May 22, 2012 Lunch - Dundee Bistro

May 22, 2012 Lunch - Dundee Bistro

We woke up and after a smoked Chinook salmon on fresh French read  with cream cheese sandwich and hot tea breakfast, we drove about ten miles to Domaine Drouhin located on the Dundee Hills for a tasting and tour at 10:00 am.  The Winery has a lovely view to the East of a deep valley and miles of grape vines.   We bought two bottles of their rose and one bottle of the 2010 Pinot Noir.  Drouhin is the largest negociant (wine producer) in Burgundy France, with vineyards in Echezeaux, Vosne, Clos deVouget, Gevrey-Chamertain, Nuit Saint George and Mersault.  We bought their 2010 Pinot Noir ($28.00) and Rosé ($15.00) at a 30% discount).

Then we went to De Ponte Winery, which is on the next hill over and whose wine maker used to be Drouhin’s winemaker until the next generation of the family took over wine production at Drouhin about ten years ago.  We really like the De Ponte wine. We all agreed that it had the best rosé and a killer 2008 Pinot.Noir, so we bought more of it than Drouhin at a 25% discount because Suzette had a restaurant. 

After that we decided to stop at one more vineyard on the hill we were on and the next vineyard on the same hill was Archer’s Summit.  This area reminds me of Sauternes where the wineries are clumped around a hill top.  Archer’s Summit has a cave dug into a hillside with a small tasting room next to it.  The tasting was $15,00 and we were reluctant to pay that until the man doing the tasting said he wanted us to try their wine.  So we tried it and it was a different kind of pinot, very bio-dynamically rich and very extracted.  I commented that the wine had a leathery front on the palate and he said I was the second person that day who had made that comment. When he said the wines were highly extracted, I asked if they had a rosé and he looked at me and then pulled a chilled bottle out of the fridge and poured it.  Unfortunately it had a leathery front also, so we did not buy it.  The wines started at $48.00 and went up to $100.00 per bottle, Suzette said they were the kind of huge pinots she thinks of as Oregon Pinots and they were huge wines, like big heavy Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa. I think of them as Scotch and cigar wines.

After Archer’s Summit, Billy and Elaine anted to go to Lange Winery because they thought they had been there before and liked it.   It around 12 noon, so we decided we would go to lunch at Dundee Bistro in Dundee after visiting Lange.  We drove about 5 or 6 miles north to the Yamhill district to Lange and when we rolled in to the tasting room in a moderately heavy rain, we found a woman and wines that had not personality.  They charged $10.00 per tasting and would not pour the rosé when I said I only love rosé, “Because it is not on our pouring list for today.”  All the other wineries will pour you whatever wine is open or in new release at the time, if you express an interest in their wines, so Lange was a decidedly different and bad experience and their wines were washed out and flavorless. 

So we went to Dundee with our heads reeling a bit from forty or so tastes of wine, a taste is about ounce, but after 40 you feel it.

The Dundee Bistro had an interesting, but limited, food menu, but its wine menu included most of the good wines made in the area and was single spaced and a legal sheet of paper long and it had received the Wine Spectator Wine Recognition Award for four yeas in a row.  I ordered a baby frisee with poached egg salad.  Suzette ordered local oysters fried in cornmeal and panko drizzled with truffle oil and the Clam and Mussel Chowder.  Bill ordered the Chowder and Elaine ordered the Redland Hills beef Burger with fried potato sticks with a truffle oil aioli.  I loved my salad.  It was better than Vinaigrette.  It had a circle of locally made salami slices around the mound of frisee and was garnished with crushed, toasted hazelnuts.  The egg was perfectly cooked and broke with a gush of yellow onto the salad.  The chowder was also good.  The baby manila clams and mussels were amazingly fresh and the soup was a wine bouillabaisse. After lunch we went across the street to the Red Hill Market, a gourmet shop and deli with seats and tables and sandwiches and light food offerings, where Suzette bought a few almond macaroons.

We had been calling Willy before and during lunch and found out he was caught in a traffic jam on Interstate 5 and was delayed.  After Suzette gave him instructions to Dundee we got in the car to go to Argyle, which specializes in sparkling wines.  Its “Extended Triage” Brut is the top ranked wine on the Wine Spectator’s sparkling list and Argyle has three other wines (Knudsen -  80% Pinot Noir/20% Chardonnay, Blanc de Blanc 100% Chardonnay, and Brut Rosé  – 50% Pinot Meunier, 40% Pinot Noir and 10% Chardonnay. The Brut Rosé was very French, the Extended Triage was more balanced and the Knudsen was my favorite with its pinot noir softness and subtlety.  So they are deservedly proud of their wines. Our pourer was unreserved about their wines, kind of like Stanley Marcus who used to say how wonderful everything was at Neiman Marcus.  How could it not be, he said it was? Gruet came in about twenty on the affordable list at $14.00.  It would have been higher if folks could all buy it at Costco for $11.00.   

We called Willy again and he was close, so we decided to meet in Minneville and drove on to a growers market where Elaine bought strawberries and we then called Willy and found out he was ahead of us and waiting in Minneville.  We met at the Staples in Minneville and Billy and Elaine went with Willy to a bakery for a rhubarb pie and then downtown Minneville and Suzette and I followed. Downtown Minneville is very charming with a main street filled with wine tasting rooms, specialty shops, restaurants and wine bars and brew pubs, a theatre and a small market.  We went into the market and bought Redhill Ranch ribeye steaks, sweet potatoes, vine ripened tomatoes, butter lettuce, green onions, bagels, and some beer and chicken salad and an apricot for Willy to eat since he missed lunch.  

Then we went back to the house on Amity Hill and rested and took showers and began cooking at around 7:30 p.m. I made the salad and sautéed mushrooms with white wine and onion, Elaine made the dressing, and Billy made the steaks and a lovely sweet potato mash with cream and butter.  We opened a bottle of Ribera de Duero Vino Tinto 2009 Billy brought from Dallas.  I sliced some strawberries and Billy heated the pie and we ate pie with tea.  Then they watched “Good Night and Goodbye” the film about Edward R. Morrow and I read my Warmth of Other Suns book.  

Bon Appetit .