavender, fennel, and ginger to handcraft ginger perry. The resulting beverage is fragrant and spicy in the nose, with an aquavit-like sharpness on the tongue. As with apples and pears, Jordan notes that ginger is important in the culinary history of Victoria. “They are still pulling up old ginger beer bottles out of Victoria harbor,” she says, referring to the relics of a sunken merchant ship. Sea Cider produces a small amount of perry—just 50 cases of the regular and ginger version combined—compared to 3,500 cases of apple ciders. But Jordan is working to restore the original pear orchard to increase and sustain yields, and she’s partnered with Victoria’s non-profit LifeCycles Fruit Tree Project to forage pears from island backyards and orchards to mix with the perry for consistent and reliable quality. Sea Cider is not the only producer of perry in the Northwest. Tieton Cider Works in Washington just planted seven English pear varieties, which they’re planning to ferment in a few years, and Oregon’s Carlton Cyderworks also makes perry with Asian pears. www.NorthwestPalate.com

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photo by Peter Szymczak

By leen occo

www.northwestpalate.com

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est. 1987 | Northwest Palate | january/february 2012

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Item #144ÂŠ2012 Erath Vineyards, Dundee, OR 97115

january/february 2012 | Northwest Palate | est. 1987

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www.NorthwestPalate.com

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