Wine Dinner Weekend, Part 1

I thought I should clean up some stuff that I meant to post this fall, before we get into all the christmas-and-oh-yeah-im-moving-to-japan stuff…

Despite a wicked headache that lasted nearly nine hours on Sunday, we had an *awesome* weekend of awesomeness. What’s that you say? You want to hear more?

Saturday morning we jumped in the car and headed down to Portland. Taking a recommendation from Ross (who i met in japan), we had lunch at a really interesting middle eastern restaurant. For some reason, I don’t have any pictures. I can’t remember what it was called or what country it was from.

We’ve talked about this before. I have the memory of a goldfish. It’s why i take 9000 pictures. When i dont, this is what happens!

After lunch, jon and I went over to Jaciva to get a anniversary cake. Jon’s so awesome and incredible. He ordered a mini-version of our pink champagne wedding cake for us to much on in the hotel room that night. Happy late anniversary to us! Because we were headed off to a vegetarian thanksgiving the following weekend, we picked up this uber cute chocolate wishbone. Apparently I love kitschy things.

What kind of day in the Hawthorne district would be complete without a visit to a brewpub? Keeping in mind that we have a wine-dinner in about 5 hours, we dragged our over-stuffed selves in for a sampler tray at Hopworks. Hopworks is one of those places that a coworker of mine has been recommending to me for ages – it was great to finally get in there and try their stuff!

Summer BBQ

The purpose of the trip down to Portland was to go to Elk Cove’s summer bbq. Even though they have things a few times a year, we haven’t ever been to one of their events. They do (more formal) wine dinners twice a year, but this bbq was supposed to be just a fun, wine-drinkin get together, so they let us bring a couple of friends down with us.

We had a good time, but it should be said that there wasn’t anything really “bbq”y about the party. They had some picnic style snacks and wine-tastes in the back of the Roosevelt room (for those of you who were at the wedding, that’s the big room where they were pouring wine at our wedding). And they had a scavenger hunt!

Maybe it’s a phase, but I *love* scavenger hunts. I think it’s just the most exciting thing ever. They’re applicable to so many different situations, they’re great for groups, they’re fun. It’s just… good. Good good.

Anyways. The point of this story is to say that we had a great time and we came back to seattle with 2.5 cases of wine in the trunk. The trunk was essentially already full with 5 people’s worth of stuff for a weekend, so it was something of a tight squeeze. This is jon and adam tetris-ing the car to make it all fit.

Wine Tasting

Jumping around in time a little… Boy, isn’t blogging without sequence fun!

To catch you up: Saturday we had brunch, went berry picking, drove to the falls, then stayed at the Edgefield. Sunday morning we picked up Alex and Adam after breakfast and drove out to wine country, where an afternoon of wine tasting and making Adam feel awkward was in front of us.

This, for the record, is Alex & Adam. I met Alexis while I was working at Poco (wine bar) and we bonded over Harry Potter. Her’s is the single most lasting-friendship I’ve ever made in a bar.

Okay, Adam feeling awkward was a byproduct. I promise we didn’t intend to. He has a really valid point though, a lot of wineries have *really* pretentious tasting rooms. There’s a really fine line between a pretentious tasting room and a really pretty, state-of-the-art tasting room. The schmancy tasting rooms, while beautiful to spend time in, are often staffed with people who make you feel less-than-welcome.

I think it took Jon and I a dozen or so of these experiences to get over it. The fact is that we’re 25 and, based on our age alone, it could appear that we’re kids trying to get drunk.

But really, let’s dissect that for a second. Why, why would someone drive all the way out to (any) wine country just to drink wine, when Trader Joes / The Shell Station on The Corner would accomplish that for a fraction of the price. Second, of all the hundreds of wineries that are in the area, the fact that we chose your tasting room to stop in should be a slightly bit humbling. You know, be appreciative not expectant.

And as just a final side note on that topic before I stop ranting, Jon and I know a lot about wine. We drink it all the time, we have good (not excellent, but definitely good) palates. A majourity of the “wine 101″ things that they tell you in these sorts of places are fairly basic wine-knowledge that we’ve got a pretty good handle on. And there’s a reasonable chance that we’re equally (if not more) likely to appreciate what we’re swirling and sniffing and sipping, than the 50 year old woman next to us.

We visited Rex Hill, which isn’t my favourite but I like quite a bit. They have this really stellar “essence table” in their tasting room. I’ve always wanted to steal this idea for a party or something. Basically, you have samples of all the different things that you may smell in your wines. For instance, if you could tell that your pinot is floral and soft, but couldn’t pin point what it was that you’re smelling, being able to smell pure forms of geranium and lavender would help you decide between the two.

Rex hill is an example of a tasting room that has all the right things to be approachable, but their staff is just slightly standoffish.

This is the four of us, but for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the vineyard that we were at. I think the important thing to notice is how a beautiful background makes us all look prettier.

16 lbs of Blueberries

Boy, it’s going to take some effort to get back to the swing of blogging full time if/when we go back to our adventures in Japan. Here I am, on Saturday, still trying to tell you a story tha happened last saturday. Let’s see.  Where did we leave off…

Friday we drove down to Portland with Alexis & Adam, who you’ll see later, and stayed at Alex’ mom’s house. We had a lovely time drinking a glass of wine and eating freshly picked raspberries on their back porch. It’s always interesting to meet people’s moms, especially after you’ve heard about them.

The four of us went to this adorable brunch spot on Saturday morning, called the Country Cat.

And this is where my story begins today.

One of jon’s ideas for the trip down to Portland was that we could go blueberry picking. It ended up being a fantastic idea. With sun-hat in hand, the four of us set out to Sauvie Island in search of the blueberry farms.

Step 1: grab a box.

Step 2: flll a box. be careful not to eat more blueberries than you put in your box.

Step 3: try to image what the heck to do with the 16 lbs of blueberries you picked. (full disclosure: this picture has adam and alexis’ bucket shown too.)

It was so much fun! The four of us picked that much in an hour. Can you imagine if we had spent all day? What would you do with so many blueberries? If you lived so close, why wouldn’t you spend a few minutes…. every day…. and have some fresh in your house?

We hadn’t ever realized just how similar the blueberry is to the grape. At first super-market glance, the two seem pretty dissimilar. First, note how they grow on clusters, similar to the grape. They have a tannic skin (yes, I peeled one with my mouth to test it out). The inside is a funky shade of green, so they too get their signature blueberry-juice colour from the pressing.

So we’re making pies and muffins and cobblers. Jon has been inspired to become a domestic goddess / berry-makin machine. It’s pretty cool. A few days ago I tried to make something I was calling blueberry-lavender brownies. While tasty, they were not brownie-like in consistency at all. I’ll have to work on that recipe before releasing it to the world.

On a moderately unrelated note, there was this *kitten*. Now, I’m not generally all about playing with cats, but this one was super-fabulous. And he very nearly missed out on being smuggled home in my sunhat.

A Sunset Drive

Saturday night after jon and I finished wine tasting in the [McMennamins] Edgefield cellars, we drove up the river to Multnomah Falls. We made it just as the sun was setting, which didn’t affect the falls themselves very much, but the surrounding river was all shades of fantastic.

On the way, we met a dragon!

We took the “scenic highway” up to the falls, and on the way passed through some loopdy-loo style roads. There was one bluff in particular that was spectacular.

I learned a good lesson that day. We asked someone to take our pictures in front of the falls becuase, since she didn’t have a camera, she didn’t seem to be busy. My first clue that something was going to go wrong was that she had the camera pointed side-to-side instead of up-and-down. (Up-and-down being preferable because we were being photographed in front of a really tall, narrow water fall.) The picture turned out just terrible.

You’ll never see me be sexist, ageist, or racist. But i will judge all future picture-takers by the size (or lack-thereof) of the camera around their neck.

And on the way home we saw a pretty nice sunset. I am convinced that real life is prettier in pictures. I don’t remember this sunset being *that* spectacular.

Although, maybe the G9 knows when you’re having a superdate.