This last weekend, I was in Astoria, OR, were life was very kind to my husband and I in the fermenting world.
After going to the Blue Scorcher Bakery and Café for a bowl of homemade soup and a pear and clove bread pudding, we headed over to Shallon Winery for a tasting. He had his dry black berry, cranberry whey, peach, spiced apple, and chocolate orange wines. Upon me producing a business card, he realized that he had read my previous comments about the winery, and informed me that I did have one fact incorrect. He does add sugar to the fruit wines, or else the alcohol level would be too low. Thank you, Mr. VanDerVeldt, for clearing that up for me and for producing great wines!
After purchasing a peach wine and an apple spice wine, we walked back to Fort George Brewery, where my husband had a bourbon barrel stout and I had the wasabi ginger ale. Mine was a bit bland, and I was since told that sometimes the batches are inconsistent. My husband enjoyed his beer, as he was getting ready to add the oak chips that have been soaking in bourbon to his porter back home to make a bourbon barrel porter.
We then joined my father’s cousin for dinner. My parents had told them before Christmas what we were doing, and they said they had some brewing equipment that they hadn’t used in over ten years that we could have. We ended up with three 5 gallon carboys, two bottling buckets, a 90 bottle tree and cleaner, another hydrometer, a bigger wine thief, a few books, and about 100 bottles. The bottles were unique. I think he said they used to have Bud Light in them, but they were like brown 16 oz Burgundy bottles rather than beer bottles with shoulders. This means that if a batch is bottle conditioned for carbonation, it is harder not to pour what little lees are produced as the neck is not conducive for catching them. There were also some champagne bottles that had the ability to be capped. My husband is thinking about using one of those per his beer batches for occasions like parties.
When we got home, we started scrubbing dust and algae off of things, and sanitizing the equipment. My husband is excited to now brew twice as many beers because he has twice the carboys to do it with!
Showing posts with label Astoria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astoria. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Shallon Winery
In Astoria, OR, there is a one man operation called Shallon Winery which I try to go to once every six months or so. It is run by Paul van der Veldt, a sort of kookie man who is up there in years but entertaining if you like wine and take your time. It drives him batty over how people are in such a rush these days, and attempting to rush him only makes him grumpy.
He will start you off with a tour of his facility. The main workshop has a mural, including one of Fort George. He will be impressed if you visit Fort George a few blocks up the hill before the tour. Also, take note of his label, the shallon plant. Again, he will be impressed if you know what it is.
After the brief tour, he will proceed with the tastings of whatever wine he has in stock. He does have one grape table wine, but he shies away from making grape wines since there are so many available coming out of the Willamette Valley that he figures he doesn’t need to add more to the market. It is this philosophy that grape wine is so easy to buy while good fruit wine is not that I’ve adapted.
Next is his dry blackberry wine made from Evergreen Blackberries. He will go on a bit about how difficult it is to find these berries due to little old ladies who picked them are dying, and kids just don’t want to do that kind of labor. Honestly, the Pacific Northwest grows Himalayan Blackberries as weeds, so it is a little bit rare to come across Evergreens.
Then comes his apple wine, followed by his peach. I tend to walk out with a bottle of both, though he will say that he is never quite sure about the peach being stable, so it should be refrigerated. I pulled out a bottle of that the other day, and it had lees in it, proving what he was saying.
He also has a cranberry whey wine, and touts the health benefits of adding whey to the wine. It is a pity that ag research centers do not have his recipe. This wine is not milky colored at all, and it is another bottle we take home. He recommends adding a little bit of 7-up to it for the bubbles, which is also excellent. I’ve never eaten it with turkey, which I imagine it would be good with, but to do so would probably mean I would have to share, and I would rather horde his wines.
Only once in all my times there has he had his lemon meringue wine, dedicated to his mother.
After tasting all those wines, he takes away your little glass and then gives you a tiny ice cream cone so that you can sample his chocolate orange wine. He’ll talk a bit about how the recipe originally had four truffles, but then he had to change to six. How the only paper worthy of labeling the bottle cost $1,000 for the labeler. He will recite stories about how indestructible this wine is though the years, and warns you not to refrigerate it, which I did. It causes the chocolate to solidify, so he suggests boiling the bottle, which I did, and the wine was saved. He also will proceed to wrap the bottle up in tissue, string, and foil, and then tell you he is selling it to you at the price of the truffles only, and that he views this wine as the pinnacle of his career, and that he can never beat this wine. It is sad because he is so old that it worries me that this defeatist attitude will not get him out of bed one day.
I’ll admit, we only have one bottle of the chocolate wine in our house compared to the others. The others are drinkers, and the chocolate wine isn’t so much. He does have a list of 25 suggested ways to consume the chocolate wine, such as on ice cream and, um, other methods.
Anyway, go check it out. He is there almost any afternoon, including major holidays. If there is a note on the door saying to call him, do it. The wine world will not know how much will be lost from the tip of Oregon when he is gone.
He will start you off with a tour of his facility. The main workshop has a mural, including one of Fort George. He will be impressed if you visit Fort George a few blocks up the hill before the tour. Also, take note of his label, the shallon plant. Again, he will be impressed if you know what it is.
After the brief tour, he will proceed with the tastings of whatever wine he has in stock. He does have one grape table wine, but he shies away from making grape wines since there are so many available coming out of the Willamette Valley that he figures he doesn’t need to add more to the market. It is this philosophy that grape wine is so easy to buy while good fruit wine is not that I’ve adapted.
Next is his dry blackberry wine made from Evergreen Blackberries. He will go on a bit about how difficult it is to find these berries due to little old ladies who picked them are dying, and kids just don’t want to do that kind of labor. Honestly, the Pacific Northwest grows Himalayan Blackberries as weeds, so it is a little bit rare to come across Evergreens.
Then comes his apple wine, followed by his peach. I tend to walk out with a bottle of both, though he will say that he is never quite sure about the peach being stable, so it should be refrigerated. I pulled out a bottle of that the other day, and it had lees in it, proving what he was saying.
He also has a cranberry whey wine, and touts the health benefits of adding whey to the wine. It is a pity that ag research centers do not have his recipe. This wine is not milky colored at all, and it is another bottle we take home. He recommends adding a little bit of 7-up to it for the bubbles, which is also excellent. I’ve never eaten it with turkey, which I imagine it would be good with, but to do so would probably mean I would have to share, and I would rather horde his wines.
Only once in all my times there has he had his lemon meringue wine, dedicated to his mother.
After tasting all those wines, he takes away your little glass and then gives you a tiny ice cream cone so that you can sample his chocolate orange wine. He’ll talk a bit about how the recipe originally had four truffles, but then he had to change to six. How the only paper worthy of labeling the bottle cost $1,000 for the labeler. He will recite stories about how indestructible this wine is though the years, and warns you not to refrigerate it, which I did. It causes the chocolate to solidify, so he suggests boiling the bottle, which I did, and the wine was saved. He also will proceed to wrap the bottle up in tissue, string, and foil, and then tell you he is selling it to you at the price of the truffles only, and that he views this wine as the pinnacle of his career, and that he can never beat this wine. It is sad because he is so old that it worries me that this defeatist attitude will not get him out of bed one day.
I’ll admit, we only have one bottle of the chocolate wine in our house compared to the others. The others are drinkers, and the chocolate wine isn’t so much. He does have a list of 25 suggested ways to consume the chocolate wine, such as on ice cream and, um, other methods.
Anyway, go check it out. He is there almost any afternoon, including major holidays. If there is a note on the door saying to call him, do it. The wine world will not know how much will be lost from the tip of Oregon when he is gone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
