This year’s IPNC (International Pinot Noir Celebration) started Friday morning with overcast skies and cool temperatures, rare for this famed weekend at Linfield College in the heart of Oregon wine country.
Our group spent the day at Belle Pente Vineyard in Carlton, Ore. As the clouds disappeared, we toured the vineyards, learning about the different blocks of Pinot Noir grapes within the vineyard.
Everyone was then broken into smaller groups of 6 (or so) for a blending exercise, in which we developed a Pinot blend from 3 different blocks of grapes. Cyril Frechier (Sommelier, Campagne, Seattle, Wash.), Fiona Beckett and Fiona Sims (Wine/Food Writers, The 2 Fionas, UK) judged each group’s blend, and much to our excitement, our group won!
Following the blending exercise, we tasted Pinots from around the world, including Oregon’s own Sokol Blosser and Flowers from Sonoma.
We then moved to a four-course lunch, provided by Portland’s Ben Bettinger of Beaker & Flask.
First course, cool corn chowder with shrimp; second course, blackened cod with seasonal vegetables; third course, lamb from the Belle Pente property (too busy eating to take a photo); and fourth course, panna cotta with black pepper, seasonal fruit and a shortbread cookie. My oh my, can you say delicious?
As if all of this wasn’t delightful enough, once we returned to campus, we visited the Moonstruck Chocolate booth, where we sampled truffles, as well as the not-yet-released Single Origin dark and milk chocolates. A wonderful cap to our fun-filled day, that is, until we moved on to the dinner festivities.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to escort a small group of U.S. journalists to Japan on a food tour of the country. I can’t possibly begin to chronicle all of the amazing things we saw and did, but here are some highlights:
Next, we attended
The next day, we took the Bullet Train North to Fukushima, where we learned about the art of miso production, met a poultry farmer who fed and treated his chickens as though they were his children, ate Waygu beef, sampled sake from an eighteenth generation sake maker and drank regional beer from a microbrewery.
A dinner with the governor of Kumamoto featured the best sustainably farmed tuna sashimi I have ever consumed in my life.
The group ate freshly dug bamboo shoots barbequed over bamboo charcoals sandwiched neatly between cinder blocks. The stunning resulting dish, prepared by the Denkis, a husband and wife team who first began farming bamboo and green tea leaves 40 years ago to pay for their children’s college tuition, bore no resemblance to the bamboo shoots we know.
Traditional accommodations in Ryokans and multi course dinners followed by steaming hot baths in onsen (Japanese for hot springs), and of course, competitive karaoke, were experiences I will not soon forget.
Last month, LANE executed events designed to introduce and educate key media and trade about the olive oils of Spain.
fs Brian McCracken and Dana Tough, were recently called rising star chefs by Food + Wine magazine, and Jose Garces of Mercat recently won the title of the Next Iron Chef. 