There are two spots open on an amazing one-week tour of Burgundy this fall – Oct. 31st-Nov. 6th – this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip with private visits at the top domaines and amazing wines from the private cellars of a top collector.

Our friend Kim Gagné of Journeys in Wine will be your guide – and you can contact her directly at 415-310-9829 to reserve your spots now. (Kim will also be working with us when we do our first-ever Scott Paul tour of Burgundy in June 2011 – watch this space and your email for all the exciting details soon!)

Here’s a look at the draft itinerary for this spectacular trip -

Sun today?  Really?  If this is a dream, it is a great one.  With this cool, wet spring, our vegetable gardens are behind, just as the vineyards are.  It can be frustrating and humbling, but Nature rules and we have to roll with it.  Yes, the slugs got way too much of a head start.  But my experience over the last several years is that even after leaf-miners or slugs take their helping, there is enough to go around.

Inside those nibbled on exterior leaves is a beautiful soft buttery heart.

This is my first year growing butter lettuce and because they grow flush to the soil, rather that upwards like some other lettuce blends, they do invite more slimey garden party crashers, but it’s worth it and I’ll grow it again next year.  We’re enjoying butter lettuce greens with homemade blue cheese dressing, with avocados, and here, with thick cut bacon, housemade at nearby Chop, and hard-boiled eggs from Champoeg Farm.  This was declared a “best salad ever.”  Homemade croutons make all the difference.  Toss cubed bread in a skillet with 1-2 tablespoons of great olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and just stir occasionally over medium heat until crispy.  I learned this from working with Chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger.  These croutons are so delicious with soup.  Did I mention that I love homemade croutons?  Just checking.

… is one of the most beautiful things on the planet. I hear we might even get something resembling summer this year. Perhaps in August, they tell me. Yikes! Where is the sun? Longtime Oregon residents swear that summer starts here on the 4th of July. I hope they’re right – we need all the summer we can get. The vines are still a couple of weeks behind, with no serious problems or worries at this point – at least nothing that some sunlight and heat can’t cure…

Dundee Hills, sans-sunshine...

In the meantime, we’re going to pretend it’s summer anyway and get this party started. We’ve just added a few events to the schedule, kicking off with a special flight of our favorite “Value Summer Whites” on Saturday  July 3rd in Carlton. This’ll be a great time to taste and stock up on some of the best-value white Burgundies around, including some crisp and mineral-ly offerings from Chablis and rich full-throttle bottlings from St. Véran and Pouilly-Fuissé. Plan to join us if you’re headed to or through wine country on the 4th of July weekend (we will be closed on the 4th to celebrate the holiday with our families.)

Limestone in the vineyards of Chablis

Then the following weekend, on Saturday July 10th, for the first time ever we will feature wines from the Burgundian village of Nuits-St. Georges. We’ll have a special flight of killer juice from Frédéric Mugnier, J-J Confuron, Benjamin Leroux & Taupenot-Merme – four of Burgundy’s absolute best and brightest. (If you missed the Mugnier & Leroux tasting two weeks ago – this is a great chance to check out these two rockstars.) Watch your email and this blog for more info shortly…

Hard as it is to believe, IPNC is just weeks away, kicking off with our sold-out dinner in the winery on July 22nd. I’m so excited to welcome Allen Meadows (Burghound), Ray Isle (Food & Wine), Greg LaFollette (LaFollette Wines) and Paul & Louis Meunier of Domaine J-J Confuron for what is sure to be a great dinner – with master chef Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place at the helm. In the tasting room, we’ll be featuring the wines of J-J Confuron Friday-Sunday that weekend – July 23-25 – including goodies from Chambolle-Musigny, Nuits-St. Georges, and their legendary Grand Cru Romanée-St. Vivant. This is a definite don’t-miss tasting – please plan to join us that weekend if you can… There remain a handful of tickets available for the IPNC festivities as of this writing – it is always the best wine event of the year in the U.S. bar none, so get yourself booked before it’s too late…

Thiébault Huber of Domaine Huber-Verdereau in Volnay is planning to come over in mid-August, and we’ll be planning some special events around his visit. Check in here for the details as this all starts to come together…

In the meantime – it’s do or die for the USA in the World Cup tomorrow. If we beat Algeria we’re in control of our destiny and move on, or if not it will depend on what happens in the England-Slovenia match. It could actually come down to a coin-toss to determine if we make the next round, so here’s hoping that we just beat Algeria and get it over with. I’ll be running at 5:30 tomorrow morning so I can be back in time for the 7am match. (Now that’s either dedication, addiction, or a bit of both…)

Finally back in the saddle after a couple of weeks of events, travel, events, travel, events, & travel. But it’s all good. Had a fabulous visit to Aspen, Vail & Denver – conducting tastings for key accounts in each market, and enjoying some spectacular summer weather in the Rockies. We seem to be stuck in winter mode here in the valley, however. After a couple of teaser days in the hi 70s with bright sun, we’re back in the 50s-and-rainy rut again. Yikes. The rainiest May & June in history so far. We’re about 2-3 weeks behind in the vineyards. Flowering would normally be happening right now, but I don’t think we’ll see anything of the sort until after the 4th of July at this rate. The same thing happened in 2008, and we ended up with our best overall vintage ever, so one never knows. Whenever I’m asked how the grapes are doing, my standard reply is always “ask me in October”…

Summer in Aspen (at least it's summer somewhere!)

It’s been a blast seeing so many of you at a number of our recent events and classes here at the winery. Our series of Burgundy classes is done for the year now, to resume again in January – but we may be taking some classes on the road later this year, so watch your email for details.

I’m happy to report that my 22 year-old son Kevin has joined us for the next 5-6 months. He’s working in the vineyards all summer, and then will be a harvest slave in the winery for crush this fall (assuming we have grapes to crush, that is!) Welcome to the glamorous life if the vigneron, young man…

The 24th annual IPNC – the International Pinot Noir Celebration – looms shortly at the end of July. We are excited and honored to once again be a featured winery for this year’s festivities, and that one of our esteemed producers from Burgundy, Domaine J-J Confuron will be joining us as well. Speaking of sons, we’ve just received word that Confuron winemaker Alain Meunier has an ankle injury that requires surgery in July, so his sons Paul & Louis will be here to represent the domaine at IPNC. This will be everyone’s first look at the next generation of one of Burgundy’s finest estates…

Writer Jordan Mackay with Thiébault Huber at IPNC 2008

And yes, I’ve been glued to the World Cup – mostly on the laptop or on the iPhone. Its very early in the tournament, but I still think the winner will come from either Spain, Brazil, or Argentina. (Although with Spain’s loss to Switzerland yesterday, we could see Spain vs. Brazil in the round of 16 – that might be the real championship match right there!) France just lost to Mexico, and they are indeed pathetic. We will certainly not see a repeat of a France-Italy final this time around, to be sure…

We are excited to now be importing the wines of one of his winemaking heroes, Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier in Chambolle-Musigny. “Freddy” is revered around the world for his ethereal, graceful, and achingly beautiful wines from his spectacular vineyard holdings in Chambolle-Musigny and Nuits-St. Georges. His Musigny, Bonnes Mares and Les Amoureuses bottlings are for many the reference-standards of great Burgundy, and we are honored to work with this special man and his pure, elegant wines.

Last year we started working with one of Burgundy’s hottest young winemakers, Benjamin Leroux, who started his own operation in the 2007 vintage. Now we’ve completed the circle, as we’ll also be importing the wines Ben makes at Domaine Comte Armand in Pommard, where since 1999 he’s been drawing raves for some of the most exquisite and thoughtfully crafted wines in the Côte de Beaune.

More details soon…

It…is…still…raining…!

But I’m feeling good.  Hey, at least my lettuce is happy.

The Chard and Kale are also content with the cool temps and the rain.  I’ve harvested about 1.5 pounds of them already and they are just getting started, so I did a quick scan through a revered cookbook to get ideas for preparing these greens, so that the family won’t get tired of the simple sauté.  I don’t quite get why the revered cookbook and another source talk about Chard stems as something to cut off and use separately.  The revered cookbook goes so far as to call them a completely different vegetable than the leaves.  That’s not at all the case with what I’m harvesting – maybe because I’m harvesting them young?  Anyway, this was very tasty the other night.  I sautéed 13 ounces of rainbow chard, stems and all…

in 2 teaspoons of olive oil (that had been steeped with a tiny bit of chopped garlic – something I had on hand), and once wilted, I tossed in a handful of chopped green olives (castelvetrano, the bright green, buttery ones), golden raisins, and the tiniest bit of shaved grana padano cheese.    Some toasted pine nuts would have been great.  It was delightful alongside oven-fried chicken, which is in regular rotation at our house. It was declared a “dream dinner” — by the big people and the little people.  That is another source of happiness.

And so is the memory of last night’s Award-Winning Chefs Dinner, a special Classic Wines Auction event of which we were honored to be a part, along with Chehalem, St. Innocent and Matello.  The chefs were Philippe Boulot (The Heathman, Portland), Ethan Stowell (Union/How to Cook a Wolf, et al, Seattle), Jason Wilson (Crush, Seattle) and Cory Schreiber (founder, Wildwood, Portland).  We had such fun table mates.  I’m looking forward to reading Jennifer Heigl’s “dish” on the evening on her popular blog, Daily Blender.  We had the pleasure of sitting with her last night.  Jason Wilson’s lamb with an orange/olive sauce, served with baby spring vegetables and morels that was paired with our 08 Audrey Pinot.  If that doesn’t chase away the rainy day blues, what will?  Maybe a photo from the new Thursday evening Portland Farmers Market in NW Portland.

In two words and one picture -

Freddy. Mugnier.

Amen