I don’t often write about music, though that world was where I spent over 30 years of my professional life before diving down the rabbit-hole of Pinot & Burgundy. I’ve been away from the music industry long enough now to have rediscovered my pure and unadulterated love for the music itself (working in the star-maker-machinery for so long nearly robbed my of that love near the end.) Fortunately, I can’t imagine ever tiring of great old bottles of Burgundy or Oregon Pinot or Champagne - so hopefully there’s no burnout ahead down this road. But back to the music.

I spend a lot of time in the car back and forth from Portland to Carlton and our vineyard sites in the Dundee Hills, Ribbon Ridge and Chehalem Mountains - and the iPod (actually these days it’s an iPhone, to be precise) is my constant companion. When the music isn’t stirring my soul, I catch up on my favorite soccer podcast - World Soccer Daily. And then occasionally something comes along that I literally can’t stop listening to. (A huge point of difference with wine - that stellar bottle of ‘49 deVogüé Musigny is not likely to be repeated anytime soon, one can only savor the moment and the memory. The great song or album, however, you can crank on endless repeat if you’d like…)

If you’re an aficionado of great, pure “pop” - of the Brian Wilson/Beatles school - you may want to check out an amazing album called “Under the Covers Vol. 1″ by Matthew Sweet & Susannah Hoffs (He a bit of a music geek’s insider secret and mid-90s alternative star, and she the main lead voice of the Bangles.) Together they selected some of the greatest pop nuggets of the 60s - some of them were major hits in their day, and others totally obscure but brilliant slices of the pop pie. They’ve remade them with love and reverence, and the upgraded technology that we all wish they’d had back in the 60s!

At any rate, this is some of the most delightful stuff I’ve heard in ages. I thought I was the only person on the planet who knew the Left Banke’s lost classic “She May Call You Up Tonight” (I actually have the original on my iPhone) - but obviously they did too. Also featured are lost treasures originated by the Zombies, Fairport Convention, and the Marmalade, along with well-known classics from Neil Young, The Beatles, Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Mamas & Papas, Bob Dylan, the Who, the Stone Ponys and more. In all, it’s breathtakingly gorgeous stuff - the voices and harmonies are captivating, the production is sonically brilliant, and I’ve been listening non-stop for days.

This album actually came out in 2006 - I just discovered it last week when I ran across a pre-release blurb on Under the Covers Vol. 2 - which is coming out on July 21st. Vol. 2 is their take on a bunch of killer 70s nuggets - including the Raspberries, Fleetwood Mac, Todd Rundgren, Derek & the Dominoes, Carly Simon, Tom Petty, Yes, Rod Stewart, Bread, and more! I literally can’t wait. If it’s anywhere near as good as the first one (and from sneak-previewing samples on Amazon it sure seems so) it will soon be in hot rotation on the iPhone. (For the record, I have zero connection to this project, I’m just a major fan. I did interview Sue a couple of times back in the radio days, but that’s the end of it.) And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Met an old friend from Los Angeles radio days who was visiting Portland and scoping it out for a potential move here (sounds familiar - didn’t I just do this 10 years ago?) We snagged a table outside on the deck at the new location of Noble Rot on East Burnside. Wow - what a fabulous view over the city and the West Hills, and a great line-up of wines and eats as always. Loved the squash panino, and the ham & cheddar panino w/mango chutney. Great space, great vibe, delicious grub, killer wines. Summer in Oregon does not suck…

I’ll leave you for now with a shot in Block 10 at Maresh from yesterday afternoon…

Had a great time at Portland’s new Metrovino in the Pearl last night - really nice high-end winebar/restaurant/bottle shop - over 80 excellent wines by the glass and a delicious selection of small plates, cheeses, and full-on entrees. We started with the decasdently delicious charcuterie platter, which included a deep-fried slice of terrine of short ribs, bone marrow and morels - a true hedonistic delight!

Also loved the tortellini stuffed with sweatbreads in a pea broth (below), the smoked trout and pork belly salad, and the baked escargot with button mushrooms and almonds.

On the wine front, you can’t beat the Huber-Verdereau Crémant de Bourgogne for starters, and the René Leclerc 2006 Gevrey-Chambertin was a perfect match with the escargot. If you haven’t been, get this place on your list asap…

Also had the chance to stop by the grand opening of Farm to Fork restaurant, Press Wine Bar, and the Inn at Red Hills - all together in a lovely new building right on Hwy. 99 just south of “downtown” Dundee. Wow - what a gorgeous space, what fabulous rooms, what a great wine shop/bar, gourmet foods shop, and full-on rockin’-good restaurant (with Chef Paul Bachand at the helm.) I just had time for a glass of Argyle bubbly and a sample of some of Paul’s house-made charcuterie and rillets - but early reports from friends dining there have been unanimously big-thumbs-up! Can’t wait to get in for a full meal (and the rooms are truly lush and deluxe - so great to have a new top-of-the-line lodging right in Dundee.) More details soon…

You never know when or where inspiration is going to strike. A bottle of ‘61 Krug on the family dinner table when I was in high school is probably what started me on the path to the here and now… Great memories touch someplace inside us that provoke deep, indelible feelings. My heart will always melt at the thought of looking into each of my children’s eyes for the first time. I feel a yummy squeeze in my chest thinking about the firt time I kissed my wife. The sound of Joni Mitchell’s voice stirs someting in my soul. And recently, I’ve been struck by the magic wand of inspiration repeatedly.

Most recently, last night - when Chef Gabe Rucker of Portland’s Le Pigeon restaurant pulled out all the stops for an all-time amazing meal. Gabe was chosen by Travel Oregon (the state tourism commission, the folks behind those “Oregon Loves Dreamers” ads you see in all the national magazines) to star in a video they are producing in conjunction with Portland’s ad-agency giant Wieden + Kennedy (the folks behind Nike, Coke, and a few small products like that.) The shoot followed Gabe around the state of Oregon - fishing, farming, making cheese, raising cattle, making chocolate, wine & beer - and then culminated with a private dinner for 10 at the restaurant, where Gabe created a menu of 8 courses inspired by his travels and all the artisan farmers & producers he met on his travels.

I was honored to be a part of the dinner, and to have one of our wines featured with one of the courses. Without waxing on endlessly, I simply must say it was a truly memorable and amazing meal. I’ve had the great pleasure of enjoying the culinary artistry of Ducassse, Keller, Gagnaire, Verget, Troisgros and other 3-star royalty - but this meal last night clearly makes my personal all-time Top 10. We were in the presence of a true talent, who was clearly inspired and playing at the very top of his game.

On offer: Oysters w/Pepper-Vodka cocktail sauce and oyster jus gazpacho

Frog Legs w/radishes & seafood butter

Hop-smoked & beer-braised Pork Cheeks w.chard, onion & goat cheese

Rockfish w/pea puree and cucumber (no photo - I got too excited)

Hay-roated Beef w/porcini mushrooms and Candy-cap mushroon crème-fraiche

Blue Cheese Crème Brulée w/biscuit & strawberry jam

And to cap it off with someting light -

Chocolate Truffle & salt-caramel tart w/hazelnut espresso cream

First off, I am in a food coma just remembering it all. Second of all, god it was good! Gabe said he was more excited about this menu than anything he’d done in the restaurant to date - and was especially pumped about the blue-cheese crème brulée (which he said was inspired by a visit to an artisan cheesemaker in southern Oregon - and a dish that I promise you will reappear at our IPNC dinner next month!)

Suffice it so say we were well sated and ridiculously happy after four hours at the table (and of course great Oregon wines accompanied every course - including our ‘07 Audrey with the beef, a gorgeous pairing.) Gabe will be cooking for us at our annual pre-IPNC dinner at the winery coming up on July 23rd (a few less courses, we hope!), and a few seats remain if you’d like to join us. Just email kellykarr@scottpaul.com for info and reservations.

I am inspired by greatness. Gabe Rucker is young, tatooed, irreverent, crazy like a fox & immensely talented. Last night, the greatness simply shined. A meal I will surely never forget. Thank-you Gabe, Andy, and the entire Le Pigeon team (with a special shout-out to “Lunch Box” the pastry chef!)

(I’ll let you know when and where you can see the finished video - should be a great piece!)

Please join us at Bar Avignon on Saturday June 20th from 2-5 pm.  We’ll pour our Scott Paul Pinots alongside a couple of our Burgundies.  Randy and Nancy have created a great vibe at this place and we hope you can swing over to see us and check it out.

 http://www.baravignon.com/welcome.html

Kelley and I spent most of yesterday doing final blending trials and selecting individual barrels for our upcoming 2008 bottlings. First off, everybody’s enthusiasm for the 2008s certainly seems justified. There is a completeness, a level of concentration, a depth to the wines that we haven’t seen since, well, ever - at least not in the 10 years we’ve been making wine here. My favorite Oregon vintage to date has been 2005, but I imagine when all is said and done the ’08s will eclipse them - and it appears to be one of those rare vintages where virtually everyone made excellent wine across the board.

The old-vine fruit from our 7.29 acres at Maresh in the Dundee Hills was again the star of the cellar. We tried endless combinations of barrels from this lot, until we arrived at what we thought was the absolute finest and purest representation of the vintage, and arrived at a total of 11 barrels that will become the 2008 Audrey - it will end up being about 250 cases of what will likely be the best wine we’ve ever made. Lovely aromas, rich sweet fruit and silky texture, superior length - this one truly has it all. It will be released in spring 2010, and should age well for 10+ years in the bottle, I would think…

The 2008 La Paulée will be comprised of the best lots of Ribbon Ridge and Momtazi, and a good bit of Maresh as well. Red & Black Cherries from Ribbon Ridge, Blackberries and earth from Momtazi, and a top note of red fruits from Maresh make this a really interesting and well-balanced cuvée. This proved to be a relatively easy blend to put together - the parts all seemed to just fit together harmoniously, and with much less trial & error than in some past vintages.

From 2008 we will also introduce two new micro-cuvées - both single-vineyard bottlings, one of them an exciting experiment - all the details of which will be revealed here in future posts…

Flowering continues in the vineyards under excellent conditions so far - keep your fingers crossed!

I’m enjoying the summer edition of Edible Portland, published by Ecotrust.  Thanks to the last issue, with Ellen Jackson’s article about radishes, we ate a green salad the other night made entirely of produce from our garden and featuring our radishes.  Better than her favorite accessories store, the little one said, as she crunched down on a homegrown cucumber dipped in a spicy vinaigrette.  And the sautéed kale is really good on this, she declared of the veggie tart.  Music to a mama’s ears!  I feel lucky that we’re able to garden together and make the connection between the soil and our dinner table.  Imagine if that adventure and education were part of the school system!  Well it is in Oregon, if we support it.

To that end, I hope you’ll add us to your July 4th plans.  A portion of tasting fees that day will go to Ecotrust’s Farm to School program.  You can read specifics on our events page and access a link to the list of other participating wineries.  We’re pouring library wines that I’m very excited to revisit - a vertical of Cuvée Martha Pirrie, plus some fun Burgs.

From their website:  Ecotrust, in close collaboration with a diverse coalition of project partners, is working …to promote “farm to school” programs…that enable schools to feature healthy, locally sourced products in their cafeterias, incorporate nutrition-based curriculum in all academic disciplines, and provide students with experiential agriculture and food-based learning opportunities, from farm visits to gardening, cooking, composting, and recycling.”

Digging around in the dirt and playing with worms?  Sounds more fun than some of the field trips I remember from third grade.

First off, I wanted to alert you to an opportunity to get in on a very special offering of some once-in-a-lifetime wines that will be produced in Burgundy this fall. A group of Burgundy’s top producers, including Aubert de Villaine of DRC, our friend Véronique Drouhin of Joseph Drouhin & DDO, and the folks at Dujac, Leflaive, Roulot and more - have gotten together to produce a limited series of Magnums from top 1er Cru vineyards this fall, all to raise money for local charities in Burgundy. They’re calling the group “Climats de Coeur” - click the link for all the information.

You can reserve your wines online starting Friday June 26th - they are sold only in sets of 4 magnums, with a limit of only one set per person. Only 1,000 sets will be made - stunning 1er Crus from Gevrey-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Meursault, and Puligny-Montrachet. Incredible stuff! We have no connection with this endeavor - just thought it would be cool to pass it along. Seems like a good time to share a nice shot of Richebourg while we’re at it…

While in Beaune last week, I got to spend some time with an American friend who has moved there, and is now offering wonderful cooking classes and market tours in Beaune. Meet Marjorie Taylor of the Cook’s Atelier - she has a delicious blog, a great website, and is living the dream in Burgundy (and cooking up some fabulously tasty stuff!) She has just started up an amazing program offering dream weekends in Beaune - including world-class lodging at a new four-room masterpiece that has just opened in the middle of town. Get in on this treat before the world is hip to it!

The great thing about working from home is that there is no one else to distract you with office chit-chat, pointless meetings and the like.  The problem is that YOU are there to distract you, with things like making strawberry preserves.  Last week, I got up from my computer station to look for a phone number and after making a berry clafouti and some pancake batter for the weekend, I had to think hard about what I had gotten up to do in the first place.  Yesterday, it was strawberry preserves.  I was delighted to run across the website for Preserve, a Portland-based duo dedicated to preserving, uh,…preserving!  It just so happened that I had in the fridge already washed, cut berries, from our garden!

We had picked a nice sized basket of berries last weekend.  It was thrilling for Little Miss, who did the honors, sampling as she went.  Maybe we picked them one hair early because they weren’t super sweet.  However, I was concerned that the ants and birds would profit most if we waited another week.

Anyway, our gorgeous, but not overly sweet berries were good candidates for this quick and easy recipe for preserves.

I brought 3 cups of sliced berries, 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to a boil in a 10-12″ skillet, stirring occasionally, then reduced heat, stirred frequently and let cook 8-10 minutes as mixture thickened (I didn’t bother to skim foam; there wasn’t much).  Then, I applied the cold plate trick:  I put a spoonful of the strawberry mixture on an ice cold plate and waiting 30 seconds and then tilted.  It didn’t run down the side so it was thick enough.

When cooled, I spooned the preserves into two small, clean jars.  This will keep 2-3 weeks in the fridge, but won’t last that long!

As I’ve mentioned here a while back, we made our first wine in Burgundy last fall - one whole barrel of a gorgeous 2008 Scott Paul Chambolle-Musigny.  Talk about a dream coming true! I still can’t really believe it, but each time I check in on our barrel it starts to sink in a little more. I ordered the labels a couple of weeks ago, which seemed to make it even more of a reality. Before dropping in to check on the juice, I stopped by the vineyard - I thought you might like to see exactly where this wine comes from. It’s a lieu-dit called Les Bussières - on the northern edge of Chambolle right at the Morey-St. Denis border -

Our barrel is sitting quietly in the cellars of Anne & Hervé Sigaut in Chambolle. It is coming along nicely in barrel (a once-used François Frères Allier MT, in case you’re interested), and the élévage has been going smoothly. As previously noted, malolactic fermentation is happening late for most of the 08s, so when I stopped by the Sigauts to taste their finished 07s in bottle and check in on our barrel last week, it was in mid-malo but showing some very succulent ripe fruit at this stage nonetheless. I’ll check in again next trip, and keep you up to date - at this point we’ll likely bottle in February or March…

Anne proudly showed off their new custom stone floor walkways in the cellar, made from local stone quarried in Chassagne-Montrachet…

We then tasted thru their range of very pretty 07s - a vintage which clearly favored my favorite village of Chambolle-Musigny, with bright, pretty, elegant red fruits and subtle, intoxicting perfumes abounding. Their 07 Chambole-Musigny showed distinct notes of raspberry that I found very appealing. Then on to the 1er Crus - the Fuées, from their youngst vines (planted in 96) was nicely balanced, and a touch more complex than the 06 version, I thought. The Noirots was dense and concentrated, leaning toward darker fruits, and very long. The Chatelots was the best of the cellar on the day in my opinion, with fine tannins, ultra-pure elegance and finesse through and through (Anne also thought it was her best of the vintage.) Then the Sentiers (from their oldest vines dating to the 40s) - it was as fine and pure as the Chatelots, but with more structure and grip - I said it reminded me of a “Baby Bonnes Mares”. Here’s a shot of the days’ lineup…

I’m really looking forward to welcoming Anne & Hervé to Oregon next month for their first appearance at IPNC. Watch this space and your email for details on a special tasting event at the winery in Carlton while they’re in town - with their full range of 06s now in-stock and ready to take home for your dining and dancing pleasure!