The wine manager at our local grocery store once reminded me, "And don't forget, your lovely-and-talented REALLY likes rosé."

She didn't have to remind me. Kim and I have both been fans of good, well-made rosé wines since June of 1994, at least. That was the anniversary that we flew her mom up to watch the girls, packed a picnic basket into the MGB, and took off to the Santa Cruz Mountains for our 15th anniversary.

The first night out, at the Davenport Inn a few miles north of Santa Cruz, we toasted the sunset with a bottle of Randal Grahm's then-unique "Vin Gris de Cigare," a pink wine made from Rhone varietals (grenache, syrah, cinsault, mourvedre). It was... dry, crisp, delicate, but tasted great chilled as we watched the sunset on the veranda outside our room.

The problem at that time was finding other wine-like rosés. Most pink wines, back then, were still of the "blush" variety, made by wineries trying to get back some of the return on their red grapes in a market dominated by white-wine drinkers. (As far as I'm concerned, wine is red; if it's white, it should have bubbles.)

Randal later introduced a Ca'del Solo rosé some time later; we once did a cross-tasting and came to the conclusion that while the Vin Gris de Cigare was a better wine, we enjoyed the Ca'del Solo more. It was a little fruitier but still not sweet; the vin gris was more austere, more (surprisingly) like a white wine, while the Ca'del Solo had more body, more fruit, and was also a better choice for serving with more highly flavored foods. Since we tend to match rosé with barbecue, a fuller-bodied wine is usually a better choice.

But apart from Bonny Doon and some French rosés (Provence and Anjou being fairly reliable), we were basically stuck.

Until recently.

Fortunately, our wonderful wine lady, Roberta, likes to talk with us and has been looking out for good, dry, fuller-bodied rosés with less residual sugar. Lately we tried two of our favorites, and better still, they're both local.

In between paragraphs, I'm sipping the last few milliliters of a 2007 Elk Cove rosé of pinot noir, from my neighbors in Gaston. (Gaston is at the western end of one of my favorite sports-car roads in the world, and a charming place to visit on its own.) It's got a lovely coppery color, a nice acid balance but a good amount of fruit (even to the point of being a little sweeter than I normally like, but not objectionably so). We're having it as a summertime refresher after dinner, a simple supper of our fresh, local bacon and a spinach salad. It would have been good with dinner, too, and in fact would be good with something spicy—a curry would be an awesome pairing with this wine.

And for all that... the Evesham Wood is one of the best wines I've tasted lately. And not just the best rosés, one of the best wines. It's got fabulous body, with all the usual tempranillo goodness of complexity, depth and richness, but in a lighter color suitable for chilling. I had a bottle recently, and was thrilled; sadly, I bought the last one in Roberta's stock, so I'll have to head down to Salem (about 30 miles from us) to the vineyard.

Because, considering that the tempranillo grape is originally from Spain, I want to make paella this summer and serve the Evesham Wood with it.

Blue-ribbon Pork, Popcorn Rice, and Fake Tomatoes

I'll be blunt—the only legitimately fresh and local product in dinner is the pork (well, that and the beer, but I'll get to that later). But the rice is worth talking about, and the tomatoes, well, they served as a reminder of what the whole fresh, local foods movement is really all about.

And as it turns out, this dinner started out with the rice. A few weeks ago, my friend Jeff Zurschmeide informed me that he'd ordered a ten-pound bag of rice for me from Ellis Stansel's Gourmet Popcorn Rice out of Louisiana. Knowing that I try to keep a "rice collection" at all times, Jeff took a gamble that I'd happily hand over the $20 it would take to bring all this Louisiana goodness up to Oregon. (You think I'm kidding about the rice collection? In addition to the Stansel, we have basmati in white and brown, a bit of Thai jasmine rice, some Italian arborio, a box of mochi, and a recently-emptied bag of Japanese short-grain rice. Oh, and some wild rice from Minnesota, but that's not technically rice, it's a different grain.)

So when the rice arrived and I brought it home from Jeff's place last week, we started planning a Cajun/Creole feast. The heavy cotton sack, complete with drawstring, makes a great presentation:



Then Saturday was so sunny that I took off looking for future features for the blog (oh, all right, I put the top down and drove the hell out of the Miata, all over the best roads of Washington County). Kim and Boh started doing the grunt work of our own garden. Charlie spent the day zoning out in front of the Wii. So we all had a very light dinner, since nobody had the energy to cook.

Worse yet, we were unable to easily lay hands on crawfish, so the original plan of making a crawfish etouffee to serve on top of this fabulous rice will have to wait. To compensate for it, Kim dug out some wonderful fresh pork chops from the prize-winning hog that Jeff acquired for us last year (blue-ribbon winner from the 2007 Clackamas County Fair, no less), and I grilled them with a mild but zesty dry-rub. They were just incredibly beautiful raw, as I laid them out for seasoning:



While they soaked up the spices from the dry rub, I made the third part of the meal, fresh tomatoes sliced and seasoned with our favorite peppercorn mix (black, white, green and pink, freshly ground), dried marjoram, and crushed red pepper, then drizzled with good extra-virgin olive oil.



While they were good, the tomatoes were on the crisp side, even though they were deep red hothouse tomatoes on the vine. Usually, these are about as good as it gets for store-sourced tomatoes; this was no exception, but I still miss the incredibly, musky lusciousness of real tomatoes.

Overall, the meal was wonderful:



And a word on that beer: I've been a fan of Bridgeport Brewing Company since we moved here, especially since learning that Bridgeport is the old name for the town we live in. They make a lovely IPA and a fantastic porter that I've enjoyed on many occasions.

Last summer, though, Kim and I were in the Hawthorne district (the funky, cool part of town on the east side) and walked past the Bridgeport Brewpub. Since we were looking for refreshment at the time, we stopped in and ordered some bar snacks (warmed olives marinated in lemon zest and herbs) and a sampler of their brews.

All the beers were good, but the Beer Town Brown hit home for me. Years ago, when I was building my race car, I spent a lot of time at the homes of various friends on our loose confederation, depending on who had what tools that one or the other of us needed that week. The beer of choice, since we all raced British sports cars, was Newcastle Brown. I still love Newcy, though it's better on draught of course. But I've always wondered what it would be like to have a Newcy IN Newcastle.

Well, unless I make the trip, a Beer Town Brown at the Bridgeport Brewpub is as close as I'm likely to get. And let me tell you, it's wonderful. Not that I wouldn't love a trip to England, but the Hawthorne is just across the river, and my local grocery store has been selling Beer Town Brown in bottles for the past few weeks.

It's got the great, rich, mellow blend of chocolate and crystal malt that is the highlight of Newcastle, but in traditional Northwestern style it's hoppier than Newcy, with a refreshing bitterness atop the creamy, deep malt. Highly recommended...

Not just fruit and veg any more...

When talking about fresh and local foods, usually the mind calls forth images of farmland, vineyards, orchards, and farmer's markets growing, selling and offering fresh produce. Green beans, cherries, pears, potatoes, ears of corn—that's what we think of.

Most people don't think of bacon. But I'm here to tell you, that's a mistake.



There's a growing trend to take fresh, locally grown meat as well as fruits and vegetables. For years we've partnered with our longtime friend Jeff Zurschmeide, who typically farms a small number of pigs every year. We chip in for the feed, buy the pig in spring, and in fall when it's a suitable size we pay for the mobile butcher to come and, er, prepare it to go to be dressed, cut and packaged by Shy Ann Meats.

Last year, Jeff's time was taken up with his book and magazine to do quite as much pig-rearing as usual. So he arranged to contract with the 2007 Clackamas County Fair winner and acquire the prize-winning pig, Homer, for us from the young 4H club member who raised a pig for the fair.

The net result, as with past years, is the best bacon I've ever tasted. This is the thick-cut, standard cure bacon, lightly smoked and moderately salty. Their hams are even better, and even the non-smoked meats (pork roasts, chops, ribs, and the like) are flavorful, lean, and best of all, grown by our friends and neighbors, in small lots that allow for careful tending and attention.

Tonight's bacon went into a dish, brussels sprouts parboiled and then finished in crispy bacon. I'll post more recipes, but take it from me, the bacon here tastes as good as it looks: lean, flavorful, and real.