L’ecole 41 Wine Dinner

Thursday April 9, 2009


2007 Walla Viola Chenin Blanc
-warm escarole salad with garlic toasted bread crumbs and preserved lemon

2007 Columbia Valley Chardonnay-marinated sea scallops with fennel and carrot confit and fresh herbs.

2005 Columbia Valley Merlot-cracklin’ duck leg over chick pea dumplings and duck jus.

2005 Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon-whole roasted lamb…roasted rack and loin with braised shoulder over glazed vegetables with lamb demi glaze.

2004 Columbia Valley Syrah-bittersweet chocolate torte and chocolate ice cream

Spring Barbeque at Celilo

We don't get too many days off. So what do we do with them?

Cook!

Enjoy.

A sign that Spring is just around the corner

Tuesday, March 10 will be our last Two for Tuesday for this year.  It has been a great one and we have seen some faces that we haven't seen in a long time so thanks again for coming in.  We do these to give back something to the community and try to "help out" during the winter along with being a warm, dry and friendly place to meet old friends and have some beer and eat on the cheaper side of things.  We were busier this year than ever so thanks again and we look forward to seeing you again after Two for Tuesday is over!

More from our friends at Phelps Creek.....

Our March wine dinner includes not one, but two winemakers. The evenings wines run a broad expanse of styles, with the bookends of old world and new world. Please read on.......


This is a tale of two winemakers.


In the 2007 crush, we were privileged to hire Rich Cushman as our full-time winemaker. Rich is well known in the Oregon wine industry where he has twenty-six Willamette Valley vintages under his belt. But what is less well known, Rich was born and raised in Hood River—his father was the local judge. He never lost his affection for the place and when the local wine industry finally took off, Rich told us “build a winery and I will come.” We furiously went through plans A and B, finally settling on converting an unused fruit-packing house into a very practical winery. We now enjoy the luxury of a spacious facility with three controlled temperature zones.

We met Alexandrine Roy in 2007 just before the International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville when a mutual friend brought her to our vineyard for lunch. Alexandrine Roy is an engaging 28 year-old fourth generation French winemaker from Burgundy, the proprietor with her mother and father of Domaine Marc Roy with holdings in Gevrey-Chambertin and Marsannay. Phelps Creek founder Bob Morus and Alexandrine hit it off immediately, and it wasn’t long before we were inviting her to return in the fall to produce a special cuvée of Pinot Noir with our grapes employing the exact same techniques that she would use in her Burgundy estate. Two winemakers, two styles applied to the same grapes from the same vineyard. Or as Bob likes to say "an old guy from the New World and a young gal from the Old World" Vive la difference!